Weekend greetings, CharterFolk.
A whip around of developments occurring across the country provides an emblematic tableau of the conditions charter schools face as we prepare to gather for our national conference in Florida this week.
Perhaps most encouraging?
In several regions, charter school momentum has irrefutably become the primary narrative framing discussion about the future of public education.
Charter Schools and Policymaking Tables
Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in Indiana.
There, CharterFolk aren’t resting on laurels after what some have called the most successful policy session in history. They’re already off to the next thing.
A new mayor-appointed council overseeing both district and charter school matters is now operational in Indianapolis. Even more new charter schools have been approved. And Brandon Brown is placing a piece in the Indy Star articulating a compelling vision for what comes next.
Meanwhile, at the statewide level, Indiana association CEO Scott Bess is showing how micro schools are powering the next generation of innovation in public education – and are allowing charter schools to establish presences in new communities across the state.
In Idaho this week, BLUUM CEO Terry Ryan described how the flexibility charter schools have to bring new talent into education should be extended to district schools as well.
In North Carolina, association CEO Rhonda Dillingham penned a strong op-ed highlighting the striking enrollment growth in charter schools in recent years, while noting that as the sector has expanded, it has evolved to reflect the state’s demographics.
It’s a similar point Dan Schaller made in Colorado – another state where charter schools are growing rapidly as the movement expands into nearly every community, including mountain towns and small rural areas.
Status quo interests certainly have charter schools in their crosshairs in Rhode Island, but that hasn’t stopped state association CEO Chiara Deltito-Sharrott from becoming one of the state’s most sought-after public education thought leaders.
In Nevada – where the governor was willing to torpedo the entire state budget until charter schools were provided the same revenue increases as district schools – association CEO Gil Lopez used the moment to celebrate that charter schools’ growing heft has finally assured them a seat at the policymaking table.
And in Utah, legislators are moving the policymaking table to charter schools themselves – touring campuses as they shape priorities for next year.
I could go on. You get the point.
In some places, CharterFolk are finally being provided seats at policymaking tables.
In others, entire tables are coming our way.
In still others, the charter school movement is setting tables ourselves.
While Dems Appear to Be Tabling Discussion of Education Matters
Would that it were the case that charter schools were being invited into the discussion at the highest levels of the Democratic National Party.
Ever since last year’s election made it clear Democrats had lost the public’s trust on education, we’ve been watching for signs of the courage required to reposition.
This week, The Wall Street Journal ran a piece suggesting that any such pivot is being actively tabled.
Last summer I wrote that Kamala Harris’s choice of running mate would reveal a great deal about the direction the party would take on education.
Rather than doing something bold, she chose Tim Walz – a figure who had studiously avoided taking a position on charter schools.
It left us waiting to see where he truly stood.
Well, now we’ve seen.
As the Journal reported, Walz chose this spring to keynote the annual conference of the Network for Public Education – a group defined by its relentless opposition to charter schools.
That tells us all we need to know.
The Democratic Party isn’t opening up a new conversation about education abundance.
It’s actively tabling it.
It Leaves Urban School Districts Free to Accelerate Toward Scarcity
As Democratic leaders equivocate – or worse – the school districts where Democrats have virtual fiat-level control continue to show why trust is eroding even further.
For years, I’ve highlighted how Chicago and Los Angeles exemplify what happens when status quo protectors are allowed to define the future of public education. The latest evidence only confirms it.
In Chicago, the teachers union is now pushing for provisions in their collective bargaining agreement they’ve been unable to win through state law or board policy – a halt to charter school growth, a mandate to ease the unionization of charter schools, and new plans for re-absorbing charters into the district.
Their desperation to reclaim lost enrollment was laid bare when news dropped that the district’s “worst case” budget scenario has now become the default assumption – over $700 million in needed cuts, with the only real plan being to borrow more in the short term and defer the pain to future students.
It’s a carbon copy in Los Angeles.
Just hours after I published a story referencing the district’s broken budget process, the LAUSD board passed a budget that raids reserves to fund raises – and once again defers contributions to its massive unfunded retiree health care liabilities.
It’s forcing the district to adopt a “pay-as-you-go” model – one that shifts the cost of yesterday’s promises onto today’s students.
The compounding effect is staggering.
Next year alone, the district will spend $315 million on retiree health care – more than ten times the amount it expects to save from closing ten schools over the next two years.
It’s a fiscal unraveling that is orders of magnitude greater than the hundreds of millions LAUSD just agreed to pay in sexual abuse settlements. And yet, it receives almost no public attention.
Here’s a graph showing the relentless rise of these costs – in real dollars, both aggregate and per pupil.
By the end of the decade, retiree health care alone is projected to consume 11% of district revenue – on top of the 30% already going toward pensions.
It’s the economic rationale behind why so many families are opting out altogether.
Why enroll your child in a district whose primary function has become compensating employees who no longer work there?
And why vote for a party that created this mess and still can’t summon the courage to begin fixing it?
The Supreme Court Goes One-Size-Fits-All
None of this is to suggest that the Democratic Party has a monopoly on bad education policymaking.
On Friday, we saw the Supreme Court grant parents the right to opt their children out of curriculum they find objectionable …
… a national expression of the “Don’t Say Gay” trend that began in Florida in 2023.
Not enough time has passed for full punditry, but the framing is already emerging.
For many, it’s another data point in the great national crackup – red and blue sentiments pulling apart on education policy, with the Court splitting predictably: six conservatives in one direction, three liberals in the other.
I see all that. But from a practical standpoint, I find it ironic that Florida – a red state that has prided itself on expanding school choice – has now instigated a policy trend that may lead to some of the most sweeping one-size-fits-all reactions in public education.
Because in the end, this decision will prove more centripetal than centrifugal – drawing schools inward toward a sterile sameness rather than spinning them apart.
Not because there’s agreement on these issues, but because schools won’t be able to implement opt-out policies without being overwhelmed. So they’ll default to removing anything that might offend either side.
Some parents will feel relief – believing their children are no longer being exposed to ideas they disagree with. And to be fair, there has been a sense in some communities that school culture has drifted too far from shared values.
But the result will be a sanitized, one-size-fits-all curriculum – one that no one in the system feels true agency over.
That loss of agency – the pervasive, corrosive sense of “not decided here” – will affect school culture far more than any curriculum decision ever could.
It’s a decision we might have avoided – had we moved more quickly to expand school choice.
Had we built more schools moving in different directions – had educators been empowered to create the schools they believed in, and families empowered to choose among them – a different, pluralistic equilibrium could have formed.
Instead, we end up with this most ridiculous of outcomes – a Supreme Court functioning as a national curriculum committee.
Florida – A Unique Vantage Point from Which to View What Comes Next
Which brings us – fittingly – to Florida, host of this year’s national conference.
It’s a state that’s been ahead of the curve on many of the most important trends in public education.
Yes, it’s been a ground zero for culture wars. But it has also been a pioneer in expanding school choice – with charter schools holding one of the most prominent seats at the table.
Like their peers in Indiana, CharterFolk in Florida aren’t resting on their laurels.
This year, state policymakers delivered yet more breakthroughs for charter schools.
And now, Pitbull is buying a historic theater in Miami to further expand his school’s reach – emblematic of how Florida continues doubling down on charters.
It’s a doubling down we’re likely to see replicated across the country in the years to come.
So it makes perfect sense that we gather here this week – to better understand the forces now shaping public education, and to prepare for what’s next.
Hope to see you there.