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At best, charter schools are there to defund public education. At worst, they are outright embezzling of school funding. They are being pushed by Betsy Devos, whose record speaks against her. Her handling of the charter school system in Detroit led to it having the nationwide poorest reading and mathematics scores. In a lawsuit, charter school defenders argued that literacy is not a right.

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Far too sweeping of a statement. "At their best" charter schools provide a laboratory for experimentation and alternative models of education which are impossible to implement within a rigid bureaucracy. In NYC we have many excellent progressive charter schools with massive waiting lists to get in. In many cases test scores are lower because these schools have chosen to emphasize real education over test preparation which unfortunately dominates bandwidth in many classrooms.

> At best, charter schools are there to defund public education.

At best, charter schools are public schools granted flexibility to trial new educational approaches on a limited basis to provide concrete evidence to drive decisions on changes in general practices.

But most charter schools, especially private-operated and especially private-for-profit ones, are not “at best”.

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