Charter schools are the main form of school privatization in the United States. As is evident in many of the ideas and statements put forward by charter school “pioneers” 35 years ago,1 charter schools surfaced as a top-down neoliberal project. They did not start out as a public good and have never been a grass-roots phenomenon. Charter schools were about privatization from the start. They did not begin as a noble pro-social project that got “hijacked” by privatizers “along the way.”
Importantly, simply being called public or receiving public funds does not automatically make a charter school public in the proper sense of the concept. Many private entities receive public funds in the U.S. but they remain private. They do not suddenly become public. Miron, Mathis, and Welner (2015) correctly note that, “while claiming to be public,” the operations of charter schools “are basically private.”
To this day most charter schools lack unions, don’t offer many services, treat teachers as “at-will” employees, cannot levy taxes, cherry-pick students, engage in profiteering, increase segregation, siphon billions of dollars from public schools, and fail and close regularly. It is also not a coincidence that charter school advocates routinely characterize charter schools as “free market” schools. Commodification, consumerism, competition, opportunism, and fending-for-yourself are seen as positive things. In this view, education is seen as a privilege, not a right that must be guaranteed in practice. In addition, more than three decades later, calls for charter school accountability and transparency continue to crop up nearly every week.
One of the main original neoliberal justifications given for charter schools several decades ago is that they could come into existence once public school districts, which have now existed for 170 years, are deprived of what prominent charter school advocate Ted Kolderie called their “exclusive franchise to own and operate public schools.” Once this historic pre-condition for privatization happened, Kolderie reasoned, a new and different “system” of schools—outsourced schools—owned and operated by unelected private persons, “edupreneurs,” and corporations could come into being.
This coup against the so-called “public school monopoly” brought forth the question of who is to authorize the creation of new charter schools if not local public school boards?
Recognizing that rights differ from power and authority, charter schools today are authorized by a variety of entities which differ from state to state. Many, if not most, of these entities consist of unelected individuals beholden to the privatization agenda. Interestingly, while local public school boards authorized (often reluctantly) more charter schools in 2020 (3,632) than any other type of authorizer, most charter schools in the country (3,977) were not authorized by local public school boards. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) states that, “While [public] school districts remain the biggest group of authorizers, the data also shows that they do not oversee the majority of our nation’s charter schools: only 48% of all charters were overseen by [public school] districts in 2020, down from 52% in 2016.”
But does the fundamental character and essence of a charter school change based on which entity authorizes it? Is a charter school “more public” or “less public” depending on who authorizes it? Is a charter school more or less problem-free depending on who authorizes it?
Such questions have recently come to the fore in light of some states striving to establish religious charter schools, which has muddied the debate about the “publicness”/”privateness” of charter schools. In this context, most charter school promoters and commentators continue to claim that charter schools are public schools or can be made “more public” depending on who authorizes them. They claim that charter schools can or should be considered state actors (government entities) covered by the U.S. constitution.
Today, most charter schools are privately-operated, and practically all charter school boards in the country consist of unelected private persons, which is the opposite of public schools. Miron, Mathis, and Welner (2015) remind us that, “It is increasingly the case that charter school buildings are privately owned by the charter’s founders, by an affiliated private company, or by a private trust.”
It is important to recall that charter school authorizers, whoever they might be, do not directly govern charter schools, which are supposed to be autonomous and independent entities to a significant degree. Charter school authorizers and charter school boards have different legal responsibilities, functions, and roles. Authorizing and overseeing a charter school is not the same as governing and operating a charter school. Even in states like Alaska, Kansas, Maryland, and Virginia, charter school laws are structured in such a way as to allow charter schools to be exempt from or “bend” various school district policies and state regulations. Chartering and deregulation go hand in hand. Charter schools by design generally do not follow the same laws, rules, and regulations followed by public schools.
