The Epidemic of Charter Schools: A Saga, the Danger of School Choice

Set of beads which read “EDUCATION” in 
the foreground with stacks of books in a 
classroom in the background, blurred.

As easy as it is to dismiss charter schools in their entirety, it is valuable to mention that they come from humble, and even wholesome, beginnings. In the 90s charter schools were touted as the next revolutionary idea to “finally fix public education.” Although their method of fixing was never quite sensible, an attempt was made. Invented to serve as labs and think-tanks for how education can be renovated for maximum student success, charter schools—and the discourse surrounding them—have become so much more. Much of the treacherous discourse around charter schools is also tied up with the issues of school choice. The ability for parents to chose which public institution their child attends rather than being required to attend the defaulted school in their district. School choice by its own nature is not evil; every student should have access to quality education. However, the answer to students lacking quality education is not to just abandon low-quality schools. Additionally, in today’s politically and socially volatile climate, many school choice supporters link their desire to change schools to the racial and socio-economic demographic of their current public school. Again, desiring to change schools because your school does not adequately support students from diverse racial and socio-economic backgrounds is really only putting a bandaid on a ever-persisting gun shot wound in the public school system’s gut. Of course, it would be a different story if charter schools had found a way to benefit all students and reconstruct under-performing public schools. But they didn’t, charter schools hardly perform better than public schools and are often on-par or below their average performance levels. 

I think what it all comes down to is autonomy. An interesting aspect, and one of the really great ideas, of charter schools is that they have almost complete autonomy in how they dictate funding, schedules, curriculum, and so much more. The autonomy charter schools have helps and hurts them considering they can be run by people with little to no experience and often go unchecked. I think that implementing a kind of autonomy within the existing public school system could be almost entirely beneficial. With the current foundations of public schools in place, I think that their are people within these schools that are more qualified, more invested in these schools and their students’ success, and more understanding of the beings at play than many of the individuals and corporations that dictate the policies of public education. This gives people with a vested interest the ability to strengthen and promote schools that parents and politicians would rather abandon. There is much hope to be had for the future of both public schools and charter schools so long as we hold them at the standard intended: that they promote and improve the education provided for all students. 

The Epidemic of Charter Schools: A Saga

A diverse classroom of public
school students work in groups
to identify parts of the skeleton.  

At the turn of the century, it was thought that the long-criticized American public school system had finally found its savior in altruistic charter schools that began to pop up across the nation. As time came to reveal, these charter schools did more to drain the life out of public schools while continuing to disproportionately underserve populations of students with disabilities, students from low income backgrounds, and student of color in more harmful ways than before. Charter schools, on the surface, appear to be elevated “non-profit” forms of public institutions. When a parent googles “what is a charter school?” as they weigh their options for their child’s future, they will find adverts designed to convince them that charter schools provide a private-quality education at a public cost: free. The proliferation of charter schools, specifically in urban and diverse regions, has also encouraged this euphemistic idea of “school choice”—yet another pseudonym for modern school segregation. Charter schools, despite being labeled as public institutions which allows them to have public funds allocated to their schools take financial compensations and donations from politicians and corporations under a guise of philanthropy. These additional funding would make it seem that charter schools provide a higher caliber or education for their student body and would thereby be a benefit to their communities, especially considering that their student bodies are not required to pay tuition. Upon closer observation, we can see how the selective nature of charter schools—they receive applications and cap student enrollment unlike standard public institutions—falsely represents this facade of high performing students and elevated instruction. Charter schools actively refrain from enrolling students with disabilities, students from low income backgrounds, students of color, and students who are second language learners as they have been shown through research to lower average institution test scores. If charter schools actively avoid these groups of students, why are they cropping up all over urban areas where these populations are largest? This brings us back to the financial and political gain of charter schools as well as this idea of school choice. If charter schools can appear in regions where these populations are large, they can prey on parents that want elevated opportunities for their students, especially parents of students who do not fall into any of the aforementioned categories. The more students admitted, albeit at a selective rate, means more public funding through school choice. This also means a decrease in funding for standard public schools which do not have the privilege of an admittance cap. Less funding for schools of higher and more disadvantaged populations is one of the major affects of the epidemic of charter schools. 

As you can likely tell from that lengthy introduction into the malign follies of charter schools, I am very passionate about their effects on public education and student well-being. This is because I attended a high school that was deeply affected by the excess of charter schools in America, namely the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. My high school was close off of the Walt Whitman and Ben Franklin Bridges leading from Philadelphia out into the suburbs and nearby farmland of New Jersey, the country’s most densely populated state. For reference, the state of Tennessee at a size of more than 40,000 square miles has a measly population of 7.2 million. This is opposed to New Jersey which, despite being less than 9,000 square miles, has a total population of 9.22 million. These areas are intensely more populated and therefore consist of poorer infrastructure and low income areas which are usually targeted by these types of schools. In my experience with charter schools, my public high school was snubbed on necessary funding despite having a much larger class size so that the district could accommodate the charter schools which had fewer students but brought in “better test scores.” Again, these rest scores were not a reflection of the students living in the area, rather they were a hand selected and exclusive group under the guise of equality and not equity.