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Significantly mixed.The overall impacts of charter schools are in some ways quite positive, and in some ways extremely negative.Separating Good Schools from Bad SchoolsIt’s important to first note that a charter school is not the same as a private school. Charter schools are public schools; they cannot charge tuition, are subject to church-state issues that parochial or private schools are not, cannot require entrance exams, and must participate in required state testing where private schools do not.However, there is incredible variability to how charter schools are organized, run, held accountable, funded, accept students, create and use curriculum, and more.I have a friend who works for Etude High School, a public charter school in Wisconsin. It’s a great learning environment that very much differs from the rigid sit-and-learn methods of traditional schools. It’s a project-based learning, discovery-focused model that allows a lot of work-at-your-own-pace education and challenges students to apply cross-disciplinary skills in every aspect of their education. It’s doing some incredibly innovative education, and it’s been quite successful. My friend has been there for six years and loves it. His students have gone on to be quite successful.Other charter schools fail spectacularly. A recent study found that many online-based charter schools fail to graduate even half of their students. Numerous charter schools have closed mid-year and without warning, leaving students, parents, and even teachers stranded in the middle of a school year with limited options.What divides the two?Largely accountability, organization, and effective resourcing.Some charter schools are “schools within a school,” or otherwise organized under the main public district, and overseen by the district’s publicly elected school board.These can vary from entirely separate “alternative schools” that follow specialized or experimental educational structures, such as Etude, to specific, isolated programs that operate in the same buildings as the regular schools.For example, a nearby city to where I grew up operates an alternative school for students who might otherwise drop out due to teen pregnancy, disciplinary issues, work schedules, and more. The dedicated building is open longer hours (7am to 7pm,) with teachers that operate more on shifts than a traditional school. The school has built-in child care for single teen parents. It is focused on a traditional high school diploma and not just a GED. It doesn’t generally offer extracurricular activities, though students can enroll in those with the main school. (Most don’t.)In contrast, a friend of mine from college who taught English for a number of years was tapped to run an isolated, dedicated program within her school that she created from the ground up for at-risk students who just couldn’t operate in a traditional educational framework. She was essentially her own principal, though she officially reported to the principal of the high school on the organization chart. (She’s been incredibly successful and recently was a presenter at a multi-state regional conference on educational innovation.) This program co-ordinates with traditional classes, replacing most entirely, but still operates within the same school.Both of these charter schools are funded by need. They receive state aid per pupil like public schools, but they also receive grants for specific programs and specific activities. Etude works with a number of local manufacturers who sponsor various projects, extracurricular activities, and courses that work in conjunction with their businesses where students learn to apply their school work to real-world applications.Both of these are accountable to the local public school board. Their books are public record and overseen by the district administration.Other charter schools are privately owned, for-profit organizations, and operate on a contract with local districts. These receive public funding, but are not directly overseen by the public school board. These schools receive grants, local, state, and federal, ranging from the standard state aid per pupil to specific grants for technology, curriculum, or personnel, to undedicated blocks of straight cash to be used as the school sees fit.Some of these are successful. There are numerous privately-run for-profit Montessori schools that operate on contracts with districts to ensure that program graduates can easily transfer right into the public school’s curriculum, and many of these are very successful.Others are essentially nothing more than get-rich-quick schemes or other criminal enterprises by organizers, just as they are in higher education. The fact that they operate on contracts with sometimes little or even no oversight from the public also opens them up to incredible waste, fraud, and abuse. Over a six-year period spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations, the Federal government alone investigated 53 charter schools that resulted in 21 indictments and 17 convictions.Steven Cox, a former insurance executive and the founder of the now-defunct California Charter Academy, at one point the largest chain of charter schools in the country, was indicted on 56 counts of misappropriation and theft for trips to Disneyland and stealing $42,000 from the school to pay his personal income taxes. Eleven years later, Cox’s case still has not been resolved as he continues to use his fortune to litigate it. Horizon Academy in Cincinnati essentially operated as a front for an immigration fraud ring for several years as the founder used it to get work visas for Turkish nationals with absolutely no background in education. The CEO of Philadelphia Academy Charter School admitted to stealing approximately a half a million dollars from the school in part through raiding its vending machines.These schools operate on loose contracts with little to no accountability to the public other than being required to publish graduation rates and test scores. They can often operate for years bilking the public before closing, sometimes abruptly, and absconding with the funds.Positive Charter School Models and OpportunitiesWhere schools are effectively resourced based on demonstrated need, and are publicly accountable just as the traditional public school, charter schools may be quite effective. They can be testbeds for new educational practices and reforms, or offer alternatives for students who need different educational models from their