Charter schools are privatized education arrangements that continually insist on being called “public” while routinely avoiding many public laws, standards, and requirements.
Charter school operators have always wanted to be both public and private for self-serving reasons—public so that they can seize public funds and private so that they can remain unaccountable.
Dr. Michael Mindzak at Brock University in Canada reminds us that, “The purpose of charter schools is to foster privatization under the guise of public education.” The Network for Public Education states that, “There are so many substantive differences between charter schools and traditional public schools that charters can’t be defined as public schools.”
It is thus important to reject non-stop disinformation that portrays charter schools as “public” schools. Both non-profit and for-profit charter schools are deregulated private businesses run by unelected private persons. And both engage in profiteering.
Naturally, many contradictions arise when charter schools ride the “public”/”private” fence. The latest example comes from Massachusetts. According to Universal Hub (March 11, 2026), “A Malden charter school that refused to hand over records requested [at least 10 times] by members of the public without a court order got the court order today – from the state’s highest court. In its ruling on the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School, the Supreme Judicial Court concluded that because charter schools in Massachusetts exist only because of an act of the legislature, an act that specifically refers to them as ‘public schools’, that makes them subject to the state’s public-records law.” Another source reports that, “In their ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court agreed with the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and held that Commonwealth charter schools, including Mystic Valley, are public agencies and are therefore subject to the Public Records Law.”
Of course, simply calling something “public” does not magically make it public in the proper sense of the word. Printing the word “public” before the phrase “charter school” does not automatically make a charter school public in practice.
Mystic Valley Regional Charter School has maintained all along that it is not subject to the Massachusetts public records law. Charter schools often maneuver in this way because they see themselves as the private entities that they in fact are—while also reaping all the benefits that come from being labeled “public” on paper. Indeed, most private entities in the U.S. see themselves as being exempt from public transparency requirements. Not surprisingly, one of the synonyms for private is “secret.”
Confusion and conflicting views and rulings arise when different authorities and jurisdictions adopt contradictory conceptions of charter schools. This happens because many courts and states interpret State Action Doctrine (which distinguishes between the public and private domains) in varying ways.
To be sure, charter schools are private actors, not state (public) actors. They are not “entangled” with government (public) authority in the same way traditional public schools are. State officials play a bigger and different role in traditional public schools than they do in charter schools. This is connected to the fact that charter schools enter into a contract with the government or a government-sanctioned charter school authorizer, while no such arrangement exists between traditional public schools and the government. Traditional public schools are not contract schools; they are directly created by and constitute a political subdivision of the state.
In addition, charter schools are not operated by publicly elected officials. Nor can they levy taxes like public schools can. These are some of the reasons why, according to veteran educator and writer Stan Karp, “School boards, public budgets, public policies, and public officials can be subjected to pressure and held accountable in ways that privatized charters don’t allow.”
It is also important to appreciate that in the U.S. the provision of education for the past 250 years has not been restricted to something organized and monopolized by the state. Education in the U.S. has been organized and delivered by many different authorities and entities for more than two centuries. Many of these forces and entities have been private, parochial, or sectarian. That is, they lie outside state scrutiny and control.
Of course, no complex modern society and economy today can survive without state-organized mass universal free education available to all. Such a state must be vested with real public authority and not be controlled by major owners of capital. A fend-for-yourself “free market” setup in education is outmoded and irresponsible, especially when it comes to modern needs and requirements.
A main takeaway from all this is the need to correctly identify charter schools as private entities and to appreciate that charter schools should not have access to any public funds or facilities because these rightly belong to public schools alone. Public wealth must remain in public hands.
The post Massachusetts: Highest Court Says Charter School Must Comply With State Public-Records Law appeared first on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.