At the risk of clarifying some of the issues which have dogged charter schools for two decades, here are some thoughts:
- Like all public schools, charter schools are subject to every state/federal regulation and testing requirement.
- The arguments one hears about charters are typically not about education or kids; they are more likely to be about the adults, more specifically their jobs, and the evaluation thereof, something which is routine elsewhere in organizational life.
- What the teachers union historically has wanted is to decide, without interference or metrics subject to analysis, whether your child is being educated. You as a parent have no real power in such a situation. This upsets many people.
- Enrollment in charters is through an open lottery.
- It is unseemly for affluent people (in this instance, predominantly non-minority) to exercise school choice by moving to towns with reputedly better schools and then object to financially challenged urban parents (a large majority of whom are minority) who attempt to select among the choices available to them.
- Charters receive less total money per pupil than non-charter schools.
- Parents who can exercise the power of choice (yes, and show motivation, a term which is never pejoratively applied to suburbanites) are lined up to get their children enrolled in high-performing charter schools.