Fight against charter schools growing

Truth Out- Public sentiment has actually been turning steadily against charter schools, and not only within the Democratic party. The NAACP recently called for a moratorium on charters, as did the Movement for Black Lives. Over the past year and a half, The New York Times published a series of scathing reports on the high-profile New York City charter chain Success Academy, including a teacher caught on tape screaming at a young student for a math mistake, a principal with a list of difficult students titled "Got to Go," and students peeing their pants out of fear. John Oliver's recent "Last Week Tonight" segment on corruption in charter schools in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania prompted a defensive response from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, acknowledging that the practices at the schools featured were "unacceptable" but insisting they "are not representative of charter schools nationwide."

On top of all that, the Democratic party platform this year contains language unprecedentedly critical of charter schools, saying they "should not replace or destabilize traditional public schools" and "must reflect their communities, and thus must accept and retain proportionate numbers of students of color, students with disabilities and English Language Learners in relation to their neighborhood public schools."

While charters have always been a controversial subject within the Democratic Party, there's been a longstanding bipartisan consensus behind closing poorly performing public schools in low-income communities and replacing them with charter schools. Both No Child Left Behind and Obama's Race to the Top program encouraged the expansion of charter schools, and both initially enjoyed bipartisan support. And while teachers unions have been a consistent voice of criticism against those policies, pro-charter groups were often successfully able to write them off as self-interested. Even within the Democratic Party, reformers painted public school teachers as selfishly fighting for job protections -- as if that's the worst thing a worker could do -- and not actually interested in the well-being of their students.