Charter Schools: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Governor Christie is pushing hard for reform of New Jersey’s public schools. Christie is acting as an advocate for both charter schools and privatization of our state’s public schools, but few people, particularly parents, understand the real impact of the type of educational reform that Christie is pushing the state legislature to pass.      

Ask most people their opinion of charter schools and they will typically respond that charter schools are educational alternatives under local control, but this is neither an accurate picture of the present or even more importantly, the future of the charter school movement. In reality, Christie’s privatization plan will amount to a corporate takeover of public education.     

Calls for privatization of public schools greatly increased after the Republican election victories in 2010, and the immediate impact was a spike in what is known as educational management corporations, or EMO’s. Originally, EMO’s were non-profit and usually helped manage one charter school by providing a la carte services such as accounting, payroll, busing, and food services. The scope and role of EMO’s rapidly changed as large, for-profit, educational corporations recognized the open door to obtaining a lion's share of the billions of dollars in public funds earmarked for education. Well-financed EMO’s began to open schools similar to a franchise operation, and the result was an educational corporation that managed and operated several schools at once at multiple locations in several states and even foreign nations. In effect, this educational business model privatized public education into a commodity market.     

What Governor Christie is risking with his plan to privatize New Jersey public schools is the long-held belief in America that the education of our children is best served through local control. Governor Christie is pushing parents and children toward an educational holocaust where public schools are sacrificed in favor of corporate schools. These for-profit corporate schools will have control over curriculum, instructional practices, staffing and school design, stealing all autonomy from local citizens.  

Charter schools in concert with public schools can offer valuable educational services, but Christie’s proposed school reforms will lead to privatization and corporate control over the education of our most valuable resource, our children. Given the past record of corporate abuse of our natural resources, this could be a gamble that parents are not willing to take.