Arizona's Failed Charter School Experiment Shows Why Conservatives Really Want to Defund Public Education

Like capitalism, charters create hierarchy and benefit the few over the many.

Photo by Vasily Koloda on Unsplash

The right has mastered political framing. Healthcare restrictions are labeled “pro-life,” welfare cuts are done to promote “individual responsibility,” and charter schools that drain public resources and elevate select students over the greater good are gently presented as “school choice.” When polling support for charter schools, the pro-charter group The American Federation for Children frames the question in a… let’s say, “generous” way to get the answers it desires.¹

“School choice gives parents the right to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs. Generally speaking, would you say you support or oppose the concept of school choice?” — An actual AFC poll question.

While this selective speech makes charter schools sound like an appeal for personal liberty, in actuality, there’s a means to force conservative beliefs onto the public. Not only do charter schools cherry-pick select families for social elevation, but they slowly strangle public school systems of funding, students, and willpower.

Yet, despite the many well-funded groups supporting them, charter schools have failed to produce consistent positive results for students. A 2010 Department of Education study found charters “are neither more nor less successful than public schools.”² While their educational results may be in dispute, what is proven is charters’ draining effect on state and local budgets, which saps public schools of their resources and worsens American education as a whole. 

Nowhere is the negative impact of charter schools more evident than in Arizona.

The Arizona Experiment

Approximately 24% of all Arizona public schools are charter, making it the highest-percentage charter school state in the country. (Washington, D.C. leads at 51.3%, but that’s an anomaly due to the territory’s small size and political nature.)

If conservative logic were true, then the state with the most “school choice” would perform best in financial and educational rankings, right? Well, please sit down because you won’t believe what I’m about to say: the conservatives are wrong. (Gasp!)