peers.Charter schools might be a great way to differentiate education or provide specialized educational applications, such as in-depth vocational education. Imagine if a student graduated high school ready or significantly far along the track to becoming a journeyman carpenter or a licensed electrician. While requiring specialization through tracked education may not be practical or even desirable (look at me, I was going to be an astrophysicist when I started undergraduate,) offering the opportunities might be quite beneficial.Offering this kind of differentiated education is already a goal of most public schools. However, a charter school with a specific mission, as opposed to the more general liberal arts education of a traditional K-12 school, could provide a more focused differentiated education that goes in-depth on a particular area, rather than more broadly on several disciplines.There are positives and negatives to this. A more well-rounded education has proven itself over time to benefit a person over their whole life. I had a poster up on my wall when I taught that had a picture of scientists running away from dinosaurs that read, “Science will teach you how to clone a T-Rex. Humanities will teach you why it’s a bad idea.”Now, a charter school could have a liberal arts education that is still focused on a certain topic. A charter school focused on churning out STEM educated graduates, for example, may have just as much focus on literature and art and music, but from an engineering perspective. The band students might take more time to learn acoustical physics or metallurgy for better instruments. The literature may focus slightly more heavily on technical documents and scientific literacy, but also include fiction geared towards engineering types. The math might be more practical-application-based.The Perception of Failing Public Schools and The Rise of ConsumerismJon Stewart hosted educational reformer Diane Ravitch several times on his show. Ravitch noted on multiple occasions that the majority of U.S. adults have bought into the narrative that public schools are failing. International benchmark test scores continue to fall for U.S. students, for example. Advocacy documentaries such as Waiting for Superman paint the public schools as a broken system where teachers’ unions continue to drive a status-quo at the expense of children, and charter schools as the revolution in education that would shake up the industry with competition and reform that public schools lack, but limited by lottery systems leaving the unlucky trapped.Yet, Ravitch also noted that on the whole, most U.S. voters surveyed also believe that their local public school is good and successful.Jon Stewart: These areas, so the families in these areas, because this gets into another issue you bring up in the book [Reign of Error]. The families in this area are rightly concerned with the performance of some of the public schools in their area. These schools can be dilapidated, they can be poorly performing and these types of things. There is this movement and the charter movement that says ‘what’s wrong with giving choice to those kids in those areas?’ because the schools around them are not are not serving their needs. What is wrong with that in your mind?Diane Ravitch: Well, what’s wrong with it is that there, it is part of, I believe, a purposeful effort to create a consumer mentality around education. Public education is the public responsibility. Whether you send your children to private schools, or to a religious school, or you home school them, that’s your right. And if you have no children at all, you’re still obligated to support public education. What they’re trying to do is to say that public education is not public, it’s a choice, it’s a consumer choice. They’re trying to destroy the sense of civic obligation so the next time there’s a…JS: So, turn it into a marketplace?DR: Yes, a marketplace, exactly. So, the next time a bond issue is up, you will say ‘well, I don’t have a child in school. I’m not going to vote for the bond issue.’ We’re going to destroy public education that way. . . . I think it’s all wrong. I think that the idea of you look on your school, you go shopping and you pick your school the way you pick your shoes or your automobile, that is wrong too. People should have a good neighborhood school in every neighborhood. One where they are very happy to send their kids because they know the teachers are terrific. The funny thing is if you look at poll data from Gallup, what it shows is if people are asked how is American education doing, they’ve heard thirty years of American education is broken, it doesn’t work, it’s obsolete, so they say ‘oh, American public education, no good.’ How is your school, how is your neighborhood school? ‘Oh, my neighborhood school is terrific. My teachers are great. I love my teachers.’JS: But it is like Congress, you could look at that, too, the same way. Oh, my Congressman is okay, but the institution – it does have issues… [laughter].The increasing narrative of “school choice” around charter schools continues to create a false premise of the consumer mentality towards education; we pay for the educational system, and so we ought to get what we pay for. And if we don’t like the results, we ought to buy something else.Yet, public schools are not allowed in many cases to compete on the same level playing field as private schools or even charter schools.Public schools are reliant on taxes, and obviously, few people really like paying more in taxes. They see their property tax levies as directly funding the schools. They often don’t think about those taxes also funding police, fire, and EMS services. So, when the municipality suggests raising taxes again, adding another bonding bill to the budget, passing another referendum, it gets voted down, often by those who no longer have children in the district.This happens because we’ve bought into this business-consumerism model of education rather than funding it as a public trust for everyone. It used to be that we all understood it was a public trust; even if you didn’t have kids in the school, it was important to fund it for everyone because it makes the public better off.As John Green notes:Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.Consumerism takes the approach that whatever is good for the individual is good for society. This is the absolute worst approach to something like education, and really even good governance or society.Civic Responsibility and Pride, and How That