# convince me that charter schools are a good thing **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 8, 2017, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298 "2017-02-08T02:34:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/81 "2017-02-10T14:44:46Z")
How can it hurt to add a profit motive to education? After all it’s working out so wonderfully with ‘for profit’ medicine! Seriously America, most countries have ‘not for profit’ medicine BECAUSE they had the benefit of seeing what a ‘for profit’ model looked like in the US. You’re mired in trying to fix it, in part, because you really CAN’T just go back and start over. And now you’re about to do the same thing to education. It almost seems like other nations (Canada most notably!) gains great benefit by learning from your mistakes. Why does it seem like y’all aren’t learning from them? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/82 "2017-02-10T15:13:50Z")
> [@sinjin](#): > > Charter schools have no standards or requirements that they must adhere to. Perhaps it’s different in your part of the country, but this is factually incorrect in the states which with I have experience. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/83 "2017-02-10T16:34:54Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > That is assuming that the for-profit _can_ do it better. It is hard to determine precise outcomes, because for profit schools can choose their students through admission criteria, and can drop students that don’t do well enough, so determining their performance is problematic. > > The one thing that is shown for absolutely sure, is whether or not the students that go to charter schools do better than they would have, the students that are not admitted are left with fewer resources, leading to a situation where the educational opportunities of the less fortunate students are being sacrificed to subsidize those who are more fortunate. Maybe for profit schools can’t do it better and the status quo is the perfect system and some people just can’t be educated. That seems a little far fetched to me. What has not been shown is that charter schools leave the other schools with fewer resources. In some places the charters schools are given less per pupil money leaving the other schools with more resources. It is easy to imagine funding formulas which leave other schools with less money but those are not the only options. > [@](#): > > A better educated workforce is a better workforce. > > The major returns of education are realized by the community that has educated citizens. The student is the second beneficiary, and the parents a far third. (which is why parents are the ones to make all the decisions, because they are actually hardly affected by the outcomes.) On the margin a poorly educated child affects the community very little. However poor education affects the child a great deal. Parents are looking out for the best interests of the child better than the child could look after their own interests. That is the whole point of parenthood. The idea that the community at large cares more about the success of a child than the parents do is crazy. Obviously awful parents exist but for almost all parents raising a successful child is the most important thing in their lives. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/84 "2017-02-10T16:41:46Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > What has not been shown is that charter schools leave the other schools with fewer resources. Have you placed me on “ignore” or something? I’ve given great detail on exactly how this can happen. [Here’s one article on the topic.](https://www.accelify.com/accelify-blog/2010/06/21/3-charter-schools-in-buncombe-county-seeking-1-3-million-nc/) ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/85 "2017-02-10T16:44:29Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Because when there is a profit motive, there is an incentive to spend less on the education to pocket the profits. Older textbooks, teachers who can’t get jobs at public schools and will take a lower salary, sub par facilities, internet connectivity insufficient to do research with, dependence on an underfunded public library. > > Now, if the results are the same, maybe that’s fine. But one of the big issues with charters is lack of oversight, different requirements (they don’t need to take special needs or free and reduced lunch kids) and different measurement criteria. > > This is especially disturbing when you consider the funding calculation described above. If you pull the per capita education cost of $10k per kid from our district to give it to a charter school, you aren’t pulling the modal per capita spend. You are including the spend on the kid who has a full time ASL translator because he can’t hear, and the kids who are six to a room due to ODD. That ASL translator still needs to get paid, so the modal amount going to the average public school student goes down, and someone makes a profit. Especially disturbing if the average student has to stay at the public school because of transportation issues and therefore doesn’t get to engage in “choice.” This misunderstands what profits are. Obviously businessmen are greedy but so are teachers, principals, and school administrators. They have the same incentives to provide less resources to the students and spend the money on themselves instead. Look at the skyrocketing number of non teaching workers in public schools. In the last 60 years school staffing has grown at four times the rate of students increase. What profits do is to align the greed of the business person with the interests of the consumer. If the businessman does not provide a good product they do not get paid. If a public school does not provide a good product they get a new principal every couple of years. Profits are why are cars are safer, why phones are smaller, and video games have better graphics. