If your Facebook timeline looks anything like mine, it’s filled with posts about Betsy DeVos and her plan to make charter schools the norm, and why that’s not okay. You might be wondering what the big deal is about charter schools, and why they are so harmful to education. Let’s go back to the basics.

Charter schools are privately managed, taxpayer-funded schools exempted from some rules applicable to all other taxpayer-funded schools. Charter schools were initially created to widen the horizons of public education and to provide an atypical education to students who didn’t fit the mold of traditional public schooling. An idea that sounds good at its core, until you realize what it really means for the people who run them and, in turn, the students who attend them.

The original reason charter schools were exempt from following all the laws placed on other public education was to provide more leeway in the curriculum. Here’s where it gets sketchy: they now use this flexibility to avoid the regulations put in place for other public schools, so they can bring as much money as possible back to the people running the school. There is no requirement for where taxpayer dollars are spent in charter schools. This means tax money is going to a school who can do God-knows-what with it, while traditional public schools are suffering from the lack of funding. In other words, your tax dollars are funding a management team rather than students. It’s like a business: cut all the fat off in order to maximize profit. Only, the “fat” being trimmed in this situation can be anything from fair and equal educational opportunities for students with disabilities to professional development for school employees. (For my non-teacher readers, professional development comes in the form of classes or conferences traditional public school teachers must attend to update their teaching methods based on the most recent research in education).

Charter schools are also notorious for hiring young, inexperienced teachers. The fact is, their teachers are not even required to be licensed teachers. (Yes, I am saying that you can go to school for architecture then go teach at a charter school). For this reason, there is no job security in charter schools. Once the teachers become well-seasoned, giving them the opportunity to make more money, they can be dropped so the school leaders can hire another new, inexperienced teacher for the position. This gives charter schools yet another way to cut costs so funding can go elsewhere. A continuous flow of inexperienced and sometimes unqualified teachers is a contributing factor to the fact that, regardless of what Betsy DeVos tells you, charter schools do not have higher test scores than traditional public schools.

I, personally, have seen the difference between special education in a for-profit charter school and special education at a public school. The experience, environment, and resources for each are immensely different. I know what you’re thinking: the for-profit school must be full of cutting-edge resources because each student pays tuition, right? Wrong. The lack of accountability of the funding in privately managed charter schools calls into question whether the students’ tuition is going to something that will benefit them directly (spoiler: it’s not).

I speak for all teachers when I say that our number one concern is the children. We don’t care about our money or time half as much as we care about our students. The problem with charter schools is that their management feels the opposite. They would rather have money in their pockets than optimal resources for the students attending their schools. The reason teachers are angry with charter schools is simple: they just aren’t providing kids with the quality education they are entitled to. At the same time, they are taking resources away from the schools that are doing everything in their power, against all odds, to provide their students with the high-quality education they deserve.

So, to the people who still believe Betsy DeVos can’t do much damage to the public education system, how about you just light your own money on fire? It will be more fun than watching business-esque charter schools do it for you.