Why are liberals so against charter schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1-pulls resources from public schools
2-wont take all kids, like the publics have to, which means the trouble-makers, the special ed kids, etc., all end up in the public, all needing more resources (which the public now has less of)
3-little to no oversight, which means sometimes, no, frequently, these private charters abscond with public money and DO NOT educate children

Very true but there are sometimes a few good ones just more often they abscond with public money...

[Anonymous]

Charter schools are not an ideal solution to improving educational for K-12. But, in DC, the way that charters have been implemented, it has improved educational options for many students (about half of DC public school students attend charters) and helped improve many public ES by keeping MC/UMC families in the city, who now are more willing to give their local ES a try.

The way DC’s charters are managed, it has helped to reduce some (not all) or the corruption at charters seen in other states. The management includes:
1)Requiring all charters to be non-profits (which comes with required public reporting of financials)
2)Review of each school by the public charter school board (reports and assessments also made publicly available). In DC, the public charter school board is also reviewed every 5 years by the GAO (www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105226)
3) The move to a true lottery system that allows any family equal shot at a spot (although yes, it does require an involved parent with access to the internet to enter the lottery and parent’s ability to transport the child to the school if they get a spot)


Ideally DC would use its vast budget to actually improve dc public schools and/or provide more necessary wrap-around services needed to better support at-risk and lower performing students. However, in previous years when DC had ample budget it has continued NOT to make any impactful changes. In the mean time, charter schools have given 50% of kids an educational option that they feel is better than their local public school. Not all charters are great, but clearly something is wrong with many of the DC public schools if 50% of the students choose to go elsewhere. The more I learn about and experience the DC school system, the more I am beginning to believe that there are systemic issues with the management of the school system, rather than lack of funding (at least in the past 10 years).

Charters, as implemented in DC, have improved things (at least marginally). However, in other states with the lack of oversight and in cases of voucher systems, etc. where the option is not equitably open to all students (I.e. parochial/private schools can pick and choose students), charters (and voucher programs) seem like an easy opportunity to increase segregation and allow government funds to be misused without improving the educational opportunities for any significant number of students.

Now that budgets are tightening in DC, I don’t see any improvements to public schools likely to be made, and charters continue to make DC more palatable to families who would otherwise move to MD or VA.

[Anonymous]

What keeps charters in business and keeps the issue in city halls and statehouses is funding from white male hedge funders. That’s it. I can’t say I understand their motivation, but without their funding, charters would have died years ago. How do I know this? I work in fundraising and have overheard these conversations at work. It’s these white hedge fund guys who are bankrolling Senator Tom Scott.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What keeps charters in business and keeps the issue in city halls and statehouses is funding from white male hedge funders. That’s it. I can’t say I understand their motivation, but without their funding, charters would have died years ago. How do I know this? I work in fundraising and have overheard these conversations at work. It’s these white hedge fund guys who are bankrolling Senator Tom Scott.

Tim, not Tom, Scott

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because charter schools in the rest of the country aren't the same as here in DC.

Yes, there are cases (like in DC) where the starting place (DCPS 20 years ago) is a true disaster for nearly everyone, AND money is not generally the problem (even at its worst, DCPS had very high per-pupil funding). And charters can be (and were!) a rising tide that lifted all boats. More families stayed (the population of school aged kids in DC has grown significantly faster than general population growth in DC since charters came to be), in general, DCPS elementary schools have been improving, poor kids have more options.

But, there are also places where charter schools are brought in with the political agenda not to save public schools but to destroy them. Michigan and Pennsylvania both come to mind. Results that are worst than the public schools they were brought in to improve. They are often for-profit and actually making money for hedge funds, which then supports politicians who support them, and the cycle continues. There's been fraud and waste, and low accountability. Plus, while most at least have to theoretically take kids from a lottery, there are LOTS of ways that charters can shape their student bodies. Think about the early days of charters in DC, when people used to camp out in front of Yu Ying to get a good timestamp for the waitlist.

So, as a very liberal person, I'm very in favor of DC's charter schools and the lottery system (though of course there could be improvements) but I am NOT in favor of charters as the silver bullet everywhere. The devil is really in the details, and in many (most?) places, the answer isn't charter schools, it's more funding.

This is a really great explanation. I can chime in and say that whenever I hear charter school, I think fraud, waste, low quality. And that's because of where I grew up and the types of charter schools that were around. They almost always closed up in disgrace and the communities were worse off than before because they lost so much money for teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
7) Charter schools as a whole have problems with quality, accountability, and corruption. There are tons of stories about people using charter schools as a grift, with the victims being the kids who get a garbage education while charter school execs and their friends make out like bandits. Public schools aren't perfect, but they have a lot more transparency and oversight.

This.

