A charter school law backed by Bill Gates was found to be unconstitutional by the Washington Supreme Court, The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss reports. The court, 6-3, ruled that the Washington state constitution only allows public-school funds to support "common schools," and charter schools can't be common schools because their boards are not elected by the public.
Strauss, citing the law review article, “The Legal Status of Charter Schools in State Statutory Law,” notes that charter schools have operations that are basically private, even though they have public funding. Some charter schools are run by private education management organizations, and some charter schools refuse to share information in response to public-information requests.
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