How the Charter School Movement Lost All Its Friends

Now that abolishing the U.S. Department of Education has become the default position of the Republican Party, charter schools — which educate about 7 percent of K-12 students in the United States— also appear to be in disfavor in today’s more radical GOP. Indeed, if Donald Trump returns to the White House and a Republican majority in Congress acts on their pledge to shut down the federal government’s involvement in education policy, charter schools would be irreparably harmed.

Abolishing the Department of Education would kill the charter school grant program, which is the federal government’s only source of dedicated funding to charters. It would also probably convert funding for special education and economically disadvantaged students — money that also goes to charters — into block grants that states could spend however they want.

Charter schools are, after all, technically public schools, even though it’s widely understood that they operate in a twilight zone between public and private. While they enjoy public funding and stature, they are private organizations with appointed boards, selective — and sometimes discriminatory — enrollments and opaque business relationships. Because of the role charters play in privatizing public education, they have long been embraced by Republican politicians and advocacy groups.

But now Republicans may feel that the charter school industry is no longer necessary for helping them reach their ultimate goal of ending public education. In fact, charters could be getting in the way.

According to a recent report from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, the same organization that created the infamous Project 2025, charter schools are “falling short” in providing parents with school choice options that are “consistent with their values.” The report, “The Woke Capture of Charter Schools,” urges state lawmakers and policy leaders to “adopt universal private school choice” instead of expanding charters. The report cites “K–12 education savings accounts,” or ESAs, that give parents taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition or other options, as better alternatives.

The problem with charters, according to the report, is that they’ve become a victim of “woke capture” due to the influence of “charter school authorizers and philanthropies.” To the authors’ deep consternation, their research concluded that charter schools are “significantly more woke than district schools.”

As proof of a liberal takeover of the charter school industry, the report points to the frequency of “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) language in charter school handbooks and in the policy recommendations of organizations that fund charters, including the Walton Family Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The cleaving of Republicans from the charter school industry goes back to at least 2020, when right-wing groups became enraged over the KIPP charter school chain’s decision to revise its branding and drop its corporate slogan, “Work Hard, Be Nice.”

In explaining its rationale for the brand change, KIPP, the nation’s largest brick-and-mortar charter chain, stated, “Many KIPP Regions had either passively stopped using it or were actively removing it from their schools.” Among the reasons some KIPP schools had shifted away from the slogan was that, “Working hard and being nice is not going to dismantle systemic racism.”

Within days, the right-wing Manhattan Institute’s Max Eden railed against KIPP’s slogan change, calling it “a wakeup call for conservatives.” Eden contended conservatives should pivot their lobbying to pressure for universal private school vouchers and homeschooling instead of charters.

Despite this right-wing opposition, more charter school chains changed their outward facing messaging to reflect education practices that are welcoming, socially aware and liberating rather than hyper-individualistic and controlling.

“Noble, the largest charter network in Chicago, apologized to its alumni for its ‘assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist and anti-Black’ discipline practices,” according to a 2021 op-ed in The Hechinger Report. Another large charter school chain, Achievement First, “promised not to ‘be hyper-focused on students’ body positioning,’ and ended its requirement for students to sit with their hands folded at their desks.”

“It’s all different now,” lamented Robert Pondiscio, a fellow of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, in a 2022 op-ed. According to Pondiscio, charter schools were no longer “media darlings,” bipartisan support for charters had “significantly weakened,” and “antagonists like [education historian] Diane Ravitch” had effectively discredited the schools. 

“The mission and vision of charter schools, the politics, the concerns of activists and advocates, and the deliverables demanded by philanthropists have all shifted over time,” he wrote. “So have the values and ideals of the young people who still flock to this work.”

Rather than resisting these changing attitudes, Pondiscio observed, “The charter sector has largely accepted the criticism as sincere and tried to adjust to it rather than rejecting it outright.”

Andrew Rotherham, cofounder of Bellwether Education Partners, an influential nonprofit organization that partners with charter schools and their advocacy groups, wrote on his Substack that the charter school industry faces a “political problem” as “Republicans are, on average, a lot more interested in [ESAs] than other choice options.”

The Republican Party’s turnabout on charters “would not be such a big problem,” Rotherham noted, “if [charter schools] enjoyed a strong base of support in the Democratic Party and were genuinely bipartisan in 2024. But they don’t. They’re not.”

Reactions to this change of affairs from prominent spokespeople for the charter industry are telling.

“Charter schools can’t afford to lose Republican support,” warned an article published by the pro-charter Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Noting that “Republicans have become more enamored with private and faith-based options,” the article nevertheless argues that charter critics at the Heritage Foundation have “sharp minds with criticisms worth contemplating” and that “trying to woo Democratic elites on the merits of charters feels like a lost cause. This means dialing down the progressive dogma.”

Also on the Fordham site, an article by Brandon Brown, the CEO of the Mind Trust, an organization that has helped launch charter schools in Indianapolis and elsewhere, recommends that the charter industry should respond to the changing political landscape by doubling down on what the industry has always advocated for: opening more charters, ending “needless regulations,” and “investing” in whatever new education gimmicks, such as “microschools,” that seem to catch the fancy of conservatives who hate public schools.

Such “stay the course” messaging is also reflected in Rotherham’s advice for the charter industry to “engage, maintain and build on that Republican support while also organizing parents to actually pressure Democratic leaders to moderate their posture here and again make charters a default consensus position.”

There is, of course, a strain of hypocrisy in Republicans’ disdain for charter schools that model a particular set of values, since they have no problem with throwing their political weight behind charters that exhibit Republican values.

But the whole argument over which kinds of values should be allowed to drive charter schools is somewhat beside the point.

Despite years of politicians’ over-the-top rhetoric about charter schools being part of a “civil rights cause of our time,” the true cause of these schools has always been less about political ideology than operating successful businesses.

If charter schools have embraced the policies of diversity, equity and inclusion, that may have something to do with market trends. Not only do charter schools need to address the civil rights concerns of the communities of color where many of them operate, but they also feel the need to repair their most embarrassing public relations catastrophes related to racial discrimination and to continue to grow their base of potential customers in a school population that is mostly non-white.

On the other hand, with the charter industry’s origins in neoliberal market capitalism, its powerful lobbying interests have done what businesses have always done — oppose regulation.

Normally, a prominent industry’s opposition to government regulations would put it in the same league with pro-business conservatives. But the Republican Party of today, fully ingratiated to Trump, is far more interested in fighting culture wars than it is in free enterprise.

Nevertheless, Rotherham’s advice to bring back Democratic support of charter schools also seems insincere.

At a time when public schools in many places face an existential threat due to the spread of rampant privatization, the charter industry has noticeably stayed away from the progressive coalition that supports public education. And as evidence of charter school corruption continues to pile up, industry lobbyists staunchly oppose any regulatory reform Democrats have proposed.

Is it any wonder that these schools now find themselves in a political no-man’s-land of their own making?