Make Sure Parents, not Companies, Have Power - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Make Sure Parents, not Companies, Have Power - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com: "Michigan is one of many states considering a parent trigger law. The strongest proponents of Michigan’s legislation are not the community-based organizations that represent the families stuck in failing schools. Instead, they’re the businesses that run 84 percent of the charter schools in the state.

If these companies were providing kids with a strong, rigorous education, it would be hard to object. But indications are quite the opposite. Like their for-profit counterparts in career and online colleges, many of these companies target low-income communities, offering what sounds like a good alternative. Yet the results show these alternatives are no better — and sometimes even worse — than those of the neighborhood public schools that were underserving students to begin with. There is, therefore, good reason to be concerned that these companies will use the trigger to exploit desperate and frustrated families who have already been terribly mistreated by their local school systems, all the while enriching their shareholders with scarce public education dollars."

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