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Charter schools were originally launched with a promise to create nimble, teacher-led and community-driven laboratories of innovation for public education.

But a new report details how that promise has been steadily weakened by state laws, shaped in large part by the lobbying power of corporate charter chains – that prioritize rapid expansion and less regulation over quality, oversight and accountability.

Mike DeGuire, vice chair of Advocates for Public Education Policy, said that policy shift has produced predictable results – fraud, mismanagement, abrupt closures, and significant charter churn.

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"Charter schools are not meeting the needs of students as they were originally intended," said DeGuire, "and there are significant changes that need to be made to state laws to fix what’s broken with the charter schools."

Last year, a bill that aimed to create more accountability for charter schools in Colorado was killed in committee after public opposition by Governor Jared Polis – who has launched his own charter schools – and intense lobbying by Americans for Prosperity, the flagship political arm of the right-wing network formed by the billionaire Koch brothers.

HB24-1363 was in sync with many recommendations in the new report, Charter School Reckoning: Part II Disillusionment – and was supported by the Colorado Teachers Association, the Colorado PTA, the League of Women Voters and others.

Under current law, charter schools are publicly funded but privately governed. In most cases, their boards are self-appointed, not elected, and are exempt from conflict-of-interest laws that apply to public officials.

And at a time when public schools are under-funded, DeGuire said corporate chains and companies that provide payroll and other services are making huge profits.

"And this is a problem when we’re talking about taxpayer dollars not being used to meet the needs of the students," said DeGuire. "And there’s no oversight, there’s little regulation, there’s less transparency for what’s happening with charter schools."

DeGuire said he worries that if they're left unchecked, charter schools – alongside controversial voucher programs that siphon tax dollars into private schools – will lead to a wholesale privatization of the public school system.

While a handful of charter schools still reflect the original vision of the movement, DeGuire said they are the exception rather than the rule.

"There are some small mom-and-pop charter schools that are doing good work," said DeGuire. "But the ones that have been taken over by the charter networks and that are being run by these corporate entities are hurting the entire system, and they’re hurting the public school system."