Impacts Government - Including Public EducationEducation is one of the great equalizers of humanity, and it was for that precise reason that the United States was one of the earliest innovators in providing a free, public education to every citizen, even mandating compulsory attendance. We were one of the first countries to achieve a >90% literacy rate.We did so because of the idea of civic responsibility for one another: that if we all contribute to the public good, we all receive back something greater than we put in.Education lifts millions out of poverty by creating a skilled workforce. That skilled workforce put a car in every driveway, a computer in everyone’s pocket, and a man on the Moon. The space program alone yielded innovations that dominate our daily lives ranging from memory foam to LASIK to infrared ear thermometers. It would not have been possible without a broad, skilled workforce, the product of public education.Whether it’s vocational education, professional education, or even general education, public education creates opportunities for every single person in the country to contribute to society. It was that kind of public access to education that turned the United States from a backwater rural agrarian society to the largest, most prosperous industrialized superpower in the world.And we took pride in that. We created state university systems that we wanted to become the envy of the world, publicly available to every citizen. We would produce the finest scientists and inventors and the world’s greatest artists. We would take pride in fostering the world’s greatest economy and the world’s greatest culture.We did that by investing in our people. Collectively. Public institutions would be cathedrals of civic pride. Public buildings such as schools and courthouses were marble and granite, built to last. They were also the centers of civic activity. The school was often the heart of the town, where meetings and debates and festivals and elections were held. The courthouse would be where critical matters of government would be decided and administered. These were buildings of respect, and everyone took pride in that. We built that.We don’t teach that kind of civic mentality anymore, not in our homes and not in our schools. Hell, we can’t even teach that in our schools anymore, because teachers would get fired for politicizing in the classroom.The school is not the center of civic life, because honestly, we no longer have a civic life.Consumerism has replaced that sense of civic responsibility to each other to make the nation better overall. Ayn Rand’s idea of selfishness as a virtue has become the guidestar of the nation: screw you, so long as I got mine.We no longer care about investing in society, trusting that we would reap the benefits. Instead, we only care about consuming from society; if we are not personally benefiting, then it must not be valuable.This is why, I firmly believe, it is so easy for certain people to believe in the idea of a “moocher class” of “welfare queens” who just exist to live fat off the public trough: it’s what they would do if they were allowed to. Why? Because they live from a mentality of consumerism, and not civic engagement.If we start from the premise that public schools are a public trust which we are all responsible for, the whole conversation changes. No longer is it about requiring education to fix itself by forcing it to compete over increasingly limited resources. Instead, it’s a matter of coming together as a culture to improve education. Every stakeholder has some degree of obligation, then.Some of it might be more funding. Maybe people without kids decide to invest their time in coaching. Maybe businesses do more joint ventures with the schools.Most of it is just shifting from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control.And that’s eminently evident in the overall impact of charter schools. The impact of charter schools is that they continue to further the mentality that other people are responsible for making a product that we want to buy and we’ll just keep demanding alternatives until we get what we want, rather than civic ownership of that product and collective work to improve it. If others are responsible for the quality control, then we as a society don’t have to have any responsibility for the outcomes.But if we are responsible for improving that product, that has a whole host of rather difficult implications for us. That’s going to require work.Look. If you want a better country, you have to be better citizens.That starts with understanding that in a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, the people are what make the difference. All of the people. Everyone is responsible for the public good. Everyone has to contribute and work at it.Charter schools are a cheap cop-out to avoid that responsibility. They continue to further an external locus of control that takes away the need for self-agency to work to improve the situation. Someone else can clean it up.Oh, we’ll pay for it. Grudgingly.So long as we don’t actually have to do anything.In BriefCharter schools do provide some valuable alternatives to traditional models of education, and testbeds for educational research. They can be excellent ways to differentiate student learning and provide unique opportunities for some students.They can also be incredibly detrimental to student outcomes and perpetuate a flagging sense of civic responsibility and a consumerist society that abdicates personal responsibility and self-agency for “more choices” and personal satisfaction.It’s difficult to say which of these impacts has the greater weight. Every situation in every place charter schools are implemented is different.Caveat emptor.Your mileage may vary.This is long and I didn’t add any pictures. Here. Have a baby raccoon.Mostly Standard Addendum and Disclaimer: read this before you comment.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, et cetera and BNBR violation and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.Getting cute with me about my commenting rules and how my answer doesn’t follow my rules and blah, blah, whine, blah is getting old. Stay on topic or you’ll get to watch the debate from the outside.If you want to argue and you’re not sure how to not be a dick about it, just post a picture of a cute baby animal instead, all right? Your displeasure and disagreement will be duly noted. Pinkie swear.If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.Debate responsibly.Thanks for the A2A, Habib.

