This article appeared in The Dallas Weekly.
The Charter Trap: How Texas’s Approval System Fuels Inequity in Public Education
This feature investigates how Texas’s charter school approval system — combined with growing voucher programs — is reshaping public education funding, access, and accountability. Drawing on insights from State Board of Education Member Dr. Tiffany Clark, the piece explores how state policies are accelerating the growth of charter schools while defunding traditional public districts, particularly those serving Black and Latino students. It highlights the unequal standards between public and charter schools, the impact of school closures, and the erosion of community voice in education policy. As public schools work to innovate under pressure, the state continues to shift resources toward less regulated alternatives — raising urgent questions about equity, transparency, and the future of public education in Texas.
In Texas, the promise of school choice has become a defining feature of the state’s education strategy. Charter schools are marketed as innovative alternatives to traditional public schools, especially in districts that serve predominantly Black and Latino students. But the way these charters are approved, and who ultimately benefits, reveals a system riddled with disparities.
Every year, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) reviews applications from prospective charter school operators. Those that make it through the cumbersome process are recommended to the State Board of Education (SBOE), which votes to approve or deny the applications. While this process is meant to support innovation and improve outcomes, the evidence suggests that it is doing the opposite in many communities.
We are approving the same systems that have failed our students over and over again. DR. TIFFANY CLARK, SBOE MEMBER DISTRICT 13
One of the clearest voices highlighting these disparities is State Board of Education member Dr. Tiffany Clark, representing District 13, which includes parts of Dallas and Tarrant counties. Earlier this month, Dr. Clark released a public letter explaining her decision to vote against two new charter proposals in her district. In her letter, she pointed to the approval of charter schools with ties to historically underperforming models, often led by alumni of the same charter incubator programs, such as Building Excellent Schools (BES).
In an interview with Dallas Weekly, Dr. Clark described how charter applicants are not required to have experience as superintendents or demonstrate a successful track record with similar student populations. “You don’t need to be a certified superintendent to apply,” she said. “You just need a compelling idea. There’s no pilot requirement. The model hasn’t had to prove itself in Texas or in similar communities.”
Her concerns are not isolated. They point to broader issues in the state’s charter school authorization process, particularly regarding performance, equity, and accountability. According to the Texas AFT, charter schools in Texas have a 30-34% closure rate. Worse, most of these closures occur within five years of opening. Some have even closed during the school year, leaving parents and students scrambling to find new options.
A Troubling Track Record
Of the 21 charter schools approved between 2016 and 2021, 17 received D or F accountability ratings by 2023. Many of these schools were launched by leaders trained through the same national pipelines, like the Building Excellent Schools (BES) program, that continue to produce new charter applicants in Texas, often with limited changes to their model.
Despite this underperformance, state approval rates remain high. In many cases, new charter proposals are approved without substantial evidence that the academic model works or that the leadership team has the experience to run a successful school.
Financial Fallout for Public Schools
The impact on traditional school districts is severe. Fort Worth ISD, for example, has lost more than $635 million in state funding and over 20% of its student population in the past five years. Dallas ISD has experienced an even greater loss of revenue (approximately $1.7 billion) over the same period. This decline is directly linked to students transferring to charter schools. The result: public school closures, staffing reductions, and diminished services for the students who remain.
Chart from Fiscal Impact of Charter Expansion DALLAS ISD
When a neighborhood school closes, it often creates more barriers for families rather than expanding their choices. Many charter schools do not provide transportation, leaving parents, especially those working multiple jobs, with limited options. The vision of equitable access is undermined when choice is only accessible to families with time, resources, or flexibility.
The situation is further complicated by the state’s growing push for private school vouchers. These programs allow families to use public funds for private tuition, even though private schools are not required to accept all students, provide transportation, or meet the same accountability standards as public schools. For districts already losing enrollment to charters, the addition of vouchers creates yet another drain on funding, with even fewer protections for equity or transparency. It adds another layer to a system in which public schools, especially those in historically under-resourced communities, are expected to serve every child, but are continually shortchanged by state policy.