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/86 "2017-02-10T16:47:07Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Have you placed me on “ignore” or something? I’ve given great detail on exactly how this can happen. [Here’s one article on the topic.](https://www.accelify.com/accelify-blog/2010/06/21/3-charter-schools-in-buncombe-county-seeking-1-3-million-nc/) You should have read the article. 3 charter schools are thinking of suing the district because they are provided so much less funding than normal public schools. That was the opposite of what you were arguing. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/87 "2017-02-10T17:10:42Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > But if your niece was part of the clique, she wouldn’t be threatened. Ergo, she’s not in the clique, and the most obvious reason she wouldn’t be is some level of social awkwardness. (I don’t mean she’s necessarily socially awkward, in and of herself, but she’s not as socially adept as the clique, or has some other characteristic that makes her unappealing to the clique. Attractiveness is not usually a barrier.) Another obvious reason would be that she does not want to be friends with people who like to beat up other people. Not every 12 year old girl enjoys fighting. [QUOTE Cars tend to fit into categories: if you buy a Toyota Camry, you have a reasonably good idea of what to expect and how it will work out. Kids aren’t Camrys, and they don’t fit into neat little categories.[/QUOTE] In the analogy the schools are the cars, not the kids. The kids would be the drivers of the car. > [@](#): > > The college example is particularly bad, because the evidence of lower-income and first-generation-college kids choosing wildly inappropriate schools is widespread. For example, lower-income students are about three and a half times more likely to choose a for-profit school than students from more prosperous households, but they’re also more likely to end up with higher loan debts, higher loan default rates, and higher unemployment rates. ([cite](http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-black-youth-for-profit-trade-schools-1009-biz-20161007-story.html)) Slick marketing draws students into the likes of Corinthian Colleges, recently shuttered under heavy pressure from regulators over its deceptive marketing. We’ve had discussions on this very board ([example](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=712233)) about the merits of places like Univ of Phoenix, yet these are precisely the sorts of places that attract naive students. Just because some people make bad choices does not mean no one should be able to make a choice. In a new market it is not as easy to make choices because brands have not had a reputation established, but as the market matures more information means better choices. > [@](#): > > Then we’re back to school choice, which is orthogonal to charter schools. > > Cite? If a powerful person or company is making money from that school, what’s the incentive to cross them by closing it? [This](http://www.publiccharters.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/New-Closed-2016.pdf) shows 4% of charter schools closed last year. [This](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=619) shows 1.7% of public schools closed in the most recent year. Charter schools are over twice as likely as public schools to close which obscures the fact that most of the public school closings are not due to incompetence but rather lack of students in the district. It doesn’t matter what a powerful person or company wants, if they don’t get enough students to go there they go out of > [@](#): > > So how about working on improving the current system, rather than siphoning off resources into a system that benefits some students and leaves others worse off? People have been trying to improve the current system for decades. Apparently privilege walks and more money are not doing the job. > [@](#): > > What happens to the students who end up in those failing charter schools, the ones riddled by fraud or staffed by people too incompetent to work in the public schools? Do you really think it okay to sacrifice them in the name of some hypothetical future? If students are at a failing charter school, they can leave. That option is not available for them at a failing public school. Better a sinking ship with lifeboats than one without. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/88 "2017-02-10T17:17:25Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > Everything else aside, what’s the difference between a “good school” and a “Vassar-type school”? Are you under the impression that Vassar is a finishing school or something? Because it[isn’t](https://admissions.vassar.edu/about/statistics/). > > A car is not your child’s education. If people mess up picking a car, it doesn’t ruin their life. > > LHoD, I’d add one thing to your list: a standardized fact sheet about the school so that people could make comparisons meaningful comparisons. A good school is one that gives a good education a “Vassar type school” is one that does not. I am aware of what type of school Vassar is. Another good thing about cars is that if you live in a place with a bad car dealership it does not ruin your life. And if you pick a bad car you can get rid of it and get another car. Think how much cars would suck if only were allowed to buy from one dealership and you were stuck with whatever they had on hand. Standardized fact sheets are great ideas. Many real estate websites have them about public schools. