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President Trump and his new education secretary, Betsy DeVos, have made clear that their interest in education is pushing more school “choice” — charter schools, vouchers, etc. There are consequences to choice policies, though, and this post explains how the spread of charter schools can affect traditional public schools, the ones that educate the vast majority of America’s schoolchildren.
This cautionary tale from Philadelphia was written by Carol Burris, a former New York high school principal who is executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education. She was named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, and in 2013, the same organization named her the New York State High School Principal of the Year. She has been chronicling problems with corporate school reform for years on this blog, including with a series about troubled charter schools in California.
[Why California’s charter school sector is called ‘the Wild West’]