Charter schools are a union busting con job that if given the opportunity will permanently topple an already dizzily teetering American education system. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, has been working tirelessly for decades to push her agenda of charter and private and religious schools being the way forward. Unfortunately that way forward doesn’t do anything to help better the vast majority of students in America.
Charter schools aren’t the solution they’ve been claimed to be. They aren’t better than public schools in measurable statistics or accountability, if they're held to any accountability at all. Charters don’t improve reading rates or math aptitude. They don’t have better teachers (some charters don't even have to hire certified teachers), or better curriculum, or some magic potion that all of the sudden cures our country of the malaise afflicting our nation’s classrooms. What charters do is drain government funding away from already perilously cash strapped public schools in working class and poor neighborhoods. They don’t improve anything besides the bank accounts of the stockholders that have invested in the privatization of our country’s education system. They weaken the teacher’s union, which slowly knocks another leg out from under the working class's ability to fight back against the dynastic wealth that is being built by the greedy few in this country.
America’s future is being mortgaged, and the lien is going to be on the parents and kids that can least afford it. Free public education is the backbone of our society, not an entity that is judged solely through a lense of profits and losses. It is the most important thing our country can do to ensure that the America we want to believe in is still around in 50 years, and that the people that are still around have the knowledge and skills to move our society forward.
Every kid in our country should be able to get a solid education near where they live. Not across town because the school in their neighborhood has been closed after it's funding went to some charter school that has no accountability to provide a quality education to their students. A lot of children are being left behind on purpose, and that will only worsen exponentially as charter schools become the last option left in town.
Instead of declaring that the public education system is irrevocably broken, and unregulated, unaccountable charter schools are the future, we reinvest. Pour money into the system. Pay teachers and support staff more. Fix and upgrade buildings and classroom technology. Offer more after school programs. Our federal government has plenty of money, it just likes giving it to people and companies that's sole driving force in life is to acquire the kind of money where you could conceivably blow up the moon. Maybe give out a few less gazillion dollar defense contracts to the friends of people in the defense department that also just so coincidentally happen to sit on the board of Missile&SubmarineEmporium.
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