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/89 "2017-02-10T17:28:01Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > But that educated adult worker in the future is **not** the person who’s paying to educate the child in the present. As **k9bfriender** and I both already pointed out, the future benefits to the student him/herself are **also** external in this transaction. > As **Dangerosa** and I both already pointed out, there are major fundamental reasons why universal basic education is **not** an area where it’s likely that “a for profit school can do it better”. > > There is strong resistance to paying the high costs of good education, largely because of the negative-externality issue discussed above. That puts a for-profit school’s profit motive in conflict with its ethical obligation to provide good education. To maximize profits for themselves they have an incentive to cut corners wherever they can on what they provide to the students. If for profit schools can not do better than why not give each type of school a chance to compete and see what happens. Most charters schools are not for profit, I don’t care what the financial organization of a school is as long as it does the job. There are two ways to achieve profits, cut costs or increase revenue. Cutting costs would be good since the US spends more per pupil than every other country in the [world](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/). But if too much is cut it starts to affect quality and customers start to go elsewhere. Providing quality means more customers and more revenue. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/90 "2017-02-10T17:36:58Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > You should have read the article. 3 charter schools are thinking of suing the district because they are provided so much less funding than normal public schools. That was the opposite of what you were arguing. I did read the article. The reason why they are provided with so much less funding is exactly as I described: the school district was withholding funding that was earmarked for services that the charter schools were not providing, e.g., preschool, ROTC, etc. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/91 "2017-02-10T17:37:11Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > At least in public schools, there is accountability. These charter and private schools, we won’t know the outcomes of their effects until the kids are adults and their educations are complete. What is the accountability in public schools? In 2008 in New York City 3 out of 30,000 teachers were fired. In Akron and Denver the number was 0. Less than 2% of public schools close and almost none for incompetence. If you think your local school board is doing a bad job all you need to do is wait several years for an election and then get ten thousand of your fellow citizens to agree. If I don’t think my child is receiving a bad education at a charter school what I need to do to hold them accountable is to find another school that is enrolling new students and they can be gone the next day. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/92 "2017-02-10T17:43:48Z")
From the article, for folks who might think **puddleglum** is correct: > [@](#): > > In the case of Asheville City school officials, they say in a statement it would be “inappropriate and perhaps unconstitutional,” to share funding “for purposes other than what the grants were intended.” > > Examples include federal dollars earmarked for the system’s preschool program, grant money for the high school’s JROTC program and money for the Gates Foundation New Schools Project. > > The charter schools do not provide preschool services and do not serve high school students, city school officials say. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/93 "2017-02-10T17:46:27Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > This misunderstands what profits are. Obviously businessmen are greedy but so are teachers, principals, and school administrators. They have the same incentives to provide less resources to the students and spend the money on themselves instead. Look at the skyrocketing number of non teaching workers in public schools. In the last 60 years school staffing has grown at four times the rate of students increase. > What profits do is to align the greed of the business person with the interests of the consumer. If the businessman does not provide a good product they do not get paid. If a public school does not provide a good product they get a new principal every couple of years. Profits are why are cars are safer, why phones are smaller, and video games have better graphics. That’s because over the last sixty years schools have been expected to do more and more. When I went to school (elementary school in the 1970s), special needs kids were institutionalized - remedial kids were still in the classroom, but it was remedial, not true special education. There was no need for a ASL interpreter in the room - those kids went to a school for the deaf. There wasn’t a social worker on staff. There wasn’t a paraprofessional for the ODD kid. There was one ESL teacher - Spanish - no need for Hmong and Somali. Since most kids didn’t go on to college, the district has a single college counselor. We didn’t have a resident police officer. We didn’t have to have a staffed reception desk because it never occurred to anyone that someone might show up in school with a duffel bag full of automatic weapons. And there were a lot more stay at home moms. They did the Great Books program and the Art classes. They were the room aides in elementary school and helped out the school secretary in the office (now, you can’t do that - privacy reasons). Get rid of the requirement that we need to teach all the kids in the public schools and bring back the army of unpaid labor mothers represent and you can get rid of a lot of the additional staff and money. