The latest installment of the Graduate School of Education’s (GSE) annual “Barbara Jackson, Ed.D. Lecture” invited Preston Green III, a professor of urban education at the University of Connecticut and educational law scholar. The lecture, “Developing a Model Civil Rights Statute in the Age of School Choice,” included discussions about the impact of public education funds on lower-income school districts and community resources
n a lecture on Oct. 19, a leading scholar of education and law warned that allowing parents to choose to send their students to charter schools that operate without sufficient oversight will actually threaten the student’s civil rights.
“I’ve heard people make arguments about the real need for school choice,” said Preston Green III, Ed.D. He acknowledged that charter schools—a key element of school choice—can provide needed opportunities for families, but said that local governments must regulate them.
Preston Green, a professor of Education Leadership and Law at the University of Connecticut, said deals such as this one could end up with bad results for communities. “We should be very concerned about what those implications are for poor communities and find ways that they can maintain their property control,” Green said.
According to Preston Green III, a professor at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, the fact that public funding for private schools has to include religious schools could be interpreted to allow for funding religious charter schools.
“The logic in this case, if extended, could be applied to [religious] charter schools, and many of us see that as the next domino to fall,” says Preston Green, a professor of educational leadership, law, and urban education at the University of Connecticut.
Might prohibiting religious charter schools amount to an illegal form of discrimination under the Constitution? The Supreme Court may eventually have to answer that question. “Charter schools are the next frontier,” Preston Green, an education law professor at the University of Connecticut, previously told Chalkbeat.
“The concern that I have is the temptation to just say that we’ve done enough, and we don’t have to worry about students in the traditional public schools, because if they don’t like it, they have another school they can go to,” Preston Green said.
Are charter schools like polluting industries? That’s a provocative analogy, but two University of Connecticut researchers explore it in a recent paper. They contend that, while some charter schools may help students, the sector needs stronger regulation to prevent harm to students and school districts. “I would argue that, even if there are benefits, that does not give you carte blanche to not regulate or mitigate the harms that occur,” Preston C. Green III, the paper’s lead author, told me.
Preston Green is a professor of educational leadership and law at the University of Connecticut and the John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education at the Neag School of Education. He’s a nationally recognized expert on school choice, charter schools, and the complex legal landscape of American public education. He stops by this week to talk about the Supreme Court, charter schools, the fight over school curricula, and more.
Preston Green, an educational policy professor at the University of Connecticut, says there is ongoing legal debate about whether charter schools are public or private institutions.
“Courts have had a very difficult time over the years making these distinctions whether charter schools are public or private because the laws may be different depending on the issue,” Green says.
