Reflections

Introduction: The Charter and Choice Movements at an Impasse             The charter and school choice movements are currently at an impasse. While Charter Schools as a sector continue to expand and serve more and more of America’s schoolchildren, bipartisan support for school choice has declined. Democrats and Republicans traditionally supported charters in relatively equal numbers; as of 2012, 62 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats approved of charter schools. While GOP support for charters remained steady at 62 percent in 2017, the percentage of Democrats who approve of the charter sector dipped to 48 percent. (Saad, 2017) Bipartisan support for school choice emerged out of the "A Nation at Risk" Report (1983), which famously asserted that “if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” ( A Nation at Risk , 1983, p. 3) The 1980s b