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/94 "2017-02-10T17:49:19Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > In the analogy the schools are the cars, not the kids. The kids would be the drivers of the car. So your argument is that kids, the ones directing their education, would have no idea what they’re getting with charter schools, and that somehow is an argument FOR charter schools, or school choice in general? Elucidate, please. > [@puddleglum](#): > > IJust because some people make bad choices does not mean no one should be able to make a choice. In a new market it is not as easy to make choices because brands have not had a reputation established, but as the market matures more information means better choices. But the people most likely to make a bad choice are precisely the most vulnerable. Kids in failing schools (and/or their parents) are the most likely to be looking for an alternative, and they’re the ones most likely to be swayed by slick marketing materials. Are you really saying, “oh, the market will sort itself out later, and in the meantime all of those injured by ill-supervised or poorly-chosen schools can just deal with the consequences”? That’s pretty harsh, no? > [@puddleglum](#): > > [This](http://www.publiccharters.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/New-Closed-2016.pdf) shows 4% of charter schools closed last year. [This](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=619) shows 1.7% of public schools closed in the most recent year. Charter schools are over twice as likely as public schools to close which obscures the fact that most of the public school closings are not due to incompetence but rather lack of students in the district. How many public schools get new administrators and/or new staffs each year? (A public school board is less likely to simply close a building they already own and build a new one down the block with a new staff, so you’re not measuring really the same thing here.) > [@puddleglum](#): > > It doesn’t matter what a powerful person or company wants, if they don’t get enough students to go there they go out of If they get enough students through deceptive marketing, pressure on school boards, or other means, they can go for a long long time before their failure becomes evident. That’s where lack of transparency, for example, can hide a multitude of sins. > [@puddleglum](#): > > People have been trying to improve the current system for decades. Apparently privilege walks and more money are not doing the job. So why do you think for-profit charter schools, with an explicit goal of making the greatest amount of money possible for their owners, are going to be able to do the job either? > [@puddleglum](#): > > If students are at a failing charter school, they can leave. That option is not available for them at a failing public school. Better a sinking ship with lifeboats than one without. I don’t know where you live, but most public school systems have options too, particularly with the proliferation of magnet schools and the like. Parental work schedules and transportation barriers tend to be bigger obstacles, and that is true for charter schools as well, as has been discussed repeatedly in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/95 "2017-02-10T17:49:49Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Education doesn’t work like that. Nobody looks in the fridge or in the mirror and thinks _“gee, what I really want is a well-educated workforce and citizenry ten years down the line!”_ Those benefits are mostly **externalized** to people **who aren’t directly paying for them**. I’m not sure I agree with that. Yes, some of the benefits of an educated populace are externalized. But the benefits to an individual from getting a good education are strong as well. Parents want their kids to get a good education, not because they think that in aggregate society will be better off, but because they want their kids to succeed. Your basic point is that education is (partly) a public good is true about many other areas, but your conclusion that it can’t be effectively provided by profit-driven enterprises doesn’t seem to hold in them either. National defense is a public good, but it’s provided by a combination of non-profit organizations (the military) and profit-driven ones (military contractors). Public health is a public good, and it’s provided by a combination of government research grants, non-profit universities, labs, and hospitals, and profit-driven pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. Roads, air travel, the internet, utilities, waste disposal, etc. all have external benefits to society as a whole, and are all provided by a combination of public and private entities. > [@](#): > > So, from the point of view of the people who **are** directly paying for them, it appears that they’re too