Charter Schools

When people in support of charter schools talk, one of the biggest lies they tell about them is they are "public" schools.

They are NOT. The only thing "public" about them is they receive taxpayer money to operate. They are private schools receiving public money, and the move towards charters is actually a way to funnel public money into private schools (without, of course, any kind of accountability to the public) when the movement towards vouchers failed.

Albert Shanker, a real liberal and the late head of the AFT, came up with the idea of charter schools in the 1980s, but it had little to do with the bastardized version which the privatizers came up with later. He believed teachers and parents could take more control of the schools if they were allowed more freedom from the restrictions of traditional public schools, but he later ditched the concept as pushed by cretins who despise public education simply because it is public.