Charter Schools

One of the many tired claims of “free-market” loving, pro-consumerist millionaires and billionaires behind nonprofit and for-profit charter schools is that charter schools “empower parents” to “choose” which school to send their child to. Charter schools, according to the top one percent, should be one of many options available to families. Taking social responsibility to invest in, defend, and strengthen real public schools that have been around for more than a century and a half is not part of the agenda of major owners of capital.

Charter school supporters and promoters have long been severely obsessed with comparing charter school and public school students’ scores on expensive curriculum-narrowing high-stakes standardized tests produced by big corporations. They fetishize test scores and believe such scores are useful and meaningful in some way, despite what extensive evidence has shown for decades.

Angering Wall Street and other millionaires and billionaires who promote charter schools, in early December 2018 hundreds of teachers at a corporate charter school chain in Chicago called Acero set a historic record and held the nation’s first mass charter school teachers’ strike.
The strike at Acero’s 15 charter schools, attended by mostly poor and low-income Latino students, was something wealthy private interests urgently wanted to avoid because it would bring too much attention to many problems that have been plaguing charter schools for years.

The intensely controversial nature of nonprofit and for-profit charter schools in the U.S., due in no small part to endless news about the infinite problems plaguing them, is increasingly a major issue in local, state, and federal election campaigns. It is hard to find a political race today where a candidate, especially a school board candidate, is not expected to have some position, hopefully well-worked out, but usually not, on charter schools.

Many individuals, groups, newspapers, and organizations claim that they oppose charter schools. But, revealing ongoing confusion, they also say, often in the same breath, that “there are some good charter schools out there,” that “not all charter schools are rotten,” that “charter schools are not a ‘panacea’ but can be part of the solution,” that “charter schools may provide a good alternative for at least some students,” or that “charter schools should be given a chance” (even though they have been around for more than 25 years).

Regulations have to do with what is allowed and what is not allowed. They establish what an individual, organization, or business can or cannot do. Regulations shape behaviors, actions, conduct, aims, and outcomes.

Charter school supporters and promoters never tire of repeating the banality that “charter schools are an innovation.”
“Innovation” has become one of many hackneyed buzzwords in the neoliberal lexicon. Everyone is under intense pressure to blindly embrace “innovation” at full velocity, no matter how irresponsible.

by Dorothy ReikPresident, Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica MountainsIt should be a given that all schools must be created equal and that they must provide the same great education to all of our children. That is why I am opposed to "public" charters-- and "magnet" schools. Let's remember the genesis of these schools-- they were created in response to forced busing.

One of the main criticisms of charter schools is that they are terrible because right wingers are behind them.
Many right wingers are indeed behind charter schools. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a textbook example of right-wing support for charter schools. The billionaire Koch brothers are another example of right-wing support for charter schools. Many others could be cited.
But this does not tell the full story of charter schools and who else strongly supports and promotes them.

People who call themselves “democrats,” “lefties,” “progressives,” or “social justice advocates” are becoming increasingly critical of and rejecting charter schools. This is a positive development.
But quite a few “democrats,” “lefties,” “progressives, and “social justice advocates” remain victims of several harmful myths about charter schools.