Why both left and right are knocking charter schools

Should school choice focus more on opportunities for disadvantaged students, or access to private and religious schools – or both? Increasingly, the charter school movement is getting caught in a clash of civic values.

Throughout his career as an expert in education policy and public charter schools, Matthew Ladner has championed the core idea that families should have a wider range of choices as they seek to find the best schools for their children.

But the Arizona-based reformer admits he’s probably in the minority of charter school advocates who also champion another side of school choice policy, the effort to expand state-funded vouchers and tax credits for families who want to send their children to private and religious schools.

Many of Mr. Ladner’s peers are wary of the politically charged voucher movement, long a priority of religious conservatives, and argue they should keep their distance, focusing more on expanding choice within public education. As he sees it, though, “charters have 99 problems, but private choice is not one of them.”

“The fact of the matter is that charter schools are under assault,” says Mr. Ladner, director of the Arizona Center for Student Opportunity at the Arizona Charter Schools Association. “We are starting to have too few friends, not too many. In a big-tent movement there’s always going to be tensions, and there’s going to be spats, but at the end of the day, the private-choice people are not an enemy at all.”

Not too long ago, policy experts often called charter schools the last remaining bipartisan issue, noting how Democrats and Republicans, including the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and especially Barack Obama, made expanding charter schools a significant part of their education policies.