American politicians often lambast so-called shadow governments and praise the necessity of accountability in politics. Yet, what if I were to tell you that there is a parallel system in the U.S. primarily supported by the rich and powerful, with little transparency and actively funded by the U.S. government? You would no doubt be outraged and call for its immediate dissolution. Yet this very system is present today, and no one seems to bat an eye at its existence. What is this shadowy cabal? Charter schools.
Charter schools began in 1991 as a new way of educating by creating publicly funded schools that were privately operated. By the 2021-22 school year, some 7,800 charter schools across the nation were teaching more than 3.7 million students. Despite being 7% of all publicly funded schools, surprisingly little is known about them. Publicly funded charter schools are immune from most regulations and often don’t require regular audits, public meetings or even disclosure of public records. While most states require charter schools to be nonprofits, many entities bypass those regulations by creating shell nonprofit organizations that then license the right to run the schools back to a for-profit company.
This leaves us with public money being used to fund for-profit companies with little oversight and even less regulation. But at least they do a good job educating the students, right? Well, according to a study by the Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes, overall, charter schools perform around the same as traditional public schools; however, online charter schools perform considerably worse. This means that charter schools aren’t delivering on the promise of bettering education, despite most being founded to fill in the gap of failing public schools.
These results are rather curious as they show charter schools being at most mediocre and at worst detrimental to their students. However, they seem to be popular on both sides of the political aisle from Obama to Trump. One explanation for this is that charter schools are popular with billionaires. Supporters from this camp like Bill Gates and the Walton Family Foundation, the philanthropic vision of Walmart’s founders, cite charter schools as a better alternative to educate America’s youth than traditional public schools. Billionaires wield their giant fortunes in support of charter schools so much so that some politicians support charter schools just to curry favor with the rich and secure a six-figure campaign check.
This does not take away from the good charter schools that genuinely help to educate the youth of tomorrow. However, some good schools do not balance out the corruption, failures and creation of parallel institutions to support such an ailing industry. Horror stories from charter schools range from school buildings doubling as nightclubs to one Texas charter school leasing a private jet. It is time to be honest about charter schools. Many just aren’t efficient or even useful as educational institutions. Americans need to realize that it would be better to shut down the charter school system and funnel that money back into our public school districts.