Two Systems, Two Standards
As Texas accelerates its charter school approvals, public schools, especially in urban districts like Dallas ISD and Fort Worth ISD, are being forced to do more with less. While many of these districts have launched dual-language academies, early college programs, STEM pathways, and arts-focused schools to meet family demand, they continue to face declining enrollment and shrinking budgets as students are siphoned off by charters. This drain leads to real-world consequences: campus closures, longer commutes for families, and a loss of critical resources, particularly for students with disabilities, English learners, and low-income communities.
Charters, by contrast, are not held to the same accountability standards. In fact, more charter schools have their operating licenses revoked than the number approved each year. But until then, they can cap enrollment, lack transportation, and often underserve or under-identify special education students, yet they receive public funding with fewer regulatory obligations. Public schools must serve every student who walks through their doors. Charters do not. And as the state continues to invest in new charters while underfunding existing public systems, it is creating two separate and unequal school systems, one with oversight, obligation, and community accountability, and one without.
Approval Without Accountability
Charter schools in Texas operate with significantly fewer accountability measures than their public counterparts. Their boards are not elected. Their meetings are not required to be public. They can expand without reapplying or justifying need. If a campus underperforms, it can take up to three years before the state considers intervention, and even then, it’s typically the individual campus that’s closed, not the entire charter network.
Moreover, schools labeled as “high-performing entities” in other states are often allowed to skip critical parts of the approval process, such as interviews or community review. But success in Florida or Arizona doesn’t guarantee results in Fort Worth or Dallas. Without a clear performance baseline or pilot requirement, the state risks importing models that are unfit for the local context.
A Call for Systemic Change
Dr. Clark advocates for more rigorous standards in charter school approvals, including requiring pilot programs, stronger oversight of operator qualifications, and elevating community input through impact statements.
She also emphasized the importance of transparency around which charter entities are being approved and why. “We can’t keep approving ideas. We need to approve proven solutions, especially when our most vulnerable students are involved,” she said.
Her perspective underscores the need for the SBOE and TEA to be more deliberate in assessing not only whether a proposed school is innovative, but whether it is likely to succeed where others have failed.
We can’t keep approving ideas. We need to approve proven solutions, especially when our most vulnerable students are involved.
According to Dr. Clark, Texas’s current charter approval system claims to promote equity and access, but its structure too often reinforces the opposite. Without stronger performance standards, leadership requirements, and accountability mechanisms, the state risks continuing to approve underperforming schools at the expense of public education.
Community voices, particularly in Black and Latino neighborhoods, deserve to be at the center of education policy decisions, not on the sidelines. If school choice is to be more than a slogan, it must come with real transparency, proven outcomes, and respect for the public systems already serving our children.
Meanwhile, public schools across Texas are already evolving, expanding STEM tracks, dual-language programs, and career pathways to meet diverse student needs. Yet instead of supporting these systems, the state continues to siphon funding away and invest in charter operators with unproven records. The result is a two-tiered system where innovation is rewarded only when it comes from outside the public sector.
Until that changes, students of color will continue to bear the weight of a policy agenda that undercuts the very schools built to serve them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Texas is administered by brigands, just like Tennessee.
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“In Texas, the promise of school choice has become a defining feature of the state’s education strategy. Charter schools are marketed as innovative alternatives to traditional public schools”
True story. On July 21st, the Boston Globe ran an opinion piece titled “New Hampshire is expanding school choice. Will Massachusetts follow? Disenchantment with public schools is driving more families to seek alternatives to traditional public education.” Its author was “Jim Stergios [is] executive director of Pioneer Institute, a think tank with offices in Boston and Washington, D.C.” That’s all the Globe said about him and the Pioneer Institute.
This set off alarm bells for me, as I was aware of the Pioneer Institute. To refresh my memory, I went to sourcewatch.org and plugged in “Pioneer Institute” and got this: “The Pioneer Institute (PI) is a right-wing pressure group headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, that describes itself as a ‘think tank’ that is ‘committed to individual freedom and responsibility, limited and accountable government, and the application of free market principles to state and local policy’… The Pioneer Institute houses and runs the Center for School Reform.” There was much more.
The Globe has an online comments feature for many items it runs, as did this one, so I quoted and attributed the entire sourcewatch.org entry in my comment, along with sticking it to the editorial page editor for letting this propaganda piece be published rather than outright rejecting it, had basic editorial vetting done. As I was up early that morning, I saw my entry post as the second one, so high visibility for anyone subsequently checking comments, thoroughly debunking Stergios and his “opinion,” and exposing the Globe editorial page editor as a do-nothing placeholder.
