Excellent Reads

1. correct - though I do consider myself more well-read on the topic than the average person
2. they technically are, though testing is different (we have entrance and exit tests, whereas public schools only have exit tests); but charter schools are privately run, publicly funded schools that must meet the same standards as public schools (and can't discriminate on applications)
3. I certainly do, seeing as I have family members in the school system; i think teacher salaries should be dramatically increased to encourage more applications, and this is especially acute in my area where teachers are paid particularly poorly; so this shift comes with the assumption of increasing teacher salaries at the expense of spending on buses and admin staff
4. yes, basically a charter system, but I don't think it necessarily needs to work that way; I think school admin should be allowed to specialize their school in any way they see fit, and if it doesn't work, they'll be replaced by someone with different ideas; whether that's offered as a public school or charter school is irrelevant, but the current model would support that as a charter school thing
5. I think it's too granular, I honestly don't care if my kid is falling behind in English but excelling in Math in a given year, I just care that they exit the school system meeting certain expectations; and that's what a democratic classroom system would do, it could delay certain subjects until kids are interested, and then go hard once they are (so kids could be 2 years ahead in one area, and a year behind in others); this can work well for some kids, but really poorly for others (as Sir Ken Robinson describes)

they can deny the difficult to teach students

I honestly don't know much about this, but I do know they are required to use a simple lottery, with priority only allowed for family of existing students (i.e. my second kid was accepted because my first kid attends there). It's not a private school that has an application process, you simply fill out some details (mostly name and age) and students are randomly selected. We applied to two, and were accepted to one. If we weren't accepted to either, we would have appealed to the district to allow us to move to a different public school (two of three in the area are acceptable to us, we just really didn't like our local principle, nor did the teachers in my neighborhood).

you’re missing a lot

If you have some good resources (e.g. books), I'd love to educate myself better. But just saying, "you're wrong because you don't have experience" isn't particularly helpful. I understand you're busy, and I am grateful that you've responded as much as you have, but surely there's something you could point me at so I could correct whatever mistaken assumptions I have.