What’s At the Heart of the Anti-Charter Movement?

There has been quite a lot of discussion recently about the sudden spate of stories in the established media that are unusually and unreasonably critical of charter schools. Some try to explain what’s driving these stories. Is it that charters, like all public schools, have problems, and all such problems should be reported? Or, is it, as I think, mostly that educrats have cranked up their PR machines to create false images to tarnish charter schools because high quality alternative school options threaten control by the “lodge” of the traditional system?​

 

If these recent articles had been more balanced, conceding the extraordinary achievement of high quality charters while exposing problems among others, I might feel differently. But no such distinction was attempted: “bad” was sought throughout, even in the good, and generally bad was reported, whether real or not.

 

To get a sense of what lies at the bottom of all this propagandistic “reporting,” I engaged in a back and forth in a recent Facebook exchange with an advocate of the anti-charter line to better understand the opposition. While I concede this is but one exchange about differences on the topic, I believe this account of charges and responses is reflective of the battle that is being waged and worth examining.

 

You can read the full article here.