The new charter school movement is a compilation of money, marketing and the mistaken use of the free market theory, which is suppressing the schools’ founding ideology that supported innovative, energetic educational think tanks and lab schools to enrich and inform public education.

The new charter school movement lacks innovation, has minimal quality control, promotes conflicts of interest, is a breeding ground for fraud and makes for-profit corporations wealthy on our tax dollars.

I supported the creation of charter schools. However, the charter school movement has morphed into a money machine and is bad for altruistic charters as well as traditional public schools. I think parents deserve choice. However, I also believe we should strive for quality choice, which means we need a strong authorizing board that values quality and sets high standards.

The word has gotten out that charter schools are huge money-making machines. Corporate and education management companies are raking in millions from taxpayers. Taxpayers, regardless of whether they have children in schools, might want to start paying attention to the huge amount of taxpayer dollars these companies are consuming with absolutely no transparency and no accountability. Hard-earned dollars are disappearing into a black hole.