John Oliver Takes on the Controversial Topic of Sparsely Regulated, Publicly Funded Charter Schools

On the August 21st episode of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver took on the very controversial topic of publicly funded charter schools by verbally objecting to the fact that they put profit over students, acting more like “pizza shops” than educational institutions.

…But there’s a fucking problem there as one former charter school employee explains. ‘This isn’t just a regular business. This isn’t a restaurant that you just open up you serve your food people don’t like it, you close it and you move on. This is education, this is students are getting left in the middle of the year without a school to go to. So I just think that there needs to be some filter as to who’s opening up these charter schools.’ Exactly, the problem with letting the free market decide when it comes to kids is that kids change faster than the market, and by the time it’s obvious the school is failing, futures may have been ruined. So if we are going to treat charter schools like pizza shops, we should monitor them at least as well as we do pizzerias. It’s like the old saying give a kid a shitty pizza you’ve fucked up their day treat a kid like a shitty pizza you could fuck up their entire life

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.