The union demand to eliminate charters
In a July 2020 episode on a California law restricting union-related speech by school officials, a Los Angeles school board member describes the demands of UTLA, the union representing teachers in Los Angeles, which she identifies as the second largest school district in the country. Among the union’s conditions for reopening schools during COVID, she says, were defunding the police and eliminating all charter schools, which she notes have nothing to do with COVID-19. She describes being advised to avoid commenting on the Janus decision and to be careful about what she said, on the ground that speech perceived as discouraging union membership could expose the board or district to an unfair labor practice lawsuit, a risk she frames as financially devastating to a district on a tight budget California’s New Union Gag Order Violates 1st Amendment (2020).
Charters as a small but independent market
In an October 2020 episode on ethnic studies curricula, Williamson M. Evers answers Bob Zadek’s question about the role of charter schools, private schools, voucher schools and religious schools as institutions outside direct government control. Evers says that in principle such schools could serve as an independent market for curricular alternatives, but that they remain small: private schools are less than 10% of the school-age population, and vouchers and charters are very small, though growing. He argues that as long as public schools exist, textbook decisions should be made at the district or school level, which would produce more competition, and says charters and private schools are currently stuck with the existing textbooks. He cites Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope as a new American history book pitched at college or AP level, and says there is not very much else available California’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum vs. Trump’s Patriotic Education (2020).
Structure, funding and the pandemic stress test
A September 2021 episode with Matt Welch examines what structurally lets private and charter schools cater to families better than public schools. Zadek asks why public schools must care about losing enrollment, and Welch explains that in most jurisdictions, though not all, a large share of school budgeting is per-student, so a school dropping from 948 students to roughly 770 loses a substantial chunk of funding. He notes the federal government sent close to $200 billion to K-12 for emergency coronavirus relief over two years, against a typical $40 billion a year, and that in practice the money went almost entirely to personnel. He describes charter schools as public schools funded by government money but not run by governments, generally not unionized, and much more nimble. In New York City, he says, charters educate 10% of the K-12 student population, held back by an artificial state cap on the number of physical charter schools, and enrollment still increased last year even though charters faced the same pandemic rules. Parents, especially poorer and more minority families, believed charters handled remote learning better and were more sensitive, creative and flexible. Private schools, by contrast, were open all year in many places, including New York, sometimes across the street from public schools open twice a week; California, Welch says, had the least open schools in the country. He notes homeschooling doubled nationally, with Black families the biggest growth element Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021).
In the same episode, Zadek puts to Welch the observation that where charter schools appeal to the same customer base as government-run schools, the government-run school’s quality improves because it faces competition and customers have an alternative. Welch answers that positive reform is more likely to come from without than from within, though some mayors and district chiefs will respond nimbly. He points to legislation in roughly 25 to 30 states during the pandemic providing that state education spending follow students rather than school buildings, which he calls institutionalizing the charter school system nationally. He notes state education spending is one out of every five dollars in most state budgets. He describes unions and Democratic politicians railing against charter schools, with 95% of union money going to Democrats, and Bill de Blasio saying he hated charter schools that teach 10% of his city’s kids. Welch calls the funding-follows-the-student measures “backpack funding” bills, says they could extend to homeschooling, and predicts force-fed change. He also warns about the effects when families flee big-city school systems en masse, comparing it to the 1960s and 1970s, and notes the people who cannot or will not leave decaying systems are left in a bad position Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021).
The skimming critique and the evidence on competition
An August 2022 episode with Corey DeAngelis takes up the charge that charter and private schools skim the best and brightest, leaving public schools with the dregs. DeAngelis argues advantaged families already have school choice through residential assignment to the best public schools, and that choice programs are typically targeted to disadvantaged families by income, by the quality of the assigned school, or by a child’s special need. He says charter schools must accept all comers and use random lottery admissions when oversubscribed, which in his view makes them more public than traditional public schools, which he says discriminate by zip code; he notes families have gone to jail for lying about their address to get a child into a better school. He contrasts selective-admission magnet schools, which he says draw no complaints because government controls them, with charters that must admit students at random, and notes traditional public schools can expel students and that out-of-district placement and court orders sometimes send students with special needs to private schools under the IDEA federal law. He argues that random-assignment evaluations, which he compares to medical trials, net out selection bias, and that the majority find statistically significant positive effects. On students who remain in public schools, he cites 28 studies of private school choice competition, 26 of which find statistically significant positive effects on the children left behind, and five studies finding competition leads to higher salaries for public school teachers. He also says eight of nine studies find private school choice leads to racial integration. Zadek closes by comparing the competitive effect to the US Postal Service before and after FedEx and UPS, saying the Post Office’s service improved under competitive pressure Students, Not Systems (2022).
Across episodes: the same argument, extended
The topic recurs across all four episodes, and the treatment develops rather than reverses. The 2020 episodes supply the frame — union opposition to charters in Los Angeles, and charters as a small, growing, government-funded but independently run sector — while the 2021 and 2022 episodes add the mechanism and the evidence: per-student funding and backpack-funding bills (Welch), lottery admissions, random-assignment studies and the 26-of-28 finding on children left behind (DeAngelis). Zadek’s competition framing, introduced with Welch, is restated with the Postal Service analogy in the DeAngelis episode. No guest in these excerpts withdraws or qualifies the pro-choice position.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not give the text, sponsor or vote counts of any backpack-funding bill, nor the name of the California law the school board member refers to beyond her reference to a number. They do not identify the court decisions behind the Janus reference or the IDEA court orders, and they give no enrollment figures for charters nationally beyond the New York City share. The Evers excerpt breaks off before any discussion of how charter growth might affect curricular competition in practice.