I taught for a high school charter for 5 years. Not in DC but another very large, major city in the US. It was so corrupt. The original mission was nice. To give kids that were kicked out or dropped out of the major city’s regular public schools a second chance to graduate. It was run by a woman and her whole family which encompassed the administration. Only family members and one friend of the family were administrators. One family member was the vice principal, one the IT person, two were accountants (for a school of 250 they needed 2 accountants), etc, etc. There were 8 teachers and we were the underlings and treated like garbage. Zero budget. Even for art. Occasionally if you asked for supplies you would get it. No windows in any classrooms. Not enough space for a class. We had about 50% kids absent regularly but if they all showed up they would have to sit in the hallway. Sewage would overflow occasionally on the floors.

The worst was that all the family administration, which there were about as many as teachers, each got paid six figures salary. Teacher salaries were below average. Pay checks bounced. If you wanted to get your money you had to go to the school’s bank and wait in line with the other teachers and if you were at the end of the line they would tell you that there was no money left. They did pay you back the fees for their bounced checks.

Teachers were fired for trying to unionize the charter schools in our group. We had extremely high turnover of staff. Several teachers didn’t even make it through one day there. I stayed because I enjoyed the teachers and the students. The guidance counselor used to say that afteryou worked there, you could work anywhere.

I call BS. Name it or it didn't happen

[Anonymous]

How are there so many farms kids in DC that want to attend charter schools? Wouldn't the rents be sky high and force out all the low income folks?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why should poor people be told to eat cake & suck it up if they don’t like their neighborhood school’s admin, test scores or style?

I’m a liberal person who loves well-regulated charter schools.

The real problem, once you work through all of the startup and jealousy issues, is that many charter schools are started by people who have no idea what they’re doing. But competition with good charter schools makes reasonably good regular public school administrators take steps to communicate more with parents and improve their product. So, I think reasonably good good charters tend to be good for the regular public schools, even though regular public schools see them as a money stealer.

[Anonymous]

Issues that are DC-specific:

-lack of coordination between DC public charter school board & DCPS with regard to siting of schools
-priority for charters to get facilities
-gaming of the per pupil formula as other PPs mentioned (including a student in the head count that takes place in Oct & then pushing the student out once funds secured)
-inability of DCPS schools to refuse any student -- eg double standard such that PCS can enforce behavior/attendance etc standards with families that DCPS cannot
-each charter school in DC is legally considered its own LEA (local education agency) which in practical terms means they are independent nonprofits which can fundraise as a peer entity with a school district like, say, DCPS. Parallel entities (like an individual DCPS school) lack the ability to fundraise like this - raises real equity issues.
-not unique to charters since DCPS has been guilty of this as well but charters notoriously claim 100% graduation rates for dwindling classes after pushing students out
-other folks have covered SpEd differences
-teachers are paid less but sometimes still stick it out in charters bz they can have more autonomy/creativity (this is a plus for teachers but I wish they had the protections that a union would provide)

All in all, I am cautiously supportive of charters in DC but think there should be much more coordination of the sectors so that the existence of charters is not detracting from the public school system that is legally required to educate the students left behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
7) Charter schools as a whole have problems with quality, accountability, and corruption. There are tons of stories about people using charter schools as a grift, with the victims being the kids who get a garbage education while charter school execs and their friends make out like bandits. Public schools aren't perfect, but they have a lot more transparency and oversight.

This.

I taught for a high school charter for 5 years. Not in DC but another very large, major city in the US. It was so corrupt. The original mission was nice. To give kids that were kicked out or dropped out of the major city’s regular public schools a second chance to graduate. It was run by a woman and her whole family which encompassed the administration. Only family members and one friend of the family were administrators. One family member was the vice principal, one the IT person, two were accountants (for a school of 250 they needed 2 accountants), etc, etc. There were 8 teachers and we were the underlings and treated like garbage. Zero budget. Even for art. Occasionally if you asked for supplies you would get it. No windows in any classrooms. Not enough space for a class. We had about 50% kids absent regularly but if they all showed up they would have to sit in the hallway. Sewage would overflow occasionally on the floors.

The worst was that all the family administration, which there were about as many as teachers, each got paid six figures salary. Teacher salaries were below average. Pay checks bounced. If you wanted to get your money you had to go to the school’s bank and wait in line with the other teachers and if you were at the end of the line they would tell you that there was no money left. They did pay you back the fees for their bounced checks.

Teachers were fired for trying to unionize the charter schools in our group. We had extremely high turnover of staff. Several teachers didn’t even make it through one day there. I stayed because I enjoyed the teachers and the students. The guidance counselor used to say that afteryou worked there, you could work anywhere.

I call BS. Name it or it didn't happen

What part do you think was bs in my post? Do you think I lied about the sewage problems? Family run administration? Bounced checks? Haven’t even shared everything.

