The Education Wars II

Another charter school article understates how crappy most of them are, yet President Obama and his flunky Arne Duncan (or is Obama Arne's flunky) want to remove barriers to charter schools, which are basically private schools funded with public money.

Under a 1994 law that strongly favors charter schools, 500 of them operate in this state, teaching more than 100,000 students. Those totals account for a quarter of Arizona's public schools and a tenth of its public school enrollment, giving charters a larger market share here than in any other state.

But a Stanford University research institute reported in June that Arizona charter students did not show as much academic progress as their peers in traditional public schools. Charter backers dispute the study's methods and findings but agree that schools vary widely in quality.

"There are some excellent, excellent charter schools in Arizona," said Margaret Raymond, director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford. "There's a good, strong cluster of really high-performing schools. There are a whole bunch that are mucking around [in the middle], and a big cluster that are not doing well."

You can read the Stanford study right here.

Charters are basically shit and suffer from the same or even worse problems in regular public schools. It all boils down to accountability, I think.