Comment by tomrod
It wasn't received as right-wing propaganda at the time. Endorsed by Bill Gates and others less-informed to education research with leanings towards the left.
But it is definitely anti-education and proposes solutions that aren't justified, like the right-wing-aligned push for chartered schools (which tend to be religious in nature, hence the wholesale gobbling for it by the rightwing).
Stanford studies in 2009 & 2013 put the fork in superior performance claims -- no better and no worse than public schools on average. So the charter school miracle is really just cherrypicking with a side of encouraging (or, if malicious, enforcing) segregation (since poorer people both tend to be minorities and tend to not have capacity/time to jump through lottery hoops). With careful planning and policy structure, perhaps good charter schools could overcome their entrance bias (RIP college entrance for either economic class or historically disparaged category), but good luck getting anything like that from the political minds that brought you DOGE and the nonsensical trade war.
> segregation (since poorer people both tend to be minorities and tend to not have capacity/time to jump through lottery hoops)
charter schools tend to have _more_ minority students than public schools. eg in philadelphia, charter schools are 80% black/hispanic versus 71% for the public schools. nationwide they are 60% black/hispanic vs 42% for public schools (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/06/06/us-public...). they're also generally lower income than public schools.
this is not super surprising because families with money already get school selection within public systems by virtue of spending more to live in better catchments.
i don't really have an opinion on charter schools being good or bad, but at least from what i've seen their primary audience is lower income families (often minorities) who look at their local public school and decide it's not good enough.