Warren proposes Charter School Funding Cuts, Increase in Title I Money

Elizabeth Warren just rolled out a huge educational plan to address what she calls "privatization" of public schools. This somewhat complex plan attempts to work on a a multitude of issues. In her plan, Warren proposes incentivizing house policies so that they eliminate strict zoning policies, fixing segregation, banning for-profit Charters and ending all Charter school funding, and quadrupling Title 1 funds. This dense, intricate plan seems to target a wide range of issues, so I am going to focus primarily on the charter school funding implications.

One of her arguments for her drastic charter school proposal is that she says that charter schools are not held to the same transparency standards and that they divert funds away from traditional public schools. Based on what we learned in class, I really don't think this is fair. Charter schools are unique in that most aspects of them (i.e., how they can be started, admissions, standards, etc) are dictated by each individual state's laws. In Maryland, for example, there are very strict and specific laws for starting a charter school. It's hard to be pro or anti them, as they are very much dependent on context. To eliminate the funding completely is just not fair because charter schools are not really run by the federal government! It's like saying that the federal government is eliminating money for a local restaurant -- they don't know what the standards are here!! Charter schools already operate on somewhat limited finances (at least here they do). I don't think eliminating the money for them is going to universally solve anything, as they are very different in each state.

As we've discussed, there's a lot of misconceptions and lack of understanding about how these particular schools work. In Maryland, charter schools still have to meet the same content standards -- the only difference is how educators approach teaching them.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/21/elizabeth-warren-education-plan-053260
https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2019-10-21/elizabeth-warren-k-12-plan-would-end-federal-funds-for-charter-schools-quadruple-title-i-funding