Why charter school leaders are furious at Trump and Betsy DeVos
by Valerie Strauss
Ironically, the proposal puts charter critics in the position of agreeing with Trump and DeVos on at least one thing: elimination of the federal Charter Schools Program. One of them is Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit that advocates for traditional publicly funded education. The network last year released reports detailing hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on charters that were started with funding from the federal program but that never opened or quickly closed.
“There is one cut in the budget with which we strongly agree — the elimination of the Federal Charter Schools Program,” Burris said in an email. “Nina Rees, of the National Association of Public Charter Schools, correctly identified that program in her recent tweet as a program for ‘charter school entrepreneurs.’ … The U.S. Department of Education is not the Small Business Administration. It should not be funding a program for ‘charter school entrepreneurs.’ Let the states decide charter school policy and provide funds according to each state’s charter needs and laws.”