Charter Schools

No Justification for the Existence of Charter Schools (Part Two)

Non-profit and for-profit charter schools are privatized, marketized, corporatized education arrangements that appeared 30 years ago in the U.S. They are legal in 45 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam. About 3.3 million youth are currently enrolled in roughly 7,400 charter schools. Charter schools openly embrace “free market” ideology and siphon billions of public […]

Inflated Charter School Waitlists

With great frequency, promoters of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools like to claim that charter schools are so great that they have very long lists of students waiting to get into them. They use such claims and “data” to argue that more charter schools are needed and that more public money should be spent […]
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Public Funds For Charter Schools Is Socially Irresponsible

Public money comes from the new value workers produce. It does not come from somewhere else. This value is presently controlled not by those who produce it but by the financial oligarchy and its state. When socially-produced wealth is not controlled by those who actually produce it, endless problems arise. There is no way for […]
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New York State: 50 Charter Schools Closed in 20 Years

According to New York Charter School Fact Sheet (January 2021) from the New York State Education Department, the number of charter schools issued in New York State since the passage of the state’s charter school law in 1998 is 397. The total number of privately-operated charters permitted statewide under 2015 legislative amendments is 460. It […]

Charter Schools: “Choice” Is Not An Argument

Advocates of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools have long ignored serious criticisms of charter schools in a variety of ways. They have always believed, for example, that simply repeating worn-out phrases like “charter schools provide choice” will automatically cause everyone to dismiss the need for any discussion, investigation, and critical thinking about the well-documented […]

Charter School Disinformation About Families Being the Most Important “Stakeholders”

Since day one, advocates of privately-operated charter schools have tried to convince everyone that segregated charter schools “empower parents” and that parents are not only “stakeholders” but the most important “stakeholders” in education. Everything in education is supposedly all about parents first and foremost. Parents are the end-all and be-all. Education apparently serves no one […]

Charter Schools’ Obsession With Test Scores Deliberately Misses the Point

Putting aside the endless problems with punitive high-stakes standardized tests produced by a handful of large for-profit corporations, charter school advocates have never stopped making a fetish out of students’ scores on these political instruments. Charter school promoters obsess endlessly over racist psychometric tests that have been rejected by many for decades. They appear to […]

What is a “Strong” Charter School Law?

Every year the billionaire-funded National Alliance for Charter Schools (NAPCS) produces a glossy report ranking state charter school laws. This year’s 72-page report is titled: Measuring up to the model, a ranking of state public charter school laws, twelfth annual edition. The main goal of the report is to rank state charter school laws in […]
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Charter Schools Distort the Modern Socialized Economy

Every year billions of public dollars and assets flow into the hands of private businesses like charter schools, leaving public schools, the economy, the public interest, and the nation worse off. This is due to the fact that competing owners of capital are using deregulated charter schools to atomize the socialized economy for private gain. […]

Arizona Pioneer in Wrecking Public Education through Charter Schools

Recent news articles claim that Arizona is a “leader in innovation” when it comes to private businesses like charter schools. Arizona is said to be amazing because it is ensuring “freedom” for parents to “choose” from an exciting array of charter schools to send their kids to, and this is all thanks to a legal […]