Comment by Catloafdev

Taking you at face value, the first step is to address the framing here:

  'redirecting funding from sucky schools towards ones that deliver results'

This is not quite the reality of how this works. What you have to recognize here is that being pro-Charter school legislation means that you are in favor of spending less on public education, and giving that money to private education companies who already charge and make profit.

You are advocating for draining public education. That's the position this takes. And you believe it's better to give it to private education, all for-profit entities. So you have to recognize that the position here isn't "give more money to better schools" it's "give money to private for-profit companies and take it directly away from public education"

  'allowing school choice for students'

This is a talking point that doesn't hold any water. They claim that by giving parents some tiny affordance, that somehow enables them to enroll their children in expensive Charter schools. That's not how that works. What they're doing is giving a very tiny % of the money they are taking from public education, and giving it to the families as direct cash. Why is this a problem? Because the amount doesn't cover tuition. It's not enough. Families in poverty can't afford multi-thousand-dollar tuition just because they got a $1k check in the mail. The math doesn't math. It only helps families that were already capable of affording it, or on the borderline.

But the bigger problem is that it directly harms public education. So then what happens is that public education gets _worse_ at the expense of the people who can afford private schooling.

So all this to say, defunding public schools is not a good position, and they are doing everything they can to try to dress it up and muddy the conversation.