DA isn't a charter school. It's a public school with an IQ cutoff...
It may be helpful to provide source documents to substantiate points made, so that people are being well-informed by reading the forums... to that end, I will share the following (others may have more to share):
1) The DA "About Us page" has a "
History/Timeline" which points to Nevada legislation: Revised Statute 392A, updated to
388C.
2) The Nevada legislation can be found several places online. Findlaw is one of these:
Nevada Revised Statutes Title 34 Education. This shows Charter Schools defined and governed by 388A, Achievement Charter Schools defined and governed by 388B, University Schools for Profoundly Gifted Pupils defined and governed by
388C. ...
From the DA's
home page:
The Academy is a third kind of public school (not a charter school) established thanks to state legislation, Nevada Revised Statute 388C.
It appears these sources agree.
As for some charter schools targeting low income students, this fact is irrelevant to the fact that many charter schools are bending and breaking laws to avoid taking students who won't make them look good. Ideology doesn't change facts.
Agreed, ideology does not change facts... however it may influence which subset of facts one chooses to focus on... while other facts may be overlooked or ignored.
Fact 1: The context of this article was a special report on difficulties which some students of low SES may have in applying to charter schools, due to complex application requirements.
Fact 2: The
report states "Many..." and "Most..." charter schools have a simple application process. In other words, the complex application processes outlined/detailed in the report would not apply to "Many... " and "Most..." charter schools.
Fact 3: The anecdotes provided in the report are not necessarily provided in the context of the applicable laws. Therefore in several instances it is difficult to know whether a law is being bent, a law is being broken, or the author does not like or agree with the law.
Fact 4: The article does not provide statistics regarding the number of students/families facing burdensome application processes or the number of schools employing application processes which may be burdensome.
Observation: The article appears to be written emphasizing persuasion, and uses anecdata... rather than being written to objectively and impartially inform, using statistics. This is not to discredit the article. There is good and bad in everything, and the article is pointing out that charters are not necessarily a panacea... it indicates areas where further investigation/research could be done, to provide more information/facts.
Compare/Contrast:
report - "Many charters, backed by state law,
specialize in serving low-income and minority children."
post - "charter schools
targeting low income students"
"
Specialize in serving" tends to have a positive connotation; "
Targeting" tends to have a negative, almost predatory, connotation.
As mentioned upthread, the present US education system was developed under previous administrations. It remains to be seen what changes DeVos may make to the Dept of Education, and how the Dept of Education may change DeVos.
