By Nat Malkus   July 7, 2016 at Real Clear Education

There’s a problem with the narrative that charter schools have a discipline problem: It’s simply not true.

Last week at the National Charter Schools Conference, Secretary of Education John King challenged charter schools to rethink their approach to discipline.

King spoke from personal experience, having co-founded Roxbury Prep, a very successful Boston charter school, that employed strict discipline practices and had a 40 percent suspension rate in 2014. King acknowledged that though Roxbury Prep has started to rethink its discipline practices, they did not do so fast enough, and he urged charter leaders to “commit to accelerate exactly this kind of work.”

Over the past year, charters have come under increasing fire in the media for their alleged disproportionately harsh discipline practices. Such practices, particularly the liberal use of suspensions, are often seen as harmful, because they have been linked to negative long-term student outcomes and keep many at-risk students out of, rather than in school. Such stories have built a broad-based narrative that charter schools have a discipline problem.

The narrative is partially anecdotal, with particular high profile charter networks, like New York City’s Success Academy, accused not only of severe disciplinary policy, but of using those policies to push out undesirable students. The narrative is also partially data driven, based on papers like a widely cited report by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA finding that charter schools have higher suspension rates than traditional public schools, particularly for students of color and students with disabilities…. read more here