The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved 16 of 17 proposed charter schools yesterday, despite objections from an ELL advocacy group that the applications for the schools didn’t comply with a state law offering protections for English-language learners.
The Somerville, Mass.-based advocacy group—Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy—had contended that most of the 17 applications by providers for new charter schools didn’t show a track record of serving ELLs and didn’t have adequate plans to recruit them, which are required by a state law enacted about a year ago. It asked the board to provide only provisional approval, if at all, for the applications that lacked adequate plans for ELLs.
The Boston Globe reported that the board rejected one of the 17 applications because of the board’s concerns that the provider was trying to convert a private school to a charter school, which is prohibited.