So much misinformation in one little thread!
Nearly all charter schools in the US are required to have a lottery for admission. Some schools are allowed "preference" categories for students that have a particular need/desire. For example, an arts academy may have an audition and 30% of the kids that are accepted in the lottery first, will have had to pass the audition with a high score. Or a school may focus on language immersion and declare that 50% of the lottery must be students who do not speak the primary language of the school (say Spanish.)
Charter schools that received public funding (which is the federal definition of a charter) are NOT allowed to discriminate against nearly all categories of IEP students. However, charter schools ARE allowed to exclude students who would not have an appropriate educational placement in the least restrictive environment. If an IEP team has decided that a student needs a severely emotionally disturbed, self-contained classroom and a charter school does not have one of those, the charter is allowed to say no.
Students who are on full-inclusion plans cannot be excluded from nearly any charter in the US. Whether they are appropriately served in that setting, is a different matter. As a former teacher and vice-principal at a charter, I can tell you that many parents chose to not disclose a child's true needs before applying. It's not good for anyone to find out that a child is severely autistic and needs assistance in a regular classroom on day 5 of 7th grade. But I've had this happen because of the misinformation that charters don't accept students with IEPs. So parents feel compelled to lie, which is completely unnecessary and does harm to the child.
As for accepted cruelty, it has been my observation that as schools move towards more heavily scripted curriculum, more testing and more test driven curriculum, students' spirits are being crushed. It is heart-wrenching for anyone, including the teacher in the classroom, to watch 1st graders go through a scripted program like Open Court where you have to read in chorus and respond to a clicker like a dog for hours upon hours a day.
Until the pendulum swings back to a more moderate educational setting and parents stop valuing the quantity of homework as an indicator of school quality, it's going to be rough in public education.
After a 3rd grade year of 60 min of worksheets every single night, sometimes the SAME worksheets as yesterday for "more review", we are homeschooling. I realize not everyone has that option, but I couldn't watch my son's desire to learn and his spark be worksheeted out of him.
