Writing for Global Research, Shawgi Tell looks at what research of past charter performance tells us about the failure we can expect from them in the future.
Over the past 30+ years, thousands of charter schools have failed, closed, and abandoned millions of students, parents, teachers, education support staff, principals, and others—all in the name of “choice,” “competition,” “innovation,” “accountability,” “results,” “empowering parents,” and “busting teacher unions” (see here, here, and here). In Michigan alone, 36% of charter schools fail in the first five years.
The lives of many have been disrupted by frequent charter school failures and closures. And many of these closures are sudden and abrupt, catching many off guard and leaving them stressed out and anxious about what to do next. Shock, anger, grief, and abandonment are often experienced by those left out in the cold by constantly-failing charter schools. When a charter school fails and closes, parents, teachers, and administrators have to scramble frantically to figure out how to place many students in another education setting with the least amount of disruption and instability.
Financial malfeasance, mismanagement, low enrollment, and poor academic performance are the top four reasons charter schools fail and close regularly. These long-standing problems usually operate together, they are interrelated, producing a perfect storm of continual failure and harm.
2025 will be no different. Hundreds of charter schools will again fail, close, and violate thousands of students, parents, teachers, education support staff, and principals. The top-down antisocial neoliberal offensive in education will remain strong. Powerful private interests will continue their onslaught on the public interest under the veneer of high ideals.
To be sure, as charter schools multiply across the country, even more closures and tragedies will occur. More charter schools equals more failures and closures. In this way, chaos and turmoil are further normalized in the sphere of education. Volatility and uncertainty become more entrenched. Vouchers and Education Savings Accounts, two other forms of education privatization, play a significant part in increasing anarchy in education as well.
Such chaos and disorder are the natural result of a “free market” education set-up that glorifies a fend-for-yourself ethos that embraces disorder, mayhem, and insecurity. Every irrational thing takes hold quickly in such a set-up where everyone fends for themselves and hopes that “things work out.” Meaningful guard rails exist nowhere and everyone is pressured to blindly embrace individualism, ego-centrism, consumerism, and competition, thereby undermining the general interests of society.
