Latest review board actions reveal once more how NC’s charter school experiment has failed

The Bottom Line from NC Newsline

North Carolina continues to expand charter schools. Image: AdobeStock

It’s been almost 30 years since North Carolina started allowing charter schools, and as the actions of the state Charter Schools Review Board showed again this week, that experiment has been a wasteful failure.

When they were first established, supporters assured us charters would be “incubators of innovation” that would, because of looser regulations and the genius of competition, lift up all public schools.

How’s that working out?

The state now has more than 200 charters that enroll roughly 8% of students and while some charters – mostly those that attract smart kids from well-off families – are great, as we learned when the review board renewed several charters this week for schools with weak performances and poor grades, it’s a distinct minority.

Meanwhile, after three decades, the promised boost to traditional schools remains as illusory as ever.

The bottom line: Competition from charters isn’t and was never the recipe for lifting public schools. What’s needed is adequate funding and for the last three decades, all charters have done is help to disguise this hard truth.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.