I disagree. It’s true that families who choose charter schools move their students’ money from unsatisfactory schools to satisfactory alternatives. But it’s an objective fact that the schools which are failing poor and middle class families have been doing so since long before charter schools came into existence, and that thousands of lower and middle class families want alternatives. Public schools don’t need charters to be “harmed.” Bad public school systems have been harming students since forever.
Funding is not the problem. Some of the very worst schools in the U.S. (D.C., New York) have higher per-pupil spending than all but one or two other public school systems in the world.
Let me assure you that I don’t think charter schools are a panacea. I don’t care for their models and I would only have sent my son to one if he had insisted on it. But blaming alternatives to public schools for the failure of public schools to satisfy low and middle class families for decades is like blaming secularism for immorality. Immorality, like bad education, has always existed. Secularism, like charter schools, is merely one choice people can try to make in their families’ lives as a response to traditionalism and institutionalism.
I make the comparison to religion because I believe that education is as personal as religion. I believe the mind is as personal as the body. Because I’m a liberal, I believe in “my body, my choice.” Therefore, I believe in “my mind, my choice.”
Some charter schools get rid of poorly performing students. That’s wrong. But to pretend that public schools don’t do the same is no different than pretending that police brutality is due to a few bad apples. It defies the evidence of the last century. I worked for years specifically with kids who were kicked out of public schools because they were performing badly.
There are fantastic public schools and terrible public schools. There are fantastic charter schools and terrible charter schools. Picking one or the other to demonize is to choose ideology over evidence.
(Personally, I think both models are terrible, but that’s a different discussion. 
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