This is a follow up to my last post on the New Jersey Star-Ledger’s editorial Giving poor families a leg up in charter schools.
Reader317 commented:
Charter schools in NJ are sucking taxpayers dry with nepotism, exorbitant salaries and perks for administrators, and so forth. They are not held to the same standards as public schools.
Privitization introduces a profit motive which is fine for an enterprise like Uber, but not for obligatory government functions paid with tax dollars. [sic]
I left this reply:
Whose standards? The charters are [or should be] held to the only standard that matters. By the standards of the parents who choose charters for their kids, the charters are better.
And just who are the “taxpayers?” They are individuals who are being sucked dry by the government school establishment. Parents who choose charter schools are taxpayers, too. Why shouldn’t their tax money follow their kid to the school of their choice?
The problem with the traditional public schools is that they are not profit-driven. A for-profit school must satisfy the customers—the parents—or lose the business to a stronger competitor. The traditional public schools collect their students and revenues by force of truancy laws and taxation, not by voluntary consent of the parents. There’s no incentive to satisfy the customers, because there’s no profit motive.
Charters are upsetting traditionals’ monopoly, and that’s a good thing. There shouldn’t be tax-funded—and thus politicized, government controlled—schools. But as long as we have education taxes, charter schools are a step in the right direction because they expand parental school choice. School choice is a moral imperative.
Related Reading:
Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 3
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