Weeding out underperforming charter schools
Editorial/Los Angeles Times
California has been a hospitable state for charter schools, approving hundreds of them on the understanding that they would provide better educational options for students who were otherwise stuck in abysmal, unsafe schools, and that they would model innovative ideas for the public school system. And in many cases, that's precisely the way it has worked. But there are steep variations in the quality of these schools, which are publicly funded but free from many state regulations. As a Stanford University study found last year, some do a better job than the public schools their students would have attended, some do worse, and a large number do about the same. (more...)