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 negative effects of charter schools on education, society, the economy, and the national interest.
“Choice,” however, is not an argument for the existence or expansion of privately-operated charter schools.
When charter school promoters use the language of “choice,” they want people to:
- Not recognize that education is an inalienable human right that must be guaranteed in practice by a public authority worthy of the name.
- Believe that “free market” ideology is the best and most pro-social way to organize education in a modern society based on mass industrial production.
- Ignore how “choice” leads to greater stratification and segregation in charter schools through their geographic location and selective student enrollment and attrition practices.
- Disregard the fact that by “choice” charter school promoters really mean education is a commodity, not a social responsibility, and parents and students are consumers, not humans and citizens, who fend for themselves while shopping for a “good” school that hopefully does not close in under 10 years.
- Think that there is no need to analyze how and why public schools have been set up to fail by privatizers so as to justify the rise of deregulated charter schools.
- Get used to the disinformation that public schools are automatically bad and charter schools are inherently superior.
- Ignore the fact that charter schools usually choose parents and students, not the other way around.
- Overlook the fact that “choice” does not guarantee excellence, stability, or equity. Several thousand deregulated charter schools run by unelected individuals have closed in recent decades.
- Believe that it does not matter who “delivers” education, but what kind of “results” are produced.
- Dismiss the fact that “choice” means taking money away from under-funded public schools that educate thousands of students and that public schools in many instances are even compelled to provide some free services to charter schools.
It is not possible to conceal the fact that deregulated charter schools fail and CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools: “Choice” Is Not An Argument | Dissident Voice