Many charter schools appear to work quite well. Here are two quotes from two articles summarizing the research:

“sound research has shown that, when properly managed and overseen, well-run charter schools give families a desperately needed alternative to inadequate traditional schools in poor urban neighborhoods.” (NY Times, October 13, 2016)

“The briefest summary is this: Many charter schools fail to live up to their promise, but one type has repeatedly shown impressive results.” (NY Times, November 4, 2016)

Because in many cases admissions to charter schools is done through a lottery, assignment to charter schools is literally random, for students that apply. So the level of confidence in these results should be as high as it gets. There’s also no reason to think that the “one type” of charters that has shown significant results cannot be replicated elsewhere (in fact, it has). Then why do so many liberals appear to be against charter schools?

I don’t have a good answer to that question. Liberals’ resistance to charter schools in any way, shape or form reminds me of conservatives’ resistance to any gun control regulation. No matter what type of gun control legislation is proposed, their answer is always “this is a terrible idea”. They also frequently invoke a slippery slope argument – “first, the Democrats will impose more thorough background checks, next, they will take away all our guns”. My sense is that liberal voters see charter schools as a similar existential threat to public school funding. But just like in the case of gun control, to me that logic is very dubious.

We need more evidence-based education reform. Charter schools that have been shown to work seem worthy of our support. I agree with Sue Dynarski, a prominent economics of education scholar, who was quoted in the second article as saying “To me, it is immoral to deny children a better education because charters don’t meet some voters’ ideal of what a public school should be. Children don’t live in the long term. They need us to deliver now.”