I said that, in black and white, right there on the page. Or gray, because it's being downmodded because people who don't like the implications of it.
Anyways, yeah. Charter schools. Whole other bag of worms. I like them in theory, in practice the way they're funded usually tends to be crooked -- quick example, in the town I was a Selectman in, a charter school started up. It cost us about 7k/year to educate a student, round numbers. Cost the charter school, say, 9k. Every student that left us for the charter school, 9k was taken from our budget and assigned to theirs. To add insult to injury, we actually had to pay to bus the kids there on top of it, plus additional unitemized strains on the police budget, etc. That's not exactly kosher.
Not defending, just explaining. I'd love to throw the NEA under the bus - the problem is, nobody else stands up for teachers.
Who is sticking up for teachers there? The NEA, which supports age over talent? Or the charter, which is focused on attracting and retaining good teachers?