By now, there should be a standard headline that reads: “Once again, charter schools are found to get no better results than public schools.” Some get worse results.

Here is the latest from South Carolina.

There are some high-performing charter schools; some low-performing charter schools. On average, the results from charter schools are no different from those of public schools. Many of the South Carolina charters get worse results than the public schools.

Yet state after state is increasing the number of charters, taking resources away from public schools to educate a small number of children and not getting different results.

The outcome will be the recreation of a dual school system: one for the motivated, the other for an underfunded, overregulated public school system with larger than average numbers of English language learners (the charters don’t want them), special education (the charters don’t want them), the unmotivated (they don’t apply to charters), the low-performing (the charters don’t want them), and the behavior problems (the charters kick them out).

This is nuts.

Why are we undermining one of our nation’s essential democratic institutions?