I let about 10 minutes or so go by and decided to check for any reaction. 7 “likes” and 1 “dislike.” I let about hour go by, decided to check again, and in place where my comment had previously been was simply stating “This comment has been blocked.” No explanation given.
Needless to say I was furious, and immediately reposted, though now further down the list of entries, hence somewhat less visibility. A short while later I saw that it had garnered 3 “likes” and 0 “dislikes.” I let it go at that, figuring that should do it. The next day, as the Globe was still featuring the piece, I decided to check again, and found that in place of my comment was the familiar “This comment has been blocked.” Livid, I reposted, saw it stick but further buried amid all the other comments made by then. I haven’t bothered to check if it’s still up.
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In general, charter schools can be no better nor worse, and no more nor less innovative than, public schools. That’s simply because the structure of the academic model of charter schools is fundamentally the same as the structure of the academic model of public schools. Wicked school choice policy would have the public believe (and much of the “underserved” public does indeed seem to believe) that highly unregulated charter schools bring innovation and high-quality schools, automatically.
The difference between public schools and charter schools, however, is surface-level, not structure-level. At the surface, charter schools are afforded considerably fewer constraints to deal with. Nonetheless, nothing about constraints public schools must deal with prohibit innovation and quality improvement.
Case in point: Buford City Schools, near Atlanta, in Gwinnett County, is the only public school district in Georgia that has chosen to operate free of the state’s wicked school choice constraints. Buford City ACT scores show the public school district has been on a long-term journey of innovation and continual improvement since at least 2004. Buford City broke through ACT College Readiness Benchmark Scores generally around 2015, and has kept going. Just last week, a national study by Wiingy named Buford City Schools the top school district in the U.S. The study might be questionable but for proof by ACT.
This is why I have come to see, I’m sorry to say, that Al Shanker’s adoption and popularization of Ray Budde’s charter school idea should be seen as a big mistake made by not understanding how system structure generates system behavior in response to whatever constraints may be present or absent.
And, please, please, please. Let’s let go using terms like “traditional public school” and “traditional school districts” and even “neighborhood schools,” as if charter schools are not located in neighborhoods. It’s “public schools” and “public school districts,” for Pete’s sake.
And the solution is not to make wicked school choice better and less wicked. The solution is to get rid of school choice.
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Ed,
Al Shanker imagined that charter schools would be R&D projects, approved by the board and the union. Their longevity would be limited. They would accept the last-chance kids, the ones bored by regular schooling.
Everything he hoped for was quickly jettisoned. The charter movement became the plaything of Wall Street and big foundations. It attracted entrepreneurs and grifters. It spawned huge chain operations.
Not what Shanker promoted.
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Diane,
Indeed, that history. But did anybody ever image that public schools were already structured to do R&D? And that the charter school idea brought nothing fundamentally different?
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Ed: I must confess that my own experience in public schools did not include a lot of experimental efforts. Maybe it was because rural schools are so underfunded
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Roy,
Thanks for that. Similarly, a few years ago, I asked the leadership of Atlanta Public Schools for an example of a teacher or a team of teachers conducting or having conducted action research to address a local problem with any particular classrooms, any particular subjects, any particular students, any particular schools, etc. They thought I was asking about professional development for teachers.
Don’t colleges of education prepare future teachers to conduct action research? If so, then why don’t public schools make teachers conducting action research a matter a practice?
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Charter schools and vouchers were never about improving education outcomes. It was always about undermining and weakening public schools and transferring public money out of the public sphere and into the private one for ideological and political gain. If privatization had been about better outcomes, accountability would have been a feature. Instead, in most states the reverse is true. There is limited to no accountability for results or finances. There also would have been rules to prevent the gaming of system, but there are few of these which why sweeps contracts and embezzling continue to produce repeated scandals. If results had been the main consideration, cyber charter schools with their horrible record would have been closed years ago. Instead, they continue to drain public funds in many states despite abysmal results.
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Not totally related but posting here anyway:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NYCTeachers/comments/1mc2h89/i_joined_success_academy_and_resigned_after_the/?share_id=b9uX4kUpIsTjTAEGWZN_r&utm_content=2&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=4
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Amazing, as were the comments following
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