The normalizing of charter schools proceeds at a land-record speed given the typical pace of educational change. To wit: Gentrifying white families, for lack of “good” schools, now demand charters, create and recruit for them. Kids on TV shows attend them. The phrase “public charter school” snakes its way into standard usage.

All of which speaks to why it was surprising and disappointing to read in Monica Disare’s Chalkbeat story that New York City’s largest and highest-flying charter network, Success Academy, doesn’t consider it necessary to provide information about its operations despite public records laws that govern all public schools in New York.

SA agrees that its 46 individual schools are subject to the state’s Freedom of Information Law, just not what goes on among the people who run the network.

To be fair, other charter networks share Success’s view. But there’s a more basic existential and policy question. How can a charter claim to be a public school — a “public charter school” — but ignore questions of performance and management every district school must have an answer for? To the extent this circumstance is true, charters are like public schools that have offshore accountability shelters.

Read the full article by David Cantor about public charter schools from The 74