NPQ has frequently reported on the well-financed national strategy to privatize schools, on charter school proponents’ misplaced belief that changing schools and teachers rather than focusing on systemic poverty will remedy the racial achievement gap, on charter schools’ accountability, and on the increasingly unusual approach taken by the Waco school board to partner with a community-based nonprofit rather than turn over the school to an outside charter entity.
Our nation’s charter school saga now continues with the launch of North Carolina’s Innovative School District (ISD), a new district created by Republican state lawmakers to take low-performing elementary schools away from local control and cede them to a “qualified” for-profit or nonprofit operator. This move is sparking consequential questions in the state about whether key proponents of school choice are personally benefitting from the new ISD and highlights the stark choices facing poor, rural communities of color when it comes to educating their children.
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