In a victory for public schools Washington's charter school law deemed unconstitutional

One of the main arguments against charter schools being considered "common schools" is that they do not have an elected board but an appointed one. Forget about the fact that charter schools seem to have the same political corruptions traditionally blamed on public schools. Don't pay attention to the fact that charter schools try to hide their amazing sameness in educational results. Forget about the many deeply rooted, philosophically problematic, issues with charter schools as a whole. This past Friday, after a year of deliberation, Washington State's Supreme Court has ruled that Charter schools cannot be considered "common schools" and therefore should not receive public school funding.

The ruling — believed to be one of the first of its kind in the country — overturns the law voters narrowly approved in 2012 allowing publicly funded, but privately operated, schools.

Bill Gates and other wealthy education crusaders have pushed for charter schools and spent a lot of money getting the Washington Law passed a few years back.

*Microsoft founder Bill Gates, with more than $3 million

*Alice Walton of Walmart Stores (who, unlike Gates, doesn’t live in Washington state), with about $1.7 million.

*Entrepreneur Nicolas J. Hanauer of Seattle, with $1 million.

*Jackie and Mike Bezos, about $750,000. (They are the parents of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and the owner of The Washington Post.)

The timing of this decision is not good at all since school has just begun and there are hundreds of kids newly enrolled in Charter schools and this leaves them in a limbo. So while I personally do not believe in Charter schools and agree with this decision I also can agree with the frustration behind this:

Joshua Halsey, executive director of the state charter-school commission, criticized the court’s timing.

“The court had this case in front of them since last October and waiting until students were attending public charter schools to issue their ruling is unconscionable,” Halsey said. “We are most concerned about the almost 1,000 students and families attending charter schools and making sure they understand what this ruling means regarding their public-school educational options.”

There's a good chance that legislative action will determine the next steps in this saga. Hopefully, people will keep the children in mind and go back to trying to make public education better and not privatizing it.

You can read the ruling here (PDF).

For more discussion go to directional's diary, here.