Last week the Washington Post ran a two-part series (by Justin Blum and Jay Mathews) on the state of D.C. charter schools. It's a good summary of how the schools are doing compared to traditional public schools (mixed) and the effect they're having on the D.C. school system (scant). The articles lead to reasonable conclusions: not all charters are stand-outs, but neither have they creamed the best students from the public schools, nor has the large shift of D.C. pupils into charters yet sparked the kind of change in the public school system that choice advocates had envisioned. Mathews and Blum refrain from drawing conclusions about whether the District charter movement has been good or bad overall. But the fact that the debate now centers around which schools are educating students well, rather than on how much more money should be funneled into a failing system, is certainly a victory for students.
"Quality uneven, despite popularity," by Justin Blum and Jay Mathews, Washington Post, June 19, 2003
"Staying the course, despite competition," by Justin Blum, Washington Post, June 20, 2003