It is also important to appreciate that including parents, teachers, school employees, or community/school representatives on a charter school board does not guarantee the “publicness” of a charter school or the elimination of problems plaguing so many charter schools. Many such individuals are often pro-privatization. Even elected members of public school districts are often pro-privatization. This is the case in numerous public school districts across the country. The same applies to State Boards of Education and charter school “boards”: many are filled with pro-privatization forces. Furthermore, it usually does not matter if a charter school is operated/owned by a non-profit group or a for-profit group because both typically engage in profiteering (and fraud). All of this points to the need to modernize the definition of public. Formalist and functionalist definitions of public no longer suffice.
To be sure, charter schools are “free market” contract schools that operate independently, even when they are authorized by a local public school board. They are still outsourced schools to one degree or another. What would be the purpose of a local public school board authorizing a charter school within its boundaries if the charter school did not differ significantly from the public schools that already exist in the public school district? Why would a public school district approve a contract with a school within its own boundaries if it were just another public school? Can a charter school not be a charter school? If there is a desire to open a new public school in a public school district that does certain things differently, then why not just do that but keep all rules, laws, structures, and governance the same, and call the school a public school? Why does chartering or contracting have to come into the picture? To their credit, a large number of public school districts have rejected many charter school applications because of all the problems associated with charter schools.
Keeping in mind that the push for the privatization of many sectors started more than 45 years ago in the U.S., the idea that something new and different must be created within the boundaries of a public school district is based on the disinformation that something is failing in the public school district. How and why something is failing is rarely analyzed though. The fact is that the same neoliberals who are behind the methodical defunding, vilification, and failure of public schools are also behind the creation of thousands of failing charter schools. The neoliberal notion of failure also ignores that fact that public schools have historically provided more resources, programs, and options than private schools and charter schools. In practice charter schools are not as innovative as charter school advocates would have us believe.
Chartering (outsourcing) ultimately changes the nature, function, aims, organization, and outcomes of a school.
Charter means contract, a legally binding agreement between two or more parties to do or not do something. What need is there for the word “charter” to appear in the descriptor “charter school” if charter schools looked, walked, and talked like traditional public schools? They would just be another public school, that is, they would be a state actor like a regular public school. But as prominent charter school advocate Ted Kolderie and other neoliberals noted long ago, charter schools are possible precisely because they deprive public school districts of their “exclusive franchise to own and operate public schools” (emphasis added). In other words, chartering makes it possible for someone other than a public school district—“enterprising people”—to own/operate a school. And the fact remains that charter schools authorized by local public school boards produce many of the same problems as charter schools authorized by other entities.
Two other concerns arise here. There is no guarantee that charter school students’ constitutional rights will be protected just because a charter school is authorized by a local public school board. Second, how realistic and feasible is it to place all charter schools in the country under the authority of a local public school board, especially when charter school laws in many states were intentionally set up decades ago to allow for a range of charter school authorizing entities?
Chartering is a way to outsource (i.e., contract out) schools to private operators, or “enterprising people,” in the name of “choice,” “innovation,” “accountability,” and “competition.” In this context, using labels such as “public” to describe charter schools is false and misleading. Private or external operators of schools do not automatically become public when they enter into a contract with a public agency (such as a public school). They remain private. They do not suddenly become a bona fide arm of the government. Partnering with a government entity is not identical to being part of a government entity. A court declaration that a charter is public because it is “carrying out the governmental function of education” does not miraculously make the charter school a state actor either. It is not the state and laws that determine the fundamental character and essence of a charter school. It is the material reality of the charter school—how it actually operates, how it came into being, who actually operates it, etc.—that determines the character and essence of a charter school.
At the end of the day what matters most is the striving of people to control and direct the affairs of society and its institutions. Privatizers, neoliberals, oligarchs, and all the police powers they exercise through their state work to block the striving of the people for new, fresh, and modern arrangements based on modern definitions. In more ways than one, the privatization of all sectors at home and abroad represents the lawlessness, destruction, and obliteration being unleashed worldwide by the rich and their representatives.
ENDNOTE:
1 The original writings on charter schools from more than 30 years ago (e.g., by Ray Budde, Albert Shanker, Ted Kolderie, Ember Reichgott Junge, Joe Nathan, Chester Finn, and others) reveal the top-down neoliberal nature of charter schools.