In an unprecedented move against the long-standing neoliberal project of school privatization in the U.S., “Governor Dan McKee [of Rhode Island] announced Thursday [June 18, 2026] he has signed a bill placing a three-year moratorium on new charter schools and permanently lowering the cap on their total number [from 35 to 28], despite his longstanding and once-outspoken support for charters.”
This is a rare and unusual move in the U.S. given how aggressively neoliberals have been imposing school privatization on the nation for the last few decades. It is also noteworthy that both chambers of the State’s legislature overwhelmingly approved the three-year moratorium on these privately-operated schools. Opposition to charter schools has been steadily growing across the country over the years.
Not surprisingly, many business groups, charter school advocates, and even some democrats tried to pressure the Governor and legislature not to approve such a moratorium. The fact that many democrats still support privately-operated charter schools goes against the mainstream narrative that it is mostly or only republicans who support school privatization.
Whether this moratorium decision by Governor McKee and the state legislature is based on principle or cynical maneuvering by certain factions of the rich against other competing factions, the moratorium is still a positive step forward for the public interest and public schools. More charter schools always means more problems.
The move by Rhode Island to block charter schools for several years presents some considerations. First, it is not uncommon for State leaders and politicians to regularly flip-flop on various positions. The absence of any fidelity to any principles is one of the many features of a political set-up that leaves most Americans repeatedly concluding that the current political set-up is obsolete and irrelevant. Thus, we are told by the mainstream media that Governor McKee used to be a staunch supporter of charter schools but now he is the opposite. What to believe?
Rather than getting ensnared by such considerations, people should seek ways to take advantage of such openings as this moratorium to advance the fight against school privatization. If a moratorium can pass in Rhode Island, it can pass elsewhere. Charter school advocates know this, and it worries them.
This moratorium is also a reminder that “free market” education is socially irresponsible and opposed by many. The privatization and corporatization of education has resulted in the deliberate neglect, under-funding, and demonization of traditional public schools so as to replace them with profit-driven education arrangements. The need today is to fully fund traditional public schools and end school privatization in all its forms.
People should reject disinformation about “choice,” “competition,” “accountability,” and “parent empowerment” to justify the de-funding of traditional public schools and the creation of charter schools. A 45-page July 2026 report from the Network for Public Education, Public Schooling in America: Measuring Each State’s Commitment to Democratically Governed Schools, reminds us that, “What the data reveal is a troubling and consistent pattern. The states most aggressively redirecting public funds toward private alternatives — charter schools, voucher programs, and education savings accounts — are the same states most neglectful of their public schools, their teachers, and their students. Our analysis found a strong, statistically significant negative relationship between the expansion of privatization and public school support (p < 0.0001). Privatization and disinvestment, it turns out, go hand in hand.”
Charter schools across the country are pay-the-rich schemes that have a very high failure and closure rate (see here and here). Every year thousands of families and educators are left out in the cold when charter schools fail and close. Charter school advocates believe that such failure, chaos, and violence are healthy, virtuous, unproblematic, and the “best of all worlds” while traditional public schools are worse than the bubonic plague.
Education is a right which must be provided with a guarantee in practice. But when education is provided by private entities like charter schools, profit is placed ahead of everything else, resulting in lower quality education for all. Both for-profit and so-called “non-profit” charter schools engage in profiteering.
Currently, about 13,000 students are enrolled in roughly 35 charter schools in Rhode Island.