I spent a chunk of my education reform career happily toiling in the charter school fields. Studies like this and this and stuff like this and this make it seem like charters are here to stay????????some might even say they're the wave of the future ????????but there were times not that long ago when the future of chartering was in serious doubt. (Well, now that I think of it, Fordham's Ohio outpost would say those times haven't left us.) But in general, I'm pretty sanguine about what lies ahead for chartering.
I was reminded of this today when I had occasion to refer to one of my very favorite annual reports. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools' yearly ???????charter market share??????? update, put together by Todd Ziebarth (who is as knowledgeable and level-headed as anyone in this business), shows which cities/districts have the highest percentage of public school kids in charters. It's only a couple pages long, and, in addition to the raw numbers, it has interesting analysis.
Do yourself a favor. Just print this thing out and put it by your desk. If ever you're feeling like education reform isn't moving fast enough or if you're doubting the power of an idea, pick it up and enjoy the fact that what was once a crazy idea banging around in the heads of a few Minnesota reformers is now the mechanism by which hundreds of thousands of urban kids are educated.