The Los Angeles Times, anyway. After the recent charter school dustup, we're happy to recommend a column on charters that strikes a good balance and gets the facts - even those that are painful for charter school proponents - right. Howard Blume, writing on the recent closure of 60 charter schools operated by the California Charter Academy (read more here), notes "a subtle turn away from choice and toward accountability" in the way the Golden State oversees charter schools there. This turn is actually supported by Caprice Young, head of the state's charter school association, which pushed for the CCA crackdown. (The California Charter Academy was pretty clearly a slipshod operation.) Blume's piece is far more nuanced than the New York Times' reporting and hatchet-job editorializing on charters, which takes charters as an undifferentiated lump; he notes that charters "are difficult to pigeonhole in any meaningful way." And he acknowledges the difficulty of balancing "freedom, public support, and oversight." A thoughtful piece; you should check it out.
"Sixty charter schools fall, with a little state shove," by Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times, August 29, 2004 (registration required)