Re-Educated Podcast features Williams: Who Gets to Decide What a Public School Should Be?

S12 E43: Rachel Elizabeth Williams — Who Gets to Decide What a Public School Should Be?

Dr. Rachel Elizabeth Williams begins with a deceptively simple question: if charter schools are given extraordinary freedom to design new educational models, why do so many of them end up looking the same? Charter schools were originally imagined as places where educators could rethink curriculum, governance, discipline, and the structure of schooling itself. Yet, despite this autonomy, one particular model—the "no excuses" charter school—has become dominant in many Black communities. Rather than asking whether charter schools raise test scores, Williams asks a deeper question: why has this become the educational future that society has chosen to imagine for Black children?