Games Charter Opponents Play: How Local School Boards--and Their Allies--Block the Competition‪.‬

Considerable attention has been paid to the most blatant barriers that public charter schools face. By lobbying against good charter legislation and fair funding (see Figure 1), financing anti-charter studies and propaganda, filing lawsuits, and engaging the public battle of ideas, teacher unions and other charter opponents openly wage what might be called an "air war" against charters. But there is also evidence of a perhaps more damaging "ground war." Interviews with more than 400 charter school operators from coast to coast have revealed widespread localized combat--what one administrator called "bureaucratic sand" that is often hurled in the faces of charter schools. Indeed, as a 2005 editorial in the Washington Post described charter school obstruction in Maryland, "It's guerilla turf war, with children caught in the middle. Attempts to establish public charter schools in Maryland have been thwarted at almost every turn by entrenched school boards, teachers unions and principals resistant to any competition."