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Charter school opponents often forget that charter schools are in fact public schools. Charters cannot charge tuition or create selective admissions policies. Ironically, we might have charter boosters to blame for the belief that charters aren't public.

The critics aren't the only ones who have odd notions about charter schools. Though Americans tend to like charter schools, most think they are private schools that charge tuition and admit students on the basis of ability. Why the confusion? For one, charters are being sold as the "anti-public school."

This isn't my idea. I got it from Nancy Flanagan, who recently wrote about a charter school meeting she attended in Michigan. She describes one of her main reactions to the meeting:

I think that positioning charter schools as the opposite of public schools, rather than a necessary supplement to public education, has poisoned the discourse. And—it goes both ways. It’s not just public schools and public school teachers being skeptical (or downright nasty) in their remarks about charter schools. Public school academies—charters—seem to be bent on repeating the worst sound bites about public schools, whether they’re strictly true or not, thereby displaying the aphorism that your mother repeated when you were seven years old: you don’t make yourself look better by tearing someone else down.

Some charter school zealots are doing a hard-core sales job for charters as the un-public schools that are saving urban kids from slothful public school teachers and venal public school administrators. Many journalists have bought the pitch. Can we blame Americans for assuming that charters aren't public schools?

And let's not forget one critical difference between many good charters and traditional public schools. Charters often nudge students who lack motivation or self-control out of their own buildings and into the public schools down the road.  Flanagan tells of a charter school principal who counsels disruptive students to leave her school. They are not a "good fit." "Nobody asked...where the kid who is not a good fit ends up," Flanagan notes.

It's useful to remember the beliefs that first fueled the charter movement. They give families more education options. The good ones use strategies traditional public schools can emulate. (And we shouldn't forget that good public schools have lessons for charters, too.)

But well financed charter boosters are hawking a much simpler message: Public schools: bad. Charter schools: good. This  is having a corrosive effect on the education debate. 

In the end, charter zealots might fall victim to their own success as salesman. If you over-hype even a good product, your customers will think they've been had.