Much talk is coming of this report covered by the NY Times that charter schools are lagging behind regular public schools on performance. Staunch defenders of public education hail this study and its conclusions as sort of a redemption in the public eye and a tool to use in the great debate over charter schools and local control and all that.
On the other hand, supporters of charter schoools such as edu-blogger Joanne Jacobs, refute the Times' conclusions on the basis that a closer look at the stats actually reveals no significant difference between the performance of students in charter schools vs. public schools.
I, for one, would like to try to support a reasonable middle ground and say to both camps--so what? I don't believe that those in public education have any reason to feel threatened by the charter school movement. My goodness, they're still public schools you know. Let the people run their experiment semi-autonomy, and if it is truly a weaker system, then the establishment has nothing to worry about. Some charter schools will exceed their public school counterparts, others will not. We know that all kinds of new programs and reforms and new models of education are touted year after year, decade after decade. And guess what...all of them have some good in them, and none of them is the savior of the world.
10:09:21 PM 
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