No, because the administrative costs exceed the savings from expelling drug users from benefit programs. It’s a waste of money. Many studies also show that drug use among welfare recipients is actually lower than in the general population.People like to demonize those on welfare, but don’t turn the criticism back on themselves. What if I were to say “You should pee in a cup once a year to see if you are allowed to get your tax refund check. Why should my tax dollars pay for your child tax credit if you smoke pot or drink too much!!!!”By the same logic of drug tests for welfare, we should administer drug tests for anyone applying for state and federal tax credits, to admit their kids into free public schooling, to get financial federal aid for college, to get a library card, and so on. In all these instances you are getting a service from the government at no charge to you. You could argue that you paid into the system, but so do people on welfare. They pay taxes as well in all it’s various forms, including federal/state taxes, sales tax, property tax, and so on.

CERB is available for all Canadians who meet the criteria. However, I’m going to go deeper with this one, as I suspect you may be wondering why this payment isn’t available to all Canadians all the time.I firmly believe that we are at a point in history where our nation should be introducing a Universal Basic Income at a rate of $2500 per month for all citizens age 18 and over. This equates to a minimum guaranteed income of $30,000 per year. It should also include an additional stipend of $500 per month per child to a maximum of 2 children per family. If you have more children, great. You just won’t get a stipend for them. Essentially this would mean that a couple with two children would be guaranteed a monthly income of $6000.00 while a couple without children would be guaranteed $5000.00.Canada has a multitude of social programs available, which include the following:Employment Insurance;Old Age Security;Canada Pension Plan;Working Income Tax Benefit;Canada Childcare Benefit;GST/HST Credit;Disability Tax Credit;Disability Savings Plans which include government grants; andvarious Social Services programs that are provincially-controlled.There are others that are not on this list, including something known as the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped in Alberta (which may or may not still exist - I don’t live there anymore so I am not 100% certain).Given how much money is paid out for each of these programs, not to mention the amount of money it takes to maintain each of these and the amount of people employed to administer them, getting rid of every single one of those programs and the processes required to apply for them would allow us to afford the new UBI.So what would that mean for those people who don’t WANT to work? Would they just lay around at home doing nothing and getting “free money?” Maybe. But let’s discuss for a moment. A lot of people are already doing this by using Social Services and Employment Insurance, but the numbers are quite small. Most people utilizing Social Services are single moms who otherwise would be working and paying out most of her salary in childcare, so it makes more sense for her to be at home and raise her children. The Employment Insurance program is in place for seasonal workers and people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Yet there are people who only work enough hours to claim EI, stay at home to draw out their claim, and then go back to work just long enough to get it again. That, to me, is taking advantage.Overall, our species has an ingrained need to feel useful. We are not a naturally lazy species in that we are easily bored and tend to seek out ways to be creative and keep busy. I strongly believe that after an initial period of people basking in this “free money”, we will eventually get incredibly bored with it and go looking for something to make us feel like we are being useful again.There are people out there working jobs they don’t enjoy because they pay well or because they will have a pension when they retire. I can imagine how much happier they would be if they could truly pursue something they were passionate about without worrying about supporting their families. A lot of people would go back to school to pursue more education. Parents would be able to find a better balance between their work and family lives. Our children would be better off for it.I believe that those who take advantage of the system now would find themselves in a position where they no longer feel the need to do this. Instead of changing the people, we can, and should, change the system to make it better for everyone. I know for myself that I would continue to work, but I’d probably work less to spend more time with my family and friends, and yet spend more because I would have more to spend.The UBI would also change the lives of so many people and lift them out of poverty. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we need a new and better way of doing things.