Jay Greene, PhD, Ian Kingsbury and Jason Bedrick:
School choice should empower parents to obtain an education for their own children that is consistent with their values. This is occurring well with private school choice, but with charter school choice it is falling short. Regulatory and philanthropic constraints need to be minimized for charter schools so they can better align with the value preferences of parents. Ultimately, states should adopt universal private school choice to avoid a binary option for families of charter schools that may not be aligned with their values or district public schools that are frequently unaligned and unsafe and academically ineffective.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Charter schools may become less well aligned with the value preferences of local parents if heavy regulations force them to please state authorizers over parents.
Additionally, charter schools can stray from parental values if they are overly dependent on left-wing national philanthropies to subsidize their operations.
Regulatory and donor capture of charter schools must be reduced so that school choice is more responsive to parental preferences.