expensive, and there’s strong resistance to paying enough to cover their costs. That is not a situation conducive to businesses being able to make good profits in an ethical manner. Between 1980 and 2014, Public education costs increased by over 100% with only a 22% increase in students. [Cite](http://www.aei.org/publication/friday-afternoon-links-21/). That doesn’t support your claim that people aren’t willing to fund public education. I would argue that at least some of those funds have been misdirected. Teacher pay, for example, is generally based primarily on seniority and educational level, rather than subject matter. One example: teachers generally get a pay bump when they complete postgraduate degrees. They get this pay raise whether or not they are teaching a subject that requires the advanced degree, and regardless of the need to retain teachers in that subject. Let’s pay English teachers (of which there is a plentiful supply) less, and pay math teachers more. > [@](#): > > So how are you figuring that a for-profit business would be able to afford an ample supply of good math teachers **plus** a healthy profit margin, when non-profit ones can’t afford an ample supply of good math teachers even **without** any profit margin? I believe the mistake you’re making is that “non-profit” somehow indicates optimal. There are inefficiencies and waste in public schools that cannot be effectively addressed by the political process due to the political power of teachers unions. It’s quite possible that a charter school could find ways to improve things enough to make things better for students _and_ make a profit. I’m not _sure_ that’s the case, but disproving it is not as simple as taking an existing (suboptimal) public system and assuming that you’ll have basically the same system but with less money because a profit is being extracted. That’s not how profit-driven entities work. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/96 "2017-02-10T18:57:30Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I believe the mistake you’re making is that “non-profit” somehow indicates optimal. There are inefficiencies and waste in public schools that cannot be effectively addressed by the political process due to the political power of teachers unions. It’s quite possible that a charter school could find ways to improve things enough to make things better for students _and_ make a profit. I’m not _sure_ that’s the case, but disproving it is not as simple as taking an existing (suboptimal) public system and assuming that you’ll have basically the same system but with less money because a profit is being extracted. That’s not how profit-driven entities work. Would you like to say - provide a cite outlining some of these ideas? Or maybe propose some? Rather than throwing an assertions on the wall and saying “well, you can’t PROVE Santa Claus doesn’t exist.” Also show how Wisconsin, which functionally ended the power of teachers unions in 2011, has been able to make positive changes to its public school system. If unions are what is preventing the changes needed, those changes should have been implemented with positive results by now in Wisconsin. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/97 "2017-02-10T19:01:00Z")
Wisconsin didn’t functionally end the power of teachers’ unions in 2011. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/98 "2017-02-10T20:03:47Z")
It ended collective bargaining. Other than teachers voting as a block - and there aren’t that many teachers and many of them are quite conservative, they have little power. Only about half the teachers in Wisconsin even belong to the union now. ---
**Author:** ![Jefferson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@Jefferson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jefferson)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/99 "2017-02-10T20:26:04Z")
I keep hearing that Conservatives want vouchers for poor (often black) kids to go to better schools (Charter perhaps) but Democrats are against the idea. Why is that? The teachers unions don’t like it? ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2017, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298/100 "2017-02-10T20:33:41Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > This makes no sense. Schools are providing a service. If a for profit school is can do it better than a public charter why not let them do it better? Of course it makes sense, if you give it a second of thought instead of knee-jerking. Right now, your tax dollars pay for teacher/admin salaries, upkeep, etc. In a for-profit situation, part of your tax dollars go into the pockets of people like the DeVos family and other rich folks who don’t give a shit about anything but the profits generated. They will run it like a business (which it is), which means providing minimum services to increase cash flow. “Ah, but the government will provide oversight”, you say? By whom? The SecEd, who is part of the profiting sector? Or the Department of Education, which is on the proposed chopping block by Republicans? Tax dollars often go to business that provide services like construction and maintenance. Having worked in that sector, I can tell you that the oversight is fairly rigorous and the companies are held to the letter of the contracts. But it has been shown over and over again that not every sector benefits from outsourcing, and that the government does not always get what it is paying for. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-that-charter-schools-are-a-good-thing/779298.md?page=6)