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The Metis Take
Charter schools and traditional public schools face a common threat – the tidal wave of privatization that is gaining traction across the country, in red, purple, and blue states
Introduction
As the product of two life-long NYC public high school teachers, an alumna of the New York City public school system, and the proud parent of two NYC public-school-educated children from PreK through high school, I didn’t expect to find myself advocating for charter schools (AFT President Al Shanker’s early support notwithstanding). But through my work at Metis, I have come to see firsthand the value of both traditional and charter schools in the landscape of school choice, as long as they support the goal of providing a high-quality public education to all students regardless of zip code, race, socio-economic status, gender, and other factors. These days, charter schools and traditional public schools have a common threat – the tidal wave of privatization that is gaining traction across the country, in red, purple, and blue states.
Charters versus Traditional Public Schools: The Early Years
The first charter school opened in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1992 following the State’s passage of the nation’s first charter school law in 1991. Today, all but six states in the country authorize charter schools and there are over 7,500 such schools nationwide, enrolling approximately 8% of all public school students nationally.
When charters came on the scene, they were justifiably perceived as a threat to traditional public school systems. As charter schools expanded beyond the initial pilot phase (in the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s), traditional districts began to face competition for students and the per-pupil funding that came with the loss of students to charter schools. This situation was particularly prevalent in states that were experiencing rapid, significant charter growth such as Arizona, California, and Michigan. Traditional public school advocates argued that charter schools divert per-pupil funding away from district schools, potentially weakening the system that serves the majority of students. Charter advocates countered that funding should follow students to the schools that best serve them, and competition improves overall quality.
Early tensions between charters and traditional public schools focused on competition and accountability concerns.
Over the past 20 years, the funding debate has intensified and become more sophisticated. What started as basic concerns about budget impacts has evolved into complex arguments about facilities funding, transportation costs, special education funding formulas, and economies of scale. Research on fiscal impacts has become more nuanced, showing varied effects depending on state funding formulas and local contexts.
Another early source of tension between the two public education sectors was around accountability concerns. This tension arose because early charter laws often had minimal oversight mechanisms. Some of the first charter school failures and scandals – financial mismanagement, academic underperformance, or sudden closures – highlighted gaps in oversight that states hadn’t fully anticipated. Charter supporters have emphasized that these schools face the ultimate accountability of closure if they fail to perform, while having freedom from bureaucratic constraints. Traditional public school advocates worry about inconsistent oversight, lack of transparency in some charter operations, and the challenge of monitoring multiple independent schools compared to unified district systems.
Accountability mechanisms have matured significantly. Most states now have much more robust charter authorization processes, performance frameworks, and closure procedures than existed in the early 2000s. However, this has created new tensions around the appropriate balance between autonomy and oversight.
New Tensions Emerge between Charters and Traditional Public Schools
After the first generation of charter schools, new tensions between this sector and traditional public school systems emerged or intensified that weren’t prominent initially, including equity concerns, teacher rights issues, and innovation versus proven practice debates. These tensions reflect deeper philosophical differences about how public education should be structured, governed, and improved.
Equity concerns became much more prominent after research in the 2000s and 2010s showed varying impacts of charter schools on different demographic groups and raised questions about segregation effects. This tension runs both ways. Charter advocates argue they provide options for families, particularly low-income families, who previously couldn’t access alternatives to underperforming schools. Critics worry that charter schools can increase segregation, don’t serve students with the highest needs as comprehensively, and that school choice benefits families with more social capital to navigate options.
Teacher rights issues intensified as charter schools scaled up and union membership declined in some areas. Most charter schools are non-unionized, which supporters see as allowing for more flexible hiring, compensation, and work rules. Traditional public school advocates, often including teachers’ unions, view this as undermining collective bargaining rights and job protections that help attract and retain quality educators.
Innovation vs. proven practice debates became more evidence-based as researchers accumulated data on charter school outcomes. Charter advocates emphasize innovation and the ability to try new educational approaches without bureaucratic barriers. Traditional public school supporters often argue that many charter innovations could be implemented in district schools, and question whether charter schools actually demonstrate superior outcomes at scale.
Charters and Traditional Public Schools Share Common Ground
Both sectors face similar challenges: teacher shortages, facility needs, technology gaps, and serving students with complex needs on limited budgets.
Early and later tensions notwithstanding, the charter sector and the traditional public education sector have much in common:
- Shared Public Mission: Both are fundamentally public institutions designed to serve all students, regardless of ability to pay. They operate under the principle that education is a public good and civic responsibility, not a private commodity.
- Similar Regulatory Framework: Both must comply with federal civil rights laws, serve students with disabilities under IDEA, provide services to English language learners, and meet state academic standards and testing requirements. While both types of schools face these same legal requirements, the implementation can sometimes vary. For instance, smaller charter schools may struggle more with comprehensive special education service delivery, and some charters have faced scrutiny over civil rights compliance in practice, even though they’re legally bound by the same standards.
