Jeremy Mohler, on behalf of “In the Public Interest,” explains why charter schools are a perfect fit for the Trump administration. They are a way of disinvesting in public schools.
From rural Pennsylvania to Nashville to Oakland, charter schools are taking already limited education funding, forcing local school boards to make difficult choices about what to cut at traditional, neighborhood schools to make up the difference. They cost the San Diego Unified School District $65.9 million last year, alongside $124 million in budget cuts the district was forced to make, including laying off teachers and slashing preschool.
Here’s how it works: when a student transfers to a charter school, all the funding for that student leaves with them, while all the costs do not. The student’s old school can’t lower it’s heating bill, make its principal part-time, or pay a teacher less because she has one less student.
“What’s happened with the proliferation of so many charter schools is that sometimes it just becomes a parallel school district and actually bleeds away money from neighborhood schools,” said John Lee Evans, a board trustee for San Diego Unified School District.
By supporting charter schools—and requesting more charter school funding in the federal budget—Trump has thrown his weight behind making the status quo even worse. And that’s on top of the tax cuts he helped usher through Congress earlier this year, which overwhelmingly benefit corporations and the wealthy, and could very likely force Washington to cut education spending even more.
Of course, the president isn’t alone. Democratic mayors in cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., have embraced charter schools to sidestep criticism and teacher demands for better pay and more student resources.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Progressive” has lost it’s original meaning due to perverse use of the word by both the right and the “left”.
Of all the things that are happening to our country, the perversion of language may be most damaging because once words have lost their meaning (and in many cases are used to mean the opposite of what they originally meant), it is no longer possible to carry on a meaningful dialogue.
SomeDAM Poet,
You are so right. Thank you for your comment.
‘Progressive’ is all we have left, if it still even means ‘progressive’. ‘Liberal’ withered decades ago under attack from “neoliberals”. ‘Reform’ was poached by the forces of privatization a long time ago. ‘Philanthropic’ has come to mean ‘profiteering’. It’s bad enough that they try to destroy my ability to teach English. They have to destroy English too. And history. And math. And art…
When language evolves organically, it is a beautiful thing because it means the language is alive.
When the meaning of words is changed by design, it is usually insidious.
Many of the changes we have seen in recent decades were purposely deceptive.
Language evolves, has always done, will always do, & rather swiftly. Check out “progressive” at wiki, its meaning has been evolving since the enlightenment, & has at times been linked with racist and imperialist ideas. But I think the current understanding has not strayed much from 130 yrs ago: “In the late 19th century, a political view rose in popularity in the Western world that progress was being stifled by vast economic inequality between the rich and the poor, minimally regulated laissez-faire capitalism with out-of-control monopolistic corporations, intense and often violent conflict between workers and capitalists and a need for measures to address these problems.”
Just because many Democrats, even progressive Democrats, have tried to give progressive chops to their support of the charter movement does not change the meaning of the word “progressive.” Their characterization reflects political expediency &/or ignorance – either way, it’s a lie which can be disproven – which is what Mohler here, & a growing number of bloggers and reporters are beginning to do, buttressed by a growing body of stats & studies.
Rather than being “laboratories of innovation,” charters are generally no better and often much worse than public schools. Charters are political entities that move public funds into privately managed accounts. Charters are the wish list of the “axis of evil” which includes ALEC, neoliberals, and assorted corporate grifters. These groups along with conservative Christians have led the attack on public education. The expansion of charters allow these groups to exploit public funds and destroy a public institution. They leave the public schools holding the bag while they drain funds that help pay for privately operated schools. They public schools are left with stranded costs and stranded students while charters make money for a few at the expense of many. Public schools along with their students become victims of disinvestment.
Along with the main goal of accessing public funds, the evil axis can accomplish several other odious objectives. They get to engineer what schools students will attend, and the result is increased segregation. They get to attack middle class jobs held mostly by women, and they get to undermine organized labor. Developers cash in as well using charters to draw the middle class to renovated housing in a neighborhood that was formerly black and brown. Testing companies thrive as complicit representatives aid the disinvestment to make public schools vulnerable for takeover. Privatization is a cash cow for wealthy vandals while every day working people and the poor are robbed of a public asset.
The latest proposed budget cuts to Oakland Unified include $1.4M to food service. That’s right, they are literally taking food away from our kids. And taking benefits away from the cafeteria service workers by cutting back their hours. But they still can’t seem to take it away from all those expensive consultants, including the guy they paid to come up with the “charter wolf” concept…SMH
NO CONSULTANT left behind…