Recently Education Week posted a column claiming that charters and vouchers do not threaten public schools and that concern about privatization is vastly overblown.

Anthony Cody refutes that argument for complacency in this post. 

The writer of the article, Arianna Prothero, is a staff writer for Education Week.

Cody writes:

Prothero apparently only consulted one side of this contentious issue, as all the statistics she cites are from the National Alliance for Public (sic) Charter Schools.

When she refers to “most parts of America,” she apparently means rural areas, he says.

She wondered why West Virginia teachers were willing to strike to block charter schools, when, she claims, they are no big deal in a state like West Virginia. After all, legislators only want to start small, with one itty-bitty program with only a few charters.

Cody responds:

Wow. That is quite a conclusion! It would be reassuring if this were not the way that almost every charter school and voucher program began – with just a few schools, or only targeting a limited group of students. And then within a few years, the programs are expanded to include nearly everyone. Reporters covering education should know this history.

Indiana’s voucher program started for limited income students who had attended public schools for at least a year. It expanded to the point that today many students are eligible. Take a look at all the student eligibility pathways.   This year, taxpayers will spend $153 million on vouchers for students attending private and parochial schools. Families earning as much as $91,000 a year are eligible.

Voucher programs such as “Education Savings Accounts” almost always start with one group, such as students with disabilities,  and then more groups are added every year. That is what happened in Arizona. The program in Arizona started small, and by last year had expanded to make 20% of students eligible. State lawmakers tried to make 90% of students eligible, but last year voters overturned the law. The proposal in West Virginia, for seven charter schools and vouchers for a thousand students this year, would have been a platform for further growth.

Cody shows how charters are undermining the very existence of public schools in some cities.

And he notes:

Mainstream media coverage for the past decade has, similar to this EdWeek blog post, generally downplayed the potential and real harms inflicted by the expansion of charter schools and voucher programs. The experiences of those in places like Oakland, Los Angeles and Pennsylvania serve as a warning to others — whether they are in urban, suburban or rural areas. Charter schools are a costly experiment that so far, has failed to yield much. Those in states fortunate enough to have avoided charters thus far do not need to repeat these failed experiments to learn the same lessons the hard way. Teachers in West Virginia were wise to ward off this danger.

Readers might be interested to know that blog posts in EdWeek bearing the K12 Parent Engagement logo are partly funded by contributions by the Walton Family Foundation, though EdWeek retains editorial control.

The Walton Family Foundation is anti-union, anti-public school, and pro-privatization. They expect a return on investment.