The public-private distinction is one of the most crucial distinctions to have emerged in society over the past few centuries.
Each realm has distinct legal, economic, political, and cultural dimensions. For example, many spaces, activities, and lived experiences inhabit the private sphere (e.g., the home) while many others occupy the public sphere (e.g., broad social public debate).
Importantly, the public and private spheres should not be confounded or blurred, as so often happens. Each sphere has its own aims, structures, and functions. Public and private are actually antonyms.
A major problem today is that both concepts are routinely trivialized, distorted, or blurred by neoliberals, thereby ensuring broad-scale incoherence. Consequently, many people cannot identify or define some of the basic features of each sphere, let alone their historical significance.
This incoherence is striking in charter school discourse. For example, charter school advocates continually insist—perseverate—that charter schools are public schools even though they are private entities.
The endless confusion over the “publicness”/”privateness” of charter schools has even found its way into the courts. This is why some courts at different levels in different jurisdictions argue that charter schools are public, while other courts in other jurisdictions conclude the opposite.
Charter school advocates believe that simply calling something public or merely receiving public funds automatically makes something public in the proper sense of the word. They think that simply asserting something makes it true and undeniable. But this is not how the law, reality, or logic work.
Charter schools have very little in common with public schools. Not only are charter schools operated by unelected private persons, but they are also exempt from dozens of laws, rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to public schools. They also cherry-pick students, avoid unions, cannot levy taxes, and often work closely with millionaires. In many states, charter schools are legally permitted to hire uncertified teachers. In addition, many do not provide transportation, and many openly operate as for-profit schools.
These and other differences stem from the fact that charter schools are contract schools, meaning they are governed by private, not public, law. Contract law falls under private law. Private operators of charter schools exist outside the public sphere. Charter schools are not state actors like traditional public schools. They are not arms of the government. They are not political subdivisions of the state. They are not organic components of state public education systems. They are outsourced “free market” schools that embrace competition, consumerism, individualism, and opportunism. In this set-up, education is not seen as a basic human right that must be guaranteed in practice.
A key question in the public/private debate is who has the right to control and direct the social wealth produced by working people? Who decides? Public authorities or private interests? Who has a valid claim to public funds, public facilities, and public services? Who should control and direct the affairs of society and the economy?
Obviously, without workers (and nature), nothing would be produced. There would be no goods and services. There would be no factories, machinery, or infrastructure. All wealth is created by workers, not major owners of capital. The financial oligarchy, banks, and the stock market produce nothing. Expropriating wealth is not the same as producing wealth. As such, workers have first claim to the wealth they produce and a duty to direct the affairs of society and the economy.
This means that the massive wealth collectively produced by working people must be allocated to wages, salaries, and benefits, as well as to social programs such as education, healthcare, transportation, and more.
Today, the basic problem is that all production is undertaken socially, yet the fruits of production are privately directed. In other words, the wealth produced by workers is controlled by private interests, which is why there are so many political, economic, and social problems.
For society to progress, the social wealth produced by working people must stay in public hands for public purposes—for public institutions, services, programs, and infrastructure. This is the opposite of the neoliberal agenda.
At no time should public money, public infrastructure, or public services be handed over to private interests, especially major owners of capital. Privatization takes money out of the economy and increases corruption and inequality. Private ownership and profiteering rob society of the social wealth needed to guarantee the rights of all. Diverting value created by working people to private interests lowers living and working standards for all.
This means private entities such as non-profit and for-profit charter schools—both of which engage in profiteering—have no valid claim to the social wealth produced by working people for public services, social programs, and public infrastructure. See here and here, for example, for how charter schools routinely engage in shady real estate deals.
A public authority worthy of the name must not privatize public resources. It must not direct public funds to charter schools. Nor must it surrender public buildings to school privatizers. Further, it is not the responsibility of public authorities to fund services such as bus transportation or special education services for charter schools. Charter schools are private businesses that must secure their own revenue. They have no valid claim to any public resources. Principles and public rights matter. They cannot be sacrificed in the name of pragmatism, expediency, or efficiency.
The distinction between public and private is critical and real, not abstract. Public resources under the control of private interests must not become the norm.
For more on the privatized nature of charter schools and the antisocial consequences of privatization, see here.