Protesters block Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and clash with her security detail as she arrives at Jefferson Junior High School in Washington on Friday. (Don Baxter/Media Images International) Skeptical questions remain over how much support Betsy DeVos will provide traditional public schools in her new role as secretary of education. But there is no doubt she is a big fan of charter schools. She and her husband invested in K12 Inc., the nation’s largest operator of for-profit charter schools, whose quality has long been questioned. With her devotion to charters and her perch at the top of the educational bureaucracy, DeVos, who took office after a tough confirmation hearing in which her fitness was doubted, is well positioned to push efforts aimed at correcting the high and racially twisted disciplinary practices of Washington’s charter schools and to determine if similar patterns exist elsewhere. A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says suspension and expulsion rates for charters in the capital city are double the national rate and disproportionately high for black students and those with disabilities. During the 2013-2014 school year, for example, “D.C charter schools had about a 13 percent suspension rate, while the national rate for all charter schools was about 6 percent,” the GAO reported. “This was also true for expulsions, with charter schools in D.C. reporting double the rate of charter schools nationally.” The agency that oversees charter schools in the District acknowledges it has issues, but it also had problems with the GAO’s findings. In a response included in the report, the D.C. Public Charter School Board said the GAO “reaches some inaccurate conclusions and from these draws ill-advised recommendations” because it did not use more recent data. Data from the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years show that “steady and significant progress has been made every year in reducing out-of-school discipline,” the board said in response. If there is good news here, it’s only by comparison. D.C. charter suspension and expulsion rates did fall from the 2011-2012 to the 2013-2014 academic years. Also, the charter suspension rate is only a little higher than that of the city’s traditional public schools. But that’s not good enough. When D.C. charter schools kick students out, they are not allowed to return, the GAO reported. They generally transfer to a traditional public school. “In contrast, D.C. traditional public schools generally do not expel students,” the GAO said. “Instead, D.C. traditional public schools generally use long-term suspensions (greater than 11 days) and temporarily transfer these students to an alternative middle and high school.” | 