The Case Against Charter Schools

School Administrator, May, 2001 by Bruno V. Manno

But the profit motive runs in multiple directions. Some school districts acting as sponsors use the charter law to pad their budgets by chartering schools far across the state. This long-distance chartering brings revenues into districts that commandeer a share of the schools' per-pupil allotment--sometimes up to 10 percent, more often 2 or 3 percent.

The most controversial charter proposals involve profit-seeking firms wanting to operate the school itself--groups like Edison Schools, Advantage Schools, National Heritage Academies and Beacon Education Management. Critics of this approach call it privatization, but this is an incorrect assessment.

True privatization means selling or transferring a public asset to private owners who bear sole responsibility for its existence and are accountable to no one except their shareholders. In the case of charter schools, these for-profit education management organizations continue to be publicly accountable for running these schools and achieving the goals set out in their contracts. Their contract can be terminated for not fulfilling its terms.

In all these arrangements, the public's most important safeguard is the fact that nobody can profit for long from an unsuccessful school. The only way to make money from charter schools over time is for them to attract and retain customers by providing an effective education.

A Front for Vouchers

* Allegation No. 9: Charter schools are a stalking horse for vouchers. The agenda behind the agenda is to accustom people to a partial education marketplace and then surprise them with the full Monty.

Though the enactment of charter legislation is often entangled with the politics of vouchers, it is also the case that some charter advocates support vouchers while others are opposed. And some voucher proponents favor charter schools, while others do not.

The charter idea is a centrist idea that transcends party and ideology. It reflects no single agenda. There are many discrete purposes embodied in charter laws: providing a better education to needy youngsters, developing innovative practices, running schools according to new education visions, operating more efficiently, injecting choice and competition into public education, making education more accountable and so on. Some would add vouchers to that list of hoped-for charter consequences. Others abhor the prospect.

Charters and vouchers both introduce customer choice and competition into education. But the differences between the two strategies are at least as great as the similarities. The central difference, of course, is that children armed with vouchers can attend private schools, including church-affiliated schools. By contrast, charter schools remain public schools, open to all who choose to attend, funded by taxpayers dollars and accountable to public authorities for their continued existence.

* Allegation No. 10: Charter schools do not go far enough. There will never be enough of them. They are hard to replicate. They function more like a pressure-release valve for dissidents than as a fundamental structural change.