The court won’t take a wrecking ball to the education system.
Starlee Coleman worries that the “High Court Could Crush Charter Schools” (op-ed, April 30). Her argument is that, should the justices rule in St. Isidore v. Drummond that such schools are private entities, some states would respond by abolishing them. Others may revise their laws “to make charter schools unmistakably public, which would snuff out their autonomy.”
Yet the court concluding that charters aren’t government actors would have no bearing on whether they are public schools under state laws. Since 1991 there have been two sectors of public education: the traditional government-run sector and the chartered nonprofit-run sector. Thousands of private nonprofits have operated schools in the second category, maintaining open-enrollment policies, administering state tests and so on. This tracks the decades-long tradition of private nonprofits working with governments in social services. The court has long recognized that a nonprofit doesn’t automatically become a “state actor” simply because it engages in a public program. Similarly, the court will recognize that chartered entities don’t become private simply because all nonprofits are allowed to participate.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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