Shawgi Tell is a professor of education at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York.
In this post, he says that charter schools have become a flash point in elections, and many parents are fighting against them. Charter advocates have tried for years to sell them as “public schools,” but the public is getting wise that they are a form of privatization that harms their public schools.
The intensely controversial nature of nonprofit and for-profit charter schools in the U.S., due in no small part to endless news about the infinite problems plaguing them, is increasingly a major issue in local, state, and federal election campaigns. It is hard to find a political race today where a candidate, especially a school board candidate, is not expected to have some position, hopefully well-worked out, but usually not, on charter schools. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent in some places based almost entirely on whether a candidate supports or opposes charter schools (e.g., California recently). This point is especially critical to appreciate as the tide against charter schools steadily rises. The last thing charter school advocates want is to open the door to disciplined investigation and serious discussion on charter schools. For them, disinformation and propaganda must have the upper hand. Informed, conscious, and oriented people do not serve their agenda.
Currently, more than a dozen individuals are vying for the position of Mayor of Chicago, a powerful position in one of the country’s largest cities, not to mention home to about 125 charter schools and the place from whence education privatizer and former U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, sprung. Elections will be held on February 26, 2019. Incumbent Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is not seeking reelection.
A December 28, 2018 Chicago Sun-Times article titled, “Where 14 candidates for mayor stand on charter schools — their full responses,” exposes the extreme confusion that has traumatized the public and distorted the “great charter school debate” for decades.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The following 4 members of the U.S. Congress are solidly backing public schools and are opposed to privatization- Katie Porter, Calf, Ayanna Pressley, Mass, Rashida Tlaib, Mich, and Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), New York.
If Rep. Susan Davis fails to support the L.A. teachers strike, the AFT should ask for its campaign funds back and divided the $10,000 among the four politicians listed above.
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Charter expansion is a hot button issue because it has social, economic, political and educational implications. A fight for public education is as true as the fight for democratic rule of law. The public understands more than ever that charter growth harms public education. It results in the disiventment of public schools and professional teachers. Privatization is the result of backdoor influences and pay to play deals by politicians and the wealthy that are working to transfer a public asset into private pockets. The battle is no longer only about education or opportunity; it is about those that believe in the common good and those that support corporate domination.
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Charters have been around for a while. Educators knew from the beginning that they threatened public schools but the union would not take a stand much like today’s politicians that don’t want to. It’s like people who knew trump was not fit to be president but they thought the job would change him. He decided, in the face of his ignorance, to change the job much to our disadvantage.
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Loving this nutshell of the pro-charter perspective: “everyone simply fends for themselves when it comes to getting into a good school, while hoping that the “free market” will not fail them as it has in every other sphere of life.”
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The failure of the market has resulted in waste, fraud and schools that do the choosing. The result is loss of tax dollars, equal access and enhanced segregation.
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True, in attempting to get an advantage, parents found that everything got screwed as far as our kids are concerned. This supposed reform is taking us in the opposite direction.
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