With the support of every president since Bill Clinton, charter schools have blossomed in popularity in the last 25 years, and about 7 percent of U.S. school children attend a charter school. | Getty Images Democrats feud over charter schools in Massachusetts

The Democratic Party's growing division over charter schools is playing out in the blue state of Massachusetts, where a ballot referendum on the expansion of charter schools has attracted national attention and tens of millions in political spending.

State and national teachers unions are leading the charge to kill it, with support from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and the Democratic State Committee. They are pitted against such prominent Democrats as Barack Obama’s Education Secretary John B. King Jr., former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch and state House Speaker Robert DeLeo — all of whom appear in an online ad that says, “Real Democrats are YES on Question 2.”


The pro-charter side also has overwhelming backing from Republican lawmakers and Gov. Charlie Baker, as well as from a slew of hedge fund managers and billionaires such as former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Blocking the state’s expansion of charter schools would be a significant symbolic coup for teachers unions, who have been early and outspoken supporters of Hillary Clinton. Clinton's campaign has declined to take a side on the referendum. A win for the unions would provide one more reason for Clinton — a longtime supporter of charter schools — to tamp down her enthusiasm. It might also deter other states from considering such expansions amid signs the anti-charter side is gaining momentum.

“This is a really important one for us,” said Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union with roughly 3 million members.

Charter schools use public funds, but are typically operated by an outside group and not confined by many of the same rules as traditional schools — a structure, backers say, that allows them to succeed in communities long failed by traditional public schools. Most significantly in the eyes of some critics and supporters, they usually don’t have unionized workers.

With the support of every president since Bill Clinton, charter schools have blossomed in popularity in the last 25 years, and about 7 percent of U.S. school children attend a charter school. All but seven states have laws on the books allowing them.

Along the way, charter schools have been wholeheartedly embraced by Republican leaders.

But there are signs their Democratic support may be splintering amid questions about whether charters are undermining the survival of traditional schools.

Already, teachers unions claimed victory this summer after the party’s platform committee adopted language much more hostile toward charters than in previous election cycles. That decision came after a personal plea from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

Then, last month, the NAACP adopted language calling for a moratorium on charter expansion until they adopt the same level of oversight, civil rights protections and transparency as traditional public schools — a controversial move since charters are popular among many black parents.

Such concerns contrast with the eager embrace of charters by the Obama administration. Education Secretary King, a co-founder of Roxbury Preparatory Charter School in Boston, said he opposes “arbitrary caps” on charter school growth. Arne Duncan, Obama's first education secretary, praised charter schools as part of the solution to giving poor students access to a high-quality education. During the recession, Duncan’s Education Department prodded 15 states to remove their charter school caps by dangling more than $4 billion in Race to the Top federal grants, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. States that capped charters were penalized during the grant application process.

The conflict in Massachusetts has gotten so heated that DeLeo, a Democrat, told a local TV station that he’d vote to expand charters “whatever the political ramifications may be.”

Massachusetts’ two largest teachers unions, meanwhile, called for federal and state investigations of the "propriety" of donations made by wealthy hedge fund managers in support of the ballot measure. The unions’ request followed an International Business Times/MapLight report that revealed $778,000 was donated to the pro-charter campaign by executives from eight financial firms that hold management contracts with the state pension fund.

Save Our Public Schools, the teachers unions-backed opposition group, has raised $14 million for the campaign, according to filings. They will likely be outspent by charter backers, who have raised more than $22 million.

Eskelsen Garcia, the union president, said expanding charters in Massachusetts would siphon money away from traditional public schools. When Warren announced she would oppose the ballot initiative, she argued that adding more charter schools could hurt students living in “districts with tight budgets where every dime matters.”

Eileen O’Connor, a spokeswoman for the pro-charters Great Schools Massachusetts, responds by arguing the Massachusetts referendum “is about access to high performing, proven models of education and it’s about giving parents a choice of where to send their kids to public school.”

Clinton hasn’t waded into the contentious Massachusetts charter battle, and a spokesman for the campaign declined to comment on her position. On the campaign trail, Clinton has both criticized charters and called for greater cooperation between charters and traditional schools. She surprised some in the education reform community last year when she complained that charter schools “don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them.”

Then, in July, Clinton tried to play peacemaker, telling the NEA convention that traditional and charter schools should work together to share ideas — a remark that drew loud boos.

Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said teachers unions appear re-energized on the issue of halting charter growth. Given Clinton’s close relationship with Weingarten, in particular, charter school supporters are sweating, he said.

“I think charter supporters have a right to be concerned that a President Clinton is not going to be as friendly toward charter schools as a President Obama has been,” Petrilli said. “That’s not to say she’s going to be opposed to them, but I think she’s going to be torn on this, and we’ll see how it plays out when it comes to things like how much money she requests for charter schools.”

Bill Clinton was also an early supporter of charter schools, and as president he helped create a federal grant program that awards seed money to help new charters open. The program has given out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, and spurred the creation of thousands of new charter schools.

The location of the latest skirmish over charter growth is notable, in part, because Massachusetts’ public schools consistently score at the top on standardized tests, and are considered among the nation’s best.

Seizing on that, opponents of the ballot measure say charter school growth will hurt the quality of traditional schools. One TV ad says $400 million was “drained” last year to fund charter schools, which equals “real cuts to our kids in arts, technology, AP classes, preschool, bus service and more.”

But charter school supporters say lifting the state’s current cap is essential because not every Massachusetts child has access to good schools. They say more than 30,000 mostly low-income students are on waiting lists to attend a charter school — although some have raised questions about the accuracy of those figures. Supporters also cite research showing that Massachusetts’ charter schools perform even better, on average, than traditional schools.

If passed, the voter referendum would allow up to 12 new charter schools annually to open in Massachusetts, with priority given to low-income communities. State law now sets the cap at 120 charter schools in the state.

“If you like your public school, Question 2 won’t affect you,” says one TV ad supporting the measure. “But for kids stuck in failing school districts, it will allows parents to choose something different and give all our kids something better.”

Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said Massachusetts is ripe ground to expand charter schools because it historically has approached approval of the schools in the “most measured way you could possibly approach it.”

“They grew slowly. They did it right. The results are there, and the wait lists are large,” Rees said. “So if there’s one place where you could argue lifting caps would actually benefit low-income kids … these areas in Massachusetts are definitely the key candidates.”

Angela Rubenstein, a teacher at Rafael Hernández K-8 School in Boston who has also taught in a charter school, said her opposition isn’t so much about the quality of charter schools, but the financial implications “on the majority of the kids who are not attending those schools.”

Rubenstein calls herself a “super liberal Democrat.”

“I think a lot of well-intentioned people think charter schools are a good idea,” Rubenstein said. “I don’t necessarily disagree, but think you have to be careful how you do it.”