How Charter Schools Harm Our Communities

1. Corruption and Lack of Accountability

  • School privatization (setting up charter schools, outsourcing educator and staff duties through contracts to private agencies) opens the door to misuse of public funds and increases the likelihood of corruption and scandal.

  • By year five, 26% close, climbing to 55% by year 20 (According to a new report by the National Center for Charter School Accountability examines charter school closures since 1998).

  • More than one million students have attended a charter when it closed.

2. Patterns of Exclusion

  • Charter schools have become notorious in our communities for counseling out and pushing out students who are perceived to be more challenging to teach.

  • Charter schools typically enroll fewer students with disabilities and English language learners than surrounding public schools.

3. Disproportionate Discipline of Students of Color

  • In recent years, the overuse of harsh disciplinary practices such as out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and school-based arrests have caused considerable damage to students, families, and communities across the country.

  • This “school-to-prison pipeline” has been especially devastating to our Black and Brown communities.

Outsourcing school support services is a mechanism of privatization.

  • “There has been much attention on privatization in education, with an emphasis on school voucher and charter school debates.”

  • “But, within public schools, a similar dynamic is playing out with public dollars leaving schools and going to private corporations for the provision of school support services.” 

  • “Important school support services, including food service, custodial and building maintenance, transportation, clerical staff, school nurses and counselors, and paraeducators are being contracted out.”

  • “Ultimately, the quality of support services suffers and students lose trusted adults that routinely go above and beyond to ensure a safe, healthy, and high-quality learning environment inside and outside the school.”

Read the Report:

Doomed to Fail

Parents and families need stable, equitable, and fully-funded public schools for their students. Charter schools are not those schools. Charter schools have an unstable track record, and often find themselves in the news for misuse of public funds, corruption, and scandal.

Many times, students find themselves attending a charter school that suddenly closes. This leaves children and families scrambling, left without resources, and completely uprooted from their educational environment.

  • Between 1999 and 2022, more than 1.1 million students were affected by charter school closures, often with less than one month’s notice. 

  • By year five, 26% of charter schools closed, climbing to 55% by year 20.

Read the Full Report Here

The Harms of Charter Schools

Higher Pushout of English Language Learners and Students with Disabilities

  • Charter schools are free to pick and choose and exclude or kick out any student they want. They’re not supposed to, but in real life there’s no enforcement.

  • Charter schools disproportionately enroll far fewer students with disabilities and fewer English learners, outsourcing the costs of educating these students onto public schools.

  • Charter schools further racial segregation and the segregation of disabled children.

    • In fact, charter schools are a legacy of white flight: some white parents enroll their children in charter schools to avoid integration (Patch.com).

Draining Public Resources

  • Charter schools take money away from the public schools, harming public schools and their students. All charter schools do this – whether they’re opportunistic and for-profit or presenting themselves as public, progressive and enlightened.

  • Charter schools can be opened by almost anyone and get little oversight, so they’re ripe for corruption, looting, nepotism, fraud and self-dealing.

  • According to the Center for Media and Democracy, KIPP Charter Schools Concealed $52M in Unexplained Expenses in 2023.

  • In the past five years,charter school leaders across the United States have been implicated in scandals that amounted to more than $300 million in stolen taxpayer funds.

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