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A national think tank's latest study of post-Hurricane Katrina public education in New Orleans says parents of students at independently run charter public schools are more satisfied with the quality of education, safety and discipline at those schools than parents of students at more traditional schools, even though the two types of schools operate similarly in many ways.

May Taliaferrow, Former parent at Achievement First, Brooklyn, NY starts out as an avid charter school supporter but finds parents are shut out and children are subjected to severe discipline and ends up telling her son how sorry she was for putting him the school.

A South Bronx charter school has been put on probation for what city education officials called "serious violations" of state law mandating random admissions, including possibly testing or interviewing applicants before their enrollment.

In the 2007 case Morse v. Frederick, when the court upheld the discipline of a student who had unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" at a school-related event, Justice Thomas joined the majority's opinion. But he wrote a separate concurrence, for himself only, explaining that he would go further and overrule the landmark 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. That case, involving students who wore black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War, has been a fundamental guarantee of student speech rights in school.

"Why would Moskowitz feel the need to lay down a gauntlet in opposition to a president and two secretaries of education who have all been vigorous charter school supporters? For that matter, why take on the entire civil rights community? To answer these questions, I decided to take a look at the data on suspensions from New York City schools, both public and charter."

My post the other day was intended to shed light on the various complexities of classifying charter schools as public or private. Some have argued that the distinctions I make are a distraction from the bigger policy issues. The point was not to address those issues, but rather to dispose of the misinformed rhetoric that charter schools are necessarily public in every way that traditional public schools are. They clearly are not. And the distinctions made in my previous post have important implications not only for teachers employment rights (or any school employee), but also for student rights. Further, it is really, really important that teachers considering their options and parents considering their options understand these distinctions and make fully informed choices.

This was written by Brett Rosenthal, assistant principal at the high-achieving South Side High School in New York. He used to work at Jamaica High School in New York City.