The Days of Charter Schools and Vouchers Are Numbered
If you were trying to make a buck on the side and were pretty sure that some new or improved technology would drastically undercut the market for cell phones within five years, would you invest in Apple stock or look for other opportunities? Well, that is the type of information I have for the Koch Brothers and Devos families of the world. Invest your money elsewhere. Vacate the Secretary of Education’s office. The days of charter and voucher growth are numbered. And regulation is coming to those charters and vouchers already in place.
Why am I suddenly confident, rather than nervous, about charters and vouchers? I got the chance to meet and listen to teachers from across the country at the Network for Public Education’s annual conference in Indianapolis this past weekend. For the first time in my professional career, I had a firm sense of public education’s future. I have litigated and participated in several civil rights and school funding cases, dealt with lots of different advocates, and watched closely as the teacher protests unfolded this spring. In Indianapolis, I saw something special—something I had never seen before.
I saw a broad based education movement led not by elites, scholars, or politicians, but everyday people. Those everyday people were teachers who were not just from big cities, small cities, suburbs, or the countryside, but from all of those places and as diverse as America’s fifty states and ten thousand school districts. The teachers weren’t Continue reading: Education Law Prof Blog
