How the charter school con has hit DC

WUSA9 =By the end of the 2020-21 school year, D.C.’s National Collegiate Prep will be no more – becoming at least the 44th public charter school closed in the District since 2009. Its 276 students will join the thousands who’ve been uprooted by a shuttered charter school during that same period.

D.C. was an early adopter of charter schools, and its system has grown into one of the largest in the country. Its now roughly the same size as the traditional D.C. public school system. During the 2018-19 school year, nearly 44,000 students were enrolled at a D.C. charter. The District’s charter schools collectively receive an annual budget of $900 million in taxpayer dollars.

But poor performance, financial mismanagement and growing demands from the D.C. Charter School Board have left many schools struggling to stay open – and some families struggling to find quality replacements.

Because charter schools operate independently from public school districts, they are overseen by a charter school board which has the authority to shut a school down if its test scores go below a 50% performance rating.

Using publicly available data, the WUSA9 investigative team found more than 1-in-4 D.C. Charter Schools have been shut down for failing to meet academic standards or financial problems. Forty-three charter schools have been forced to close their doors in the last decade alone – forcing more than 11,000 students to find a new school. Thousands of Students Affected by DC Charter Closures D.C. school data shows more than 11,000 students have been affected since 2009 by their charter school closing. Jordan Fische