Charter Schools

Charter School Oversight Remains Weak

In 2016, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called for a moratorium on new charter schools, citing many problems with these privatized schools, including poor performance, extensive waste, widespread segregation, and inadequate accountability.
Oversight, transparency, accountability, and good governance have never been the strong suits of charter schools or charter school authorizers. Both have been poor stewards of the public interest for more than a generation.

Charter School Promoters Celebrate Charter School Failure

Even worse than the persistently high failure rate of brick-and-mortar charter schools is the extraordinary failure rate of cyber charter schools year after year. Even the nature and scope of corruption in these deregulated online schools is more troubling than the corruption that has long plagued brick-and-mortar charter schools nationwide.
The abysmal performance of cyber charter schools is so visible and chronic that many charter school advocates do not even bother trying to sugar-coat their chronically substandard performance.

Federal Charter Schools Program, a Lifeline for Owners of Capital, Under Threat

Neoliberals established the Federal Charter Schools Program in 1994, three years after the nation’s first charter school law was passed in Minnesota. Since then, billions of public dollars have been handed over to privately-owned-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools through the federal program. The money is usually used for charter school start-up costs.

Charter Schools Are Part of Private Law, Not Public Law

Public law and private law are separate spheres of law that operate according to different standards and relationships.1
Private law governs relations between private citizens, whereas public law governs relations between individuals and the state. This distinction is critical. Private law does not concern society as a whole; public law does.

Seventeen Charter Schools Siphon $155 Million from Buffalo Public School System

To the shock of many, the Buffalo News, Buffalo’s main newspaper, recently published an article exposing serious problems with charter schools. Like Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News usually goes out of its way to provide biased reporting on charter schools, almost always presenting them in the most favorable light possible, while consistently ignoring well-documented problems.

Charter Schools Have No Valid Claim to Public Property

Public facilities and infrastructure are produced by the working class and people and belong to the public. They exist in order to serve the common good and to contribute to the extended reproduction of society.
This collectively-produced wealth must not be handed over to competing owners of capital who are only concerned with maximizing profit as fast as possible, regardless of the damage caused to society and the environment. Socially-produced wealth must be off limits to narrow private interests. The aims and purposes of the private sector and public sector are not the same.

Teachers Unions Not the Only Ones Opposing Charter Schools

Promoters of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools that seize billions of dollars a year from public schools have long promoted the illusion that it is mainly teachers unions that are opposed to charter schools.
Keeping in mind that 90% of charter schools have no teacher unions and that charter school owners-operators usually react bellicosely when teachers try to unionize to defend their rights and their students, it is not only teachers unions that oppose charter schools.

Community Schools Are Not the Antidote to Charter Schools

Democratic presidential candidates, such as Elizabeth Warren, have pledged to fix the American education system by replacing privatized charter schools with “community schools” that incorporate “socioemotional-learning (SEL)” programs. These “Democratic” community schools, which teach “social skills” and “emotional competencies,” might sound like “liberal” or “leftwing” education reforms. But don’t be fooled by the pathos of such leftist “social justice” rhetoric.