> I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters
The left doesn't hate charters, it hates publicly subsidized private schools that are not effectively accountable. That's a subset of charters plus all vouchers.
Actual public charters, by which public schools are granted some variance of generally applicable rules to trial new methods are not a problem to the left; the hijacking of that process to create super-voucher schools when the voucher model failed to gain sufficient political support is what the left hates.
> Parents choose to send their kids there
Often, after the local regular public school has been replaced by a privately-operated charter in the same facility, and often the parents who most choose to send their children their are the ones whose most-local school was replaced, because it's the most convenient public school and going to a more distant one has added cost.
Charters are explicitly reductions in institutional legal accountability, and unlike public (charter or not) schools, the chief decision makers so released from accountability with private schools are not accountable by election, either.
Yes, and it's difficult to get information from charter schools because they are not subject to the same reporting that public schools are. This makes it easy for people take advantage of their opaqueness.
Harper’s recently ran a pretty good piece on the matter, if anyone is interested in a longer-form skeptical perspective on charter schools and their lack of accountability:
Charter schools are accountable to the parents. If the parents do not like the performance of a charter school, they can pull their kids out of it, and put them in their neighborhood public school.
I have had 3 kids in charter schools in San Diego for a total of 5 charter schools. The charter schools were all really good. Bad ones should close but the passion and excitement shown by charter school teachers are above and beyond the State run school teachers that my kids have also attended.
The left doesn't hate charters, it hates publicly subsidized private schools that are not effectively accountable. That's a subset of charters plus all vouchers.
Actual public charters, by which public schools are granted some variance of generally applicable rules to trial new methods are not a problem to the left; the hijacking of that process to create super-voucher schools when the voucher model failed to gain sufficient political support is what the left hates.
> Parents choose to send their kids there
Often, after the local regular public school has been replaced by a privately-operated charter in the same facility, and often the parents who most choose to send their children their are the ones whose most-local school was replaced, because it's the most convenient public school and going to a more distant one has added cost.