Neutering Charter Schools

Letter to the Editor, Investor’s Business Daily

We agree with “Charter Schools in Choke Hold,” Anna Bray Duff, IBD, August 13, because the education establishment cannot abide fresh ideas or competition. The way to eliminate charter schools is to put them back in the box of sameness — same curriculum, same bureaucratic and union strictures. Thereby they lose their reason for being.

The bogus cry of the regulators is that charter schools are public schools, so they must be “accountable.” For basic health and safety, that’s fair enough. But as schools of choice, charter schools are accountable to their customers, the parents, for academic performance.

Besides, they must answer to the public authorities that charter them. They can lose their charters and be forced to shut down if they fail to deliver promised results. That’s marketplace discipline.

How many non-chartered public schools must rise to that level of
accountability?