Charter schools would be given free rein if a proposal from Republicans in North Carolina's state Senate is passed. Under the plan, oversight of charters would be taken from the state's board of education and given to a charter school board with nine of 11 voting members appointed by the governor and legislative leaders and with nothing in the law to prevent members of the new board from having conflicts of interest.
And that's not all:
The charters would no longer be required to assure that at least half the teachers are certified.
Charter schools would no longer be required by law to conduct criminal background checks of their staff.
Local control would also be slashed, with, for instance, local school boards required to rent buildings to charter schools for just $1 a year unless they could show that they absolutely didn't have the space or couldn't afford to make the lease. Requirements on charter schools to reflect the racial and ethnic composition of the local population would be weakened, and since the charters don't provide transportation to school, many low-income students would also be effectively excluded.
It's the charter school double standard raised to new heights, and, as Diane Ravitch points out, it has a whiff of ALEC model legislation to it. This isn't even the end game, either. Loosening requirements on charter schools, requiring local communities to allow and even lease to charters whether they want to or not, putting political appointees in charge of the spread of charters without regard to conflicts of interest—it's simultaneously a massive change and just one step on the road to the ultimate corporate education policy movement goal of total privatization of public education.