War on Charter Schools: The NEA’s Self-Defeating Platform

I n its latest policy platform, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest union that represents my profession, has once again made clear that it cares more about institutions than about families and students. The platform’s opening paragraphs set out the NEA’s ostensible purpose: to do what’s best for students and shrink racial inequities. In reality, its policies would accomplish the opposite.

Some prescriptions it recommends for Congress and a Biden-Harris administration could be beneficial. So-called community schools that provide social services along with instruction could be a form of welfare amenable to conservative compromise. Yet others are just self-defeating. The NEA calls for smaller class sizes along with increased licensure, which would shrink the pool of employable teachers and thereby increase class sizes. And one policy, in particular, is outright damaging: to functionally prohibit many charter schools, publicly funded but locally run institutions. This would degrade American education and limit the opportunities for students of color especially.

On its face, the NEA platform allows the existence of charter schools. However, it seeks to “oppose all charter school expansion” that undermine traditional public schools and to “bar federal funding” for charter companies not operated by local districts. In other words, charter schools can exist so long as they function like other schools and in many cases accept no federal funding. This is akin to suggesting an athlete can run on a broken foot — theoretically possible but functionally not.

Consider Uncommon Schools, which manages 55 urban charter schools along the East Coast. Its schools serve predominantly economically disadvantaged students yet outperform even affluent districts. Doug Lemov, the pedagogical mind behind Uncommon’s success, has written numerous books, including Teach Like a Champion, which has sold over a million copies. My own master’s program featured progressive politics and friendship bracelets, but it was Lemov’s “Reading Reconsidered” that taught me both the theory and practice necessary to actually teach well. The innovation that the charter movement has wrought benefits more than just the students who attend charter schools. Unfortunately, because an organization outside of the local districts manages Uncommon’s schools, they could not exist within the NEA’s scheme.

Such organizations are the most persuasive evidence against the NEA’s recommendation. Progressives rightly lament the literacy gap between blacks and whites: Only 35 percent of American fourth-graders scored proficient on the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, nicknamed the “nation’s report card,” and the majority of those falling behind proficient were students of color. While this disparity has shrunk in the past few decades, a national study from Education Next found that the gap shrunk far faster among charter-school students. These schools are closing the literacy gap.

Some worry that these few systems are outliers, and that a lack of regulation would foster an educational disaster. The data show otherwise. Another comprehensive review from Stanford University found that, in its infancy, the charter-school movement did lag behind traditional public schools. But the roles have since reversed. By 2013, African Americans attending charter schools gained the equivalent of eight additional days of instruction compared with their traditional public-school counterparts. If racial justice is the goal, charter schools are a superior policy. The Stanford study also found that they benefit African Americans in particular — affluent schools in white neighborhoods already perform well.

The data from charter schools alone warrant their implementation. They would help to shrink the racial disparities that the NEA decries. However, there is a Machiavellian calculation for Republicans to support charter schools now: They are exceedingly popular. While white Democrats oppose charter schools, a majority of black and Hispanic voters favor their expansion. There is a real risk here for Democrats, who depend on minority voters. And it’s even more real at a time when Republicans are making inroads with these demographics. If Republicans hope to rebrand, as Marco Rubio recommends, as the “multi-ethnic, multiracial, working-class party,” then education is one place to do so. Florida governor Ron DeSantis arguably was elected in 2018 because of minority parents’ aligning with his support for school choice — a related policy that would make charter schools more accessible to all. When people’s children are in question, they get to the voting booths.

This does not bode well for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Like the NEA’s platform, Biden accepts the existence of charter schools but has signaled his opposition to them. If Republican senators and congressmen push for charter-friendly legislation and Biden obstructs, it could spell electoral disaster for Democrats, and rightly so. The NEA essentially recommends the prohibition of numerous charter schools; Republicans — and Biden, and everybody else for that matter — would be wise to ignore them. Our students depend on it.