Kind of. Many charter schools are run by private boards or individuals that don't answer to the city or state [1], many are run by for-profit management companies [2]. In many states, charter schools amount to a privatization of public schools because they are run by organizations that don’t answer to the public and in some states aren’t subject to key rules that apply to government agencies, such as open meetings and public records laws.
In these states, the only things that make charter schools "public" is the fact that they take money from the district or the state, and tuition is free, but in all other respects they are basically private schools.
In other states they are directly under the control of the school board, and are indeed public schools.
Not saying you're wrong, but I feel the need to point out the framing that something being controlled by government beurocrats is what makes it public by this definition. Charter schools are often free to attend, available for anyone to apply to, and are accountable to the families attending them and the voters who elected officials that made them legal. That's a perfectly reasonable version of "public" as well, it's just not centralized.
Well, they're answerable to the public in that parents can take the kids to another school if things aren't working out. And since they're paid a certain dollar amount per warm body, the school has a pretty direct feedback loop.
Sure, but in that way a private school is public as well.
> "parents can take the kids to another school if things aren't working out. And since they're paid a certain dollar amount per warm body, the school has a pretty direct feedback loop."
Indeed, this is exactly why British private schools like Eton are called "public schools," because anyone can attend if they have the money. But in the US we use a different definition.
Alternate narrative: Teachers don't like charter schools because their business model often revolves around idealistic, frequently underqualified [0] young teachers being paid $40k/year to spend 12 hours/day as prison guards "for the good of their community". The unions are just doing their job in opposing horrific working conditions in their industry.
The situation is the same as an entry level teacher in non-charter schools in a lot of places, but this isn't universally true of charters. I'm not even trying to say that charters are always better, it's pretty clear that on balance they're roughly similar in terms of outcomes across all charters. That said, the really good ones absolutely outperform their peer schools by miles, and at least in NYC charters receive 28% less funding per pupil.
