Biden has a tawdry new scheme to cripple charter schools

By George Will. Excerpts:

"From 1990 on, that is the lowest percentage (97.9%) of the American Federation of Teachers’ campaign contributions that went to Democrats."

"Last month, President Joe Biden’s Education Department released 13 pages of pettifogging rules patently written to discourage and impede charter schools from accessing a $440 million federal program of support for charters. The rules include:

A charter must serve a “diverse” population. This could disqualify a school that serves, as many charters do, non-diverse — that is, non-White — inner-city populations.

A charter must prepare a “community impact analysis” demonstrating that there is an “unmet demand” for it. Such a demonstration must be evidence of “over-enrollment of existing public schools,” not long waiting lists for admission to charters by parents dismayed by public schools whose dismal performance has produced under-enrollment because of parental flight.

Charters must supply plans for “racially and socio-economically diverse” staff, effectively a mandate for a racial spoils system. Charters must drown themselves in paperwork not required of traditional public schools — detailed reports on purchases of goods and services from for-profit companies.

Biden’s handmaidens of the AFT and other teachers unions say a charter should “collaborate with at least one traditional public school” and provide a letter from each such “partnering” school attesting to each partner’s “commitment” to the “collaboration.” This salad of weasel words requires charters to get permission from schools with which the charters would compete."

"In 1994, President Bill Clinton, celebrating Senate passage of the first federal support for charter schools, said the legislation “puts the Federal Government squarely on the side of public school choice” and “innovative charter schools.” In 1995, at a San Diego charter, he said the school was “freed of a lot of the rules and regulations that keep some of our schools all across America from designing their own ways of educating children.” He criticized congressional Republicans for proposing a budget that “would cut back on our ability to promote charter schools.” By the end of Clinton’s presidency, there were 1,941 charters."

"A 2019 poll of Democratic voters, before the pandemic deepened dissatisfaction with union tyranny over public education, showed Blacks supporting charters 58-to-31, and Hispanic support at 52-to-30. Charters’ current enrollments are 24.9 percent Black and 35.2 percent Hispanic, far above each cohort’s portion of the nation’s population.President Barack Obama, who made Biden’s presidency possible, said charters “serve as incubators of innovation” and “give educators the freedom to cultivate new teaching models and develop creative methods to meet students’ needs.”"