New York Charter Schools Said To Reject Problem Students

The New York Times (7/11, Winerip, Subscription Publication) reports on the experience of a New York mother who was encouraged to remove her young son from the Harlem Success Academy 3 charter school because he was disruptive. The boy is "thriving" in his new school, and his mother now says "she felt her son had been done an injustice." Her "story raises perhaps the most critical question in the debate about charter schools: do they cherry-pick students, if not by gaming the admissions process, then by counseling out children who might be more expensive or difficult to educate - and who could bring down their test scores, graduation rates and safety records?"