Welcome to Cashing in on Kids, a weekly email newsletter for people fed up with attacks on America’s public schools—produced by In the Public Interest.

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New Orleans charter school parent: “What we have here is pretend choice.” Ashana Bigard: “New Orleans’ is held up as a model by education reform advocates, but I refer to what we have here as ‘pretend choice.’ Our all charter system was sold to parents and the community as one that would give us choices and options, but at times it seems like we have fewer options than we had before Katrina.” Public Voices for Public Schools

Why charter schools are not as “public” as they claim to be. Professor of Education Policy and Law Kevin Welner on charter schools: “As an education policy researcher—and as author of a new book about charter schools I wrote with fellow researcher Wagma Mommandi—I have discovered that charter schools are not as accessible to the public as they are often made out to be.” The Conservation

New lawsuit exposes how A3 charter school scandal impacted multiple states. The court-appointed receiver in control of the California-based online charter school system’s assets since prosecutors brought criminal charges is trying to find whatever money is still circulating in the U.S. and get it back. Voice of San Diego

How we’re fighting back

In California? Look up how your school district is spending Covid-19 relief. NBC Bay Area reviewed the most recent data from the California Department of Education for more than 1,500 school districts and charter schools to find out where the money went. NBC Bay Area

And here’s how to make sure that money is going to schools and isn’t going to corporations. In the Public Interest

A new book on fighting against privatization and for public institutions (like public schools). In the Public Interest’s Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian’s new book, The Privatization of Everything, drops next month from New Press. Preorder it now.

Photo by Infrogmation of New Orleans.