(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
The Denver Post ran a story about charter schools flourishing in Colorado. Money quote on the blessings of creative destruction:
“Take the roughly 1,700 public schools in Colorado, multiply that by 20 years, and the odds of a district-run public school being shut down by the state is 34,000 to one,” said Alex Medler, a Boulder-based consultant who worked for six years as vice president for policy at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. “Compare that to one in 10 charters closing — one in five for Colorado — and you’ll see the imbalance.”
“The lopsidedness of district-run school versus charter public school accountability is striking,” Medler said.
Quite right- Colorado charters face real accountability conducted frontier justice style by parents with charter schools facing a one in five shot of being closed. District schools meanwhile face faux accountability (mere bureaucratic compliance) and a 1/34,000 danger of being closed.
That was the great quote in the article. The unintentionally humorous quote:
Rico Munn, a former state board member and now superintendent of Aurora Public Schools, said the board was fairly balanced in the past when it came to charter appeals. But lately, the board appears to believe charters should “rise and fall only on parental choice” and not any other factors.
Hmm, rising and falling only on parental choice. That would be consistent with the NACSA 9/33 score for Colorado on their recent rankings. I wonder how all this letting things rise and fall only on parental choice business works out academically. Oh, that’s right we actually have scores:
Posted by matthewladner 
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