Charter school promoters want the public, especially poor, low-income, and vulnerable minority families who have long been exploited by the rich and their state, to believe that when it comes to nonprofit and for-profit charter schools the issue is really “high-quality” charter schools versus “low-quality” charter schools. We are told that we need more of the former and fewer of the latter.
Charter school advocates do not want anyone to believe that both the concept and the practice of charter schools are flawed and harm education, society, the economy, and the national interest. They do not want anyone asking why we have charter schools in the first place. Nor do they want people defending public schools. That bothers them. Charter schools are simply “here to stay.” Presumably, we are stuck with them and there is little we can do about them. We are to largely remain hapless victims of charter schools that increase each year.
Charter boosters want people to think that even though charter schools are plagued by endless problems and scandals, somehow their existence is legitimate, valid, and positive, and all that we have to do is make sure we are replicating “high-quality” charter schools while letting the so-called “free market” eliminate thousands of “low quality” charter schools. This will supposedly give rise to the “best of all worlds” for everyone. The fact that there are so many “low-quality” charter schools year after year is often casually glossed over or conveniently trivialized.
Both the rate and amount of failure in the charter school sector have been high for decades. There are thousands of low-quality charter schools out there. News reports on a broad range of unscrupulous and shocking activities in the charter school sector, which is tiny compared to the American public school system serving most youth, appear every few hours. A surreal atmosphere prevails in the charter school sector. The absence of a politics of social responsibility can be sharply felt.
All of this has necessarily left a bad taste in the mouths of many and tarnished the reputation of privately-operated schools that siphon billions of dollars each year from over-tested and under-funded public schools that are scapegoated, shamed, and demonized by the monopoly-controlled media every day.
Charter Schools take school funding from the bedrock of US public education.
Charter school promoters are very sensitive to criticism of charter schools and know that there are thousands of rotten charter schools across the nation, which is why they think they can fool the gullible by stressing the disinformation that what is really important and decisive is promoting “high-quality” charter schools and getting rid of “low-quality” charter schools.
The deliberate and concerted focus on the descriptor “high-quality” before the phrase “charter schools” is a sideshow designed to divert people’s attention away from the fact that there is no justification for the existence, let alone expansion, of any charter schools in the United States (or anywhere else for that matter). Just because the rich have been able to impose thousands of these segregated and deunionized “schools” on society since the early 1990s does not mean they are legitimate, socially responsible, have to be tolerated, or cannot be phased out over time. Charter schools are mainly pay-the-rich schemes that parasitically drain socially-produced wealth from the economy, society, and education.
There is no compelling reason for society to support privately-operated contract schools that choose parents and students (not the other way around), drain public coffers, perpetuate high employee turnover rates, under-enroll students with disabilities, are mired in fraud and corruption, and regularly deliver poor results.
Other false or misleading dichotomies in the “Great Charter School Debate” include:
- regulated verses unregulated charter schools
- for-profit verses nonprofit charter schools
- independent verses CMO/EMO charter schools
- online verses face-to-face/in-person charter schools
Such dichotomies are dangerous and detrimental because they distort reality and undermine the ability of people to see charter schools for what they are. They produce a debased and counterfeit consciousness by focusing on form while covering up the internal content and essence of charter schools as privately-operated contract schools. These and other dichotomies prevent people from analyzing and discussing charter schools in a serious way and reaching warranted conclusions. More often than not, the pressure is to just resort to shooting from the hip, talking off the cuff, or casually spouting off one-liners and knee-jerk assertions about charter schools—all of which are anti-analysis and do nothing to advance social consciousness and the public interest.
The main issue is the “publicness/privateness” of charter schools. There is no such thing as a public charter school. Charter schools are nonprofit and for-profit organizations that differ in fundamental ways from public schools as we know them. Among other things, nonprofit and for-profit charter schools are exempt from hundreds of public laws, rules, and regulations governing public schools. Moreover, unlike public schools, charter schools cannot levy taxes, usually lack unions, and are not governed by publicly elected and publicly accountable individuals. Many other profound differences could be listed.
Charter schools came into being nearly 30 years ago on the basis of usurping and pillaging public school systems that have been around for more than 150 years. They have always lacked most of the features of public schools and are mired in deeper controversy with each passing day.
Just as nonprofit and for-profit charter schools hurt education, society, the economy, and the national interest, so too do “high-quality” charter schools and “low-quality” charter schools.
The necessity today is for the development of a fully-funded, world-class, locally-governed system of public education available for free to anyone, at all times, in every neighborhood and every zip code. No one should be reduced to a consumer who fends-for-themselves like an animal and “shops” for a school that they may or may not get into and that may or may not be high quality. A society based on large-scale industrial production that has to meet the diverse needs of millions of people cannot leave a modern social responsibility like education to chance or the private choices of “rugged individuals” fending for themselves in a dog-eat-dog world.