An agreement has been reached in Michigan to expand the number of charter schools–currently maxed out at 150 (the existing cap)–by 135. Showing that school boards of existing governments schools are as much of an obstacle to reform as the teachers unions, the director of the Michigan Association of School Boards says that his group is “dead set against this. We’d be pouring more money down a rat hole at a time when we don’t have the money we need to shore up the system we’ve got.”
If anything’s a rat hole, it’s the existing system by which one school board and one teachers union local has a monopoly on the use of tax dollars within a given geographic area (known as a school district.) Charter schools aren’t as good as full school choice, but they do allow some alternatives.