Biden backs off charter regulation campaign promises.
Some charter supporters cheer. Others not satisfied.
When Joe Biden was running for President he took a hard line against for-profit charter schools.
“I am not a charter school fan,” Joe Biden said when he was running for president.
Once elected, Biden’s charter reform proposals were modest at best.
Yet even his modest proposals to limit charter school expansion caused the for-profit charter industry to go ballistic.
There is too much money at stake in school privatization for charter school investors to agree to even the slightest reform.
“Stop Biden’s and Democrats’ war on charter schools,” said a Fox News article.
The Washington Post editorial board called the rules “flagrantly wrongheaded.”
Of course, Republicans criticized the regulations Biden proposed, but so did corporate Democrats, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, himself a charter operator, and three other Democratic U.S. senators.
“Act Now: DC Bureaucrats Plan a New Attack on Charter Schools,” read one email. from the National Alliance for Public Charter School.
Naturally Biden backed off many of his charter reform campaign promises.
Some, like billionaire Michael Bloomberg, were thrilled by Biden’s retreat and claimed victory.
“Give President Joe Biden’s administration credit: It listened to outraged parents (and editorialists) and decided to scrap provisions of a proposed regulation that would have made it far more difficult to open and expand public charter schools,” writes Bloomberg in today’s Washington Post.
Others say Biden hasn’t retreated enough.
Mike Petrilli of the right-wing Fordham Institute says that despite the rules being less harmful than the original proposals, “these regulations still aren’t great.”
Jeanne Allen, the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, a pro-charter organization, said she expects future administrations to overturn the regulations.
Freedom for charters, which she said is hindered by the new requirements, “is the hallmark of charter school accountability and why they are so successful.”
“Without completely reversing their rules, there is no improvement,” Allen said. (K-12 Dive)