Op-Ed: More Accountability Should Be Endgame For Charter Schools

Chiera, NJ Spotlight

Illegally or not, charter schools take money for schools and students out of the very communities where it is most needed

While “Avengers: Endgame” is smashing records at the box office, the hundreds of millions in precious public dollars that flowed to for-profit management companies and real estate concerns associated with charter schools — as the NorthJersey.com investigation Cashing In On Charter Schools documented — might be better exemplified by the 1960’s spaghetti Western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

It is a good time to have an important discussion about accountability, while the state wrestles with how to update the long outdated charter-school authorizing law originally implemented more than 20 years ago. Until the laws can be strengthened to prevent squandering of public money, a moratorium on granting new charters or expanding existing charters is appropriate.

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