[Anonymous]

Charter schools don’t proliferate in areas where students & their families are happy with the schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Charter schools don’t proliferate in areas where students & their families are happy with the schools.

This.

Personally I think the problem is that most liberals tend to think of people as a monolithic block. They’re not. Some low income people want low academic and behavioral standards in school because they’re lazy and don’t want to parent their children and don’t want to talk to teachers, but other low income people want more for their kids. They want higher academic and behavioral standards. They want strict rules and police officers. These things can’t all exist together in the same school. And if you make the good parents unhappy then they’re just going to find another place for their kids. If they can’t afford privates, that means charter schools. The neighborhood schools are catering to the wrong parents.

[Anonymous]

Depends a lot on the system. In Massachusetts, charters are tightly regulated and seem to offer some benefits. In Indiana, they are the wild west, don't improve outcomes, and sometimes make $154 million disappear.

https://in.chalkbeat.org/2021/7/12/22574499/indiana-sues-ex-virtual-schools-and-officials-for-154-million-in-alleged-fraud

[Anonymous]

Didn't read all replies yet, but once public funds are used for charter schools, we're only a hop, skip and jump away from right-wing zealots diverting public funds to religious schools.

In fact, it's already happening:

Even as public schools across the country continue to grapple with budget shortfalls and misleading attacks from right-wing agitators over classroom lesson plans, the Supreme Court has moved to further undermine public education by opening the door for states to divert more public tuition dollars to private religious schools.

The Court’s 6-3 decision in Carson v. Makin, issued on June 21, further breaches the separation between church and state by requiring states to fund private religious schools if they fund any other private schools, even if those religious schools would use public funds for religious instruction and worship.

Every student in America deserves to attend a great public school, but the Court’s decision to allow tax dollars to be diverted from public education to religious education only makes it more difficult for all students—no matter their race, zip code, or background—to receive the quality education that they deserve.

“Forcing American taxpayers to fund private religious education—even when those private schools fail to meet education standards, intentionally discriminate against students, or use public funds to promote religious training, worship, and instruction—erodes the foundation of our democracy and harms students,” NEA President Becky Pringle said.

Sadly, the Court pursued an unpopular, extreme agenda this past term that has also upended states’ ability to regulate firearms and limited women's rights over their own reproductive health care decisions. Taken together, the most extremist Court in modern history is eroding some of the most basic social commitments of our society in order to serve partisan interests.

https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/supreme-court-decision-paves-way-public-funds-flow-religious-schools


There are religious schools in the South that will not teach science in any meaningful way, i.e., origin of the universe is replaced with creationism and how to defend that stance. Challenging authority of the white Christian patriarchal structure is not allowed. Ask me how I know.

Do we really want to continue feeding into and/or expanding that portion of our electorate that seems wholly lacking in critical thinking skills and hell bent on marching toward authoritarianism?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn't read all replies yet, but once public funds are used for charter schools, we're only a hop, skip and jump away from right-wing zealots diverting public funds to religious schools.

In fact, it's already happening:

Even as public schools across the country continue to grapple with budget shortfalls and misleading attacks from right-wing agitators over classroom lesson plans, the Supreme Court has moved to further undermine public education by opening the door for states to divert more public tuition dollars to private religious schools.

The Court’s 6-3 decision in Carson v. Makin, issued on June 21, further breaches the separation between church and state by requiring states to fund private religious schools if they fund any other private schools, even if those religious schools would use public funds for religious instruction and worship.

Every student in America deserves to attend a great public school, but the Court’s decision to allow tax dollars to be diverted from public education to religious education only makes it more difficult for all students—no matter their race, zip code, or background—to receive the quality education that they deserve.

“Forcing American taxpayers to fund private religious education—even when those private schools fail to meet education standards, intentionally discriminate against students, or use public funds to promote religious training, worship, and instruction—erodes the foundation of our democracy and harms students,” NEA President Becky Pringle said.

Sadly, the Court pursued an unpopular, extreme agenda this past term that has also upended states’ ability to regulate firearms and limited women's rights over their own reproductive health care decisions. Taken together, the most extremist Court in modern history is eroding some of the most basic social commitments of our society in order to serve partisan interests.

https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/supreme-court-decision-paves-way-public-funds-flow-religious-schools


There are religious schools in the South that will not teach science in any meaningful way, i.e., origin of the universe is replaced with creationism and how to defend that stance. Challenging authority of the white Christian patriarchal structure is not allowed. Ask me how I know.

Do we really want to continue feeding into and/or expanding that portion of our electorate that seems wholly lacking in critical thinking skills and hell bent on marching toward authoritarianism?

Do they allow government funding of research at Notre Dame, Georgetown, or other religious schools? Student loans?