How Some California Charter Schools Illegally Restrict Enrollment

All across California, charter schools are implementing admissions policies that exclude students from enrolling. Like other public schools, charters must admit all students who wish to attend. By law, they may not discourage certain students from enrolling based on income, national origin, academic performance or other factors. These admission policies threaten to turn public schooling into a two-tier system where the students who need the most resources receive the fewest.

To realize charter schools' promise of providing educational choice to all, the ACLU SoCal and Public Advocates released Unequal Access: How Some California Charter Schools Illegal Restrict Enrollment, a July 2016 report that sheds light on exclusionary enrollment policies at 253 charter schools.

See a map of charter schools cited.

These charter schools post enrollment policies or forms online that are clearly illegal or exclusionary. Other schools may also maintain similar prohibited policies that are hidden from the public view. The violations we found include:

• Exclusion Based on Academic Performance
• Discrimination against English Learners
• Pre-Enrollment Essays or Interviews
• Requirements that Discourage Undocumented Students
• Illegal Parent/Guardian Volunteer Requirements

Download the full report.

See the methodology for the report.

Read our followup brief after 119 schools on the list complied and changed their policies.

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Unequal Access (Full report: Aug 1, 2016)

Illegal Pupil Fee Complaint Form (AB 1575)

Charter Enrollment Complaint Form

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In Rodriguez v. Robbins, the ACLU SoCal and the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project represent a class of noncitizens who have been incarcerated for six months or longer in the Los Angeles area while they litigate their immigration cases, and who have been denied a constitutionally-adequate bond hearing to determine whether their prolonged detention is justified. In the past three years, the ACLU has won important rulings that have required the government to provide bond hearings to class members — their first meaningful opportunity to seek release and return to their loved ones during the lengthy time it can take for their cases to wind their way through the immigration court process.

The government has conducted thousands of bond hearings for class members under the court's orders over the past three years. Based on data produced by the government, this report presents statistics on the outcomes of class members' bond hearings during an 18-month period, from October 2012 to April 2014. It provides the first comprehensive examination of Rodriguez bond hearings, and provides important insight into the implementation of the court's orders and the immigration detention system more generally.

As documented in the report, immigration judges have found that the overwhelming majority of class members should be released on bond or other conditions of release. Thus, their prolonged detention — at great personal cost to themselves and their families and massive financial cost to taxpayers — was unnecessary.

Read the report

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Restoring Due Process

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