- Public Accountability Standards: Both face similar transparency requirements for academic performance data, financial reporting, and governance. They’re accountable to public oversight bodies rather than private boards or shareholders.
- Shared Student Demographics: Both primarily serve students from working-class and middle-class families, with significant populations of students of color and those from lower-income households. Charter schools nationally serve disproportionately higher percentages of students of color (roughly 70% of charter students are Black or Hispanic, compared to about 55% in traditional public schools) and low-income students (about 60-65% of charter students qualify for free/reduced lunch programs).
Both sectors face similar challenges, including teacher shortages, facility needs, technology gaps, and serving students with complex needs on limited budgets. But these challenges pale in comparison to the latest threat to the entire public school sector in the form of privatization.
Enter the Common Threat: Public Funding for Private Schooling
Across the United States, a diverse array of initiatives now enable families to use public funding for private school education, representing a significant expansion of school choice policies over the past several decades. Nearly 60% of parents support using public funds for their child to attend a private or religious school, up from 50% in 2007, according to the 57th annual PDK Poll released earlier this month.
Know your school voucher history
Vouchers gained prominence in the US as a tool to combat school desegregation in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. State legislatures, mainly in Southern states, adopted voucher programs that provided funds for white students to attend private schools, often referred to as “segregation academies” rather than integrated public schools. While early voucher programs were discriminatory by design, the data show that voucher programs continue to contribute to racial segregation, albeit in more indirect ways.
Traditional or conventional school voucher programs provide direct payments or scholarships that families can apply toward private school tuition, while Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) offer greater flexibility by allowing families to use public funds not only for private school tuition but also for tutoring, educational materials, online courses, and other approved educational expenses.
Tax credit scholarship programs operate through a different mechanism, providing tax credits to individuals or businesses that donate to scholarship organizations, which then distribute funds to families for private school choice. Additionally, federal and state tax policies now support private education through expanded 529 education savings plans that can be used for K-12 private school tuition, and various tax credit and deduction programs. These initiatives range from targeted programs serving specific populations—such as low-income families, students with disabilities, or those in underperforming schools—to increasingly universal programs that make public funding available to nearly all families regardless of income or circumstances.
This trend has accelerated dramatically in recent years, with states like Arizona, Florida, West Virginia, and Iowa implementing universal or near-universal programs that represent a fundamental shift toward treating public education funding as portable resources that follow students to their chosen educational providers, whether public, charter, or private. Arizona led this trend with its ESA program becoming available to nearly all students. West Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Utah, and Arkansas have all moved toward universal school choice programs in recent years.
More states have chosen ESAs over traditional vouchers because they offer greater flexibility – families can use funds for private school tuition, tutoring, educational materials, or even save for future education expenses. This flexibility has made ESAs politically more appealing than vouchers in some contexts.
The pace of legislative activity in this area has accelerated significantly since around 2021, with many states either creating new programs or dramatically expanding existing ones. However, implementation challenges and legal challenges have also increased correspondingly. And all this while numerous studies have failed to demonstrate that vouchers improve academic outcomes, particularly for low-income students and students of color.1
Impact of Privatization on the Public Education Sector
We need to remember that public education is the scaffolding that supports a democratic society.
Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and school vouchers pose distinct threats to both charter and traditional public schools, with many threats in common and some key differences.
Funding competition intensifies as charter schools now compete not just with traditional districts but also with private schools for the same pool of per-pupil funding. ESAs can be particularly challenging since they often provide more funding flexibility than charter school budgets allow.
Mission dilution pressure emerges as charter schools may feel compelled to compete with private schools by adopting more exclusive practices or moving away from their public school mission to maintain enrollment.
Regulatory disadvantage becomes apparent as charter schools remain subject to many traditional public school regulations (e.g., special education compliance, teacher certification, standardized testing) while competing with private schools that face fewer such requirements.
Enrollment hollowing particularly affects districts in states with broad voucher programs. Unlike charter competition, which typically draws students to other public options, vouchers can accelerate middle-class flight to private schools, potentially leaving districts with higher concentrations of students who are more expensive to serve.
Political undermining occurs as voucher programs can erode public support for traditional public education funding. When taxpayers see their money going to private schools, it can become harder to build coalitions for public school investments. Recent polls suggest that the majority of Americans, across political and ideological lines, support investments in public schools over redirecting funds to private education.2
Both traditional public and charter schools face the broader challenge of public education fragmentation. As public funding flows to an increasingly diverse array of providers with different accountability standards, it becomes harder to maintain system-wide coherence, equity protections, and democratic governance.
The accountability erosion affects both sectors as well. When significant public funding flows to private providers with minimal oversight, it can create pressure to reduce accountability standards across all publicly funded options.
Clearly, charters and traditional public schools stand to lose if they do not work in partnership facing their shared challenges. As NYS Education Commissioner Betty Rosa reminded us in her keynote remarks at the recent 2025 NY Education Summit, as we approach this country’s 250th birthday, we need to remember that public education is the scaffolding that supports a democratic society.
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