Nancy Flanagan, retired NBCT teacher and current blogger, explains in a comment what has happened in Michigan, where she lives:
I live in Michigan, where the charter movement was an outgrowth of Betsy DeVos’s inability to get a voucher law through, resulting in her turning to charter schools (DeVos family paid–twice!–to put failed voucher initiatives on the ballot). Initially, 25 years ago, the goal was conversion charters–making Christian (not Catholic) education free for white parents in western Michigan, by putting up a new sign and moving Bible Study classes to the end of the day, as an “elective.” A few education progressives took advantage of the law to start high-tech schools (very sexy, at the time), including one in Henry Ford Museum. Charters were all about serving the privileged kids and the promising kids, with new, out-of-the-box thinking.
It wasn’t until the DFER Democrats came along, promoting charters as a “civil rights” initiative (just about the time the admin turned over), that charters could also be positioned as a cheap and promising strategy for “saving” kids in troubled urban districts. Connecting charters to the civil rights movement was a brilliant (although utterly failed) strategy, because the charter model produced nothing of consequence in urban education, except financial malfeasance.
People who live in states where charters are very limited and relatively new immediately perceive–because we have plenty of evidence now– all the things that are wrong with the charter movement. You have to go to a state where the policy has been in place for 25 years–like Michigan, which has 300+ charter schools–to see what advanced-stage charter syndrome looks like.
Jay Mathews is just stuck in the past, following an old (but seductive) narrative. And he has plenty of company–witness the terrible, deceptive coverage of education (and the policies of major candidates) in the 2016 election.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Am I correct in understanding that it was Democrats who started that movement?
Rudy, if you mean the charter movement, it was started by a professor in Massachusetts and Albert Shanker, president of the AFT, in 1988. They never intended charters to be for-profit or to be run as corporate chains or opened by non-educators, celebrities or high school dropouts. They thought that charters would be formed by teachers, with the permission of their union. They would get to try experimental methods for a period of 3-5 years, then share what they learned with the public schools. They were never intended to be competition for public schools. Al Shanker turned against charters in 1993, when he wrote a column saying that charters and vouchers were indistinguishable. He was especially angry about an online charter in Michigan called the Noah Webster Academy and the business called Education Alternatives Inc in Baltimore. Read “Death and Life of the Great American School System” for documentation.
Charters are like cancer that suck the life from the host, public schools. Then, Michigan, especially Detroit, is stage four.https://thinkprogress.org/trump-education-secretary-public-schools-3eb20d886c49#.vnhkb5gz9
These Bible Trumpers know but one religion — Moneytheism
Jon Awbrey:
TAGO!
😎
I thought Catholic was a subset of Christian? Anyway, vouchers for everyone. Supreme being of pasta noodle academies of America need prorata funding too.
Of course, Roman Catholics are Christian. I grew up about 20 miles from the DeVos compound in western MI, where many towns have dozens, literally, of Dutch Reformed and Christian Reformed churches, and neighbors on both sides of my parents sold Amway. Kids who went to Catholic schools did not date or fraternize with kids who went to Christian schools–they had radically different instructional and curricular philosophies. It’s in the Christian schools where we see evolution questioned and social studies texts that minimize racism–stuff like that.
Betsy went to Calvin College, a Christian Reformed school–a well-regarded college that has grown more scholarly and less rigid since she attended, but still VERY conservative.
Got it. That is an interesting background on the local landscape where DeVos comes from.
“to see what advanced-stage charter syndrome looks like”