The All New Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate

by George Lakoff

Charter schools are schools paid for publicly but run privately—very often by for-profit corporations. The CREDO study at Stanford in 2013 found that about 75 percent of charter schools have results that are worse than, or no different from, traditional public schools. A small percentage of charter schools do have better results. But since funds for charter schools are taken from public school budgets, charter schools tend to drain money from public schools and make public education worse on the whole, even for the best public schools. Moreover, charter schools have no accountability to local school districts or the public.

When conservatives talk about the lawsuits, you don’t just say, “No, no, the lawsuits weren’t frivolous,” you talk instead about public protection, about open courts, about the right to have juries decide, and about the last line of defense against unscrupulous or negligent corporations.