Little dead schoolhouse

Among Ravitch’s other targets is school choice, especially the charter school movement embraced by both free-market reformers and parents weary of the problems at their local public schools. Championed early on by teacher union head Albert Shanker as a kind of laboratory in which the most innovative teachers could try new ideas, nurture students requiring extra support, and address specific community needs, charter schools were quickly adopted by conservatives as a way to sidestep governmental and union regulations. Varying widely in quality - predictably, one person’s cutting through the red tape was another person’s hiring unqualified teachers - charter schools have nonetheless multiplied nationwide, with enthusiastic support from both Democratic and Republican leaders. This pattern is concerning, Ravitch argues, because “choice schools” siphon off both funding and the most motivated students, especially in urban districts, a trend she warns will “leave regular public schools with the most difficult students to educate, thus creating a two-tier system of widening inequality.”