Charter Schools Have a Big Problem, and Rebranding Won’t Help
Charters promised all sorts of miraculous educational achievements at low, low prices. But those achievements haven’t appeared. More people are understanding that what we’re really talking about is the privatization of our public school system.
U.S. News recently reported that “school choice” has a branding problem. In that piece, reporter Lauren Camera quotes Senator Ted Cruz, who is carrying the Trump Administration’s water for a $5 billion school choice tax credit proposal, as saying, “We need to expand our coalition.”
Ignoring for a moment the unlikely image of Cruz building a bipartisan coalition, even with his new facial hair, we’re looking at old news.
Camera says that the school choice tent has been a large one, and in some ways she’s correct. School choice has its roots most firmly in conservative free market ideology, folding in both those who sincerely believe that the free market is the best way to raise educational quality and those who sincerely believe that a free market approach to education would give them a chance to get their hands on a ton of taxpayer dollars.
The leftward wing of the coalition included those who sincerely believed that an alternative was needed to a public school system that was not serving minority students, as well as those who sincerely believed that school choice would give them a chance to get their hands on a ton of taxpayer money. The Democratic wing of the coalition also brought in the neoliberals, who believed that education could be better provided by private businesses. CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Have a Big Problem, and Rebranding Won’t Help - Progressive.org
