Thomas Ultican is a teacher of physics and mathematics at a high school in California. The students in his school are 50% English language learners and 75% Title I (poor).
He writes here that the charter experiment has been a disaster for public schools. California was second in the nation to pass a charter law in 1992, and now 9% of the children are in charter schools. While the charter schools have a rich and powerful lobby, the public schools suffer from underfunding and overcrowding. The charters get to choose their students, and some charters are located in affluent communities, where they serve the children of the rich. This is very far from what charters were supposed to be when they were first proposed in 1988. Ultican writes that it is time to change the law in California and ban charters outright.
Ultican writes:
Today, twelve percent of all schools in California are charter schools with 9% of all state supported students attending charter schools. In these more than two decades; charter schools have enriched some people – have harmed public schools – have not improved publicly financed education – have increased segregation – have increased the cost of publicly financed education – have paid foreign based entities to operate schools in California – have generated massive fraud.
The California charter school experiment should be ended and these undemocratic publicly financed institutions should be carefully transitioned into the public schools system.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are teachers who work at Charter schools whose children can’t attend this same school. Seems their children don’t meet the admission and/or grade level requirements.
REAL situation: I know a child who now attends the charter school where one of the parent teaches, but was told that for the following year there is no placement for this child. Seems this child does not fit in the school’s “ticky tacky” box with regards to their standards of development, so this parent was told there is NO PLACEMENT for your child, even though you teach here.
WHAT? Aren’t schools suppose to meet the needs of students? Guess charter schools are exempt.
Charter schools nationally have not lived up to the hype. Now that they have become a political weapon that is being used to destabilize and defund local, public schools, they are an anathema to public schools. Charters have become a tool of big, profit seeking corporations, especially Silicon Valley. With very deep pockets, they continue to buy influence. If the parents of public school children in this country united in support of public education, they could unseat the complicit legislators and governors sending a message that charter schools have failed to make a positive impact except for a few, and they are costing citizens more. Our representatives believe they can ignore public schools and public school parents. We need to vote out those that ignore public education. Our policymakers need to know they are accountable for their bad, undemocratic decisions.
“Our policymakers need to know they are accountable for their bad, undemocratic decisions.”
This is the key. It doesn’t matter how rational the argument against charters is. It doesn’t matter that the data/evidence shows the ineffectiveness of charters. This is a political issue, and when the political price is too steep, the politicians will abandon the charade. Too bad most people on this site are too afraid to make the Democrats pay the price for their support of these “undemocratic decisions.” Heck, they don’t even hold their own unions accountable.
“If the parents of public school children in this country united in support of public education, they could unseat the complicit legislators and governors sending a message that charter schools have failed to make a positive impact except for a few, and they are costing citizens more.”
It is by no means certain that there is any longer a “public” that supports public education, meaning education shaped by the action of elected local officials who are accessible and required to listen to and respond face-to-face to the public…including those who pay taxes, but do not have children who participate in the public system.
Parents have been positioned as customers of public schools. Business gurus lay claim to the proper measure of outcomes of education–job readiness and saving the economy.
Private foundations invent accountability measures embedded in federal laws, including systems they prefer for a variety of reasons, too often tied to ego and power overlaid with a dab of “public purpose” and accountability as long they escape from accountability for their actions.
Lobbyists and professionals in “public relations” spin webs of influence and deception unparalleled in scale and sophistication.
The press is indistinguishable from the entertainment industry.
The due-process rights of students, parents, teachers, and collectives–including teacher unions–are under serge.
Some scholars are joining the political class of cynics who say that the forms of discussion and “civility” that have been taken for granted as necessary for governance in a democracy are (take your pick) sexist, racist, classist, authoritarian, un-Christian (or whatever), and more generally, that public institutions of authority and civility are dead…
and good riddance.
So, what next? Trump on the one hand… and on the other hand? Who knows and really cares?
In my opinion, silence is not a viable option, nor is political INACTION.
What’s vital is not just voting, but knowing who you are voting for, why, and with what level of warranted trust.
I agree!
Supporters of using public funds to operate privately governed schools have wealthy lobbyists to spend on influencing legislators. The rest of us have only the threat of not voting for them. Republicans are almost universally committed to privatization. Tell Sander, Clinton and the rest of the Democrats running for local, state and federal offices that competition and privatization is not a healthy choice for school improvement. There are plenty of healthy choices. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-camins/memo-to-clinton-and-sande_b_9453824.html
Unions are held accountable by their members, not a political party. Charters are a tool wielded to extract money from a profit center and at the same time destroy a couple of the largest unions in the country. Nice for them how this works together. Running everything like a business makes sense for them because that is what they know. Look at Flint, MI. Cheaper water, must be a good deal. Charter schools do it cheaper, must be a good deal. By the way, check out this advertisement on I-75 on the north end of Flint.
http://bridgeporteducationassociation.blogspot.com/2016/03/what-next-for-flint.html
A lot of charters wind up costing taxpayers more. While they pay lower wages to teachers, their high priced administrative salaries are more expensive than public schools. It is expensive for charters to set up a new site with a whole set of new fixed costs. This does not include the ghost corporation, overpriced rent schemes that many charters manipulate, and it does not include the charters that fold during the year. The stranded students often return to public schools. Charters have caused a great deal of disruption for very little return. They only produce positive gains from selecting the best and eliminating costly students. Under idealized conditions public schools would do better as well, but that is not the real democratic world in which we live.
NEA, AFT, California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers all get funding from the same foundations that are also promoting charters. They do not protect their members, especially in Los Angeles. Our unions feel that teachers are also profit centers.
If citizens want charter schools, they should have them, but they need to be under the governance of a duly elected board. Also, they should have to take (and keep) ALL children who apply. Parents, teachers and interested citizens should be in charge.
The idea that some private individual or corporation can take over a public school, collect all the tax money, and make all the rules is absolutely crazy. I just can’t imagine how this happened.
If citizens want charters, they should have to understand that charters should have separate funding. If taxpayers are willing to fund two or more separate school systems for the same number of kids, hey, who am I to argue. But there should be a blanket prohibition on pulling money from the public school system.
What would that look like? Abolishing charter schools? We are far enough down the charter road that there would need to be a phased plan. I know lots of previous public school supporters who are now quite happy with their charter.
This is no easy situation.
I know lots of previous charter school supporters who are now very disillusioned with the charter experiment. Empirically, there are many, many more public school supporters.
It would look like what our schools looked like prior to 1992 as far as structure goes. Private schools would receive private funding, public schools public funding. The ballot initiative to eliminate charter schools would allow local districts to determine whether a charter school is needed and fold it into the district schools.
Public schools in communities like Centerville, Ohio, appear to be creating their own schools, for students “who need a different kind of structure to function optimally in their learning program.” It avoids corruption of politicians and fleecing of taxpayers.
Shut down the unaccountable charter schools.