The origins of charter school law were to help underprivileged kids and to reinvigorate public schools. Those initial aims were admirable, but were co-opted long ago by the corporate and billionaire classes whose rhetoric and tactics appeal to privileged parents in suburbs across the country. According to this blog from noted educator, researcher and former Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch,
"The tragedy of the charter school movement is that the original idea was admirable. They were supposed to be schools with a contract for five years or so, during which they would enroll students at risk of failure and dropouts; the teachers would seek innovative ways to spark their motivation in education. The teachers of charter schools would share their fresh ideas with their colleagues in the public schools. The students would return to their public school, re-energized and mmotivated. The public school would adopt the new methods pioneered by the charters. It was to be a collaboration.
But as charters began to open, the original idea was eclipsed by a philosophy not of collaboration, but corruption. Ambitious entrepreneurs created chains of charter schools. A new industry emerged, led not by educators, but by savvy lawyers, industrialists, and flim-flam artists. Some charters claimed they were far better than the public schools and showed contempt for public schools. They boasted that their scores were better than the public forces. They want to beat the public schools, not help them. They became a malignant force for privatization and union-busting.
Families for Excellent Schools is just one more of the deceptive names of organizations that are led by the 1% and whose goal is the impoverishment and –eventually–abandonment of public education."