Did YOU attend a "private public school"?

Our new report, America's Private Public Schools (described below), is meant to pierce the tired rhetoric used by so many defenders of the status quo in education. Unions and others love to hide behind their fealty to "public education" when arguing that charters or vouchers will lead to "exclusive" schools, whereby their beloved public schools "serve all comers." Except, it turns out, when they don't.

But one thing that's fun about our little project is that we can actually look at the NAMES of these 2,800 "private public schools"--schools that serve virtually no poor children. And I suspect they will be quite familiar to you; as several readers have told me this morning, the school they went to as a kid--and their rival schools, and the schools that all of their friends went to--are on the list.

And in full disclosure, that's the case for me too. I didn't think to look until yesterday, but lo and behold, there it is: Claymont Elementary in Ballwin, Missouri, a "private public school" whose student body is 97 percent non-poor. Maybe I should no longer boast that I went to "public schools" from Kindergarten through college.

See for yourself; if you went to school (or send your child to school) in one of the 25 largest metro areas in the country, you can scan our lists and find out right now.