Jophiel wrote:
Sure. I'm willing to say Smash was wrong and you're right. And the right answer makes charter schools sound like a terrible proposition that should be abandoned as almost entirely ineffective.
Part of the point of charter schools is that they are more flexible though. Many of them fail precisely because they're trying different things. Some don't work. But the key difference is that when they don't work, parents stop sending their kids to them, and the schools close (usually because the city or state doesn't renew the charter and the funding dries up). So you have to take the stats on overall performance of "all charter schools" with that in mind.
Um... But when they succeed, they tend to succeed pretty amazingly well. There's a reason why some charter schools have waiting lists and lotteries. Dismissing the successes because other charter schools (which may be run entirely differently) suck is really unfair. Also, charter schools have very little in common (other than being flexible). Your earlier comparisons were funny, but not at all accurate. A closer comparison would be to say that since only 17% of socks that cost less than the ones you normally buy are better than the ones you buy, there's no point in buying those socks. Um... Yeah, there is. Go buy the ones that are better and cost less and don't buy the ones that are worse.
That's the option that charter schools present. The primary objective is cost reduction, so it shouldn't be too surprising that a majority of the charter schools result in lower education quality than the more expensive standard schools. But the ones that do succeed should not be ignored. They should be copied where possible.