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November 19, 2007

Fasten your seatbelt, Chancellor Rhee, it's going to be a bumpy night

As covered in today's Washington Post, Rhee's latest proposed shakeup of the District's woebegone school system (where unfortunately all the children are NOT above average, when it comes to academic achievement) has brought the back-seat drivers out in droves. Her proposal: turn over 27 of the district's poorest performing schools to non-profit charter school operators. Despite the Chicken Little protests, it's an idea that has merit and precedent. After all, for the 30 percent of the District's public school children already in charters, the benefits have already become evident: in recent test results, D.C. charter school students outperformed their conventional public school peers in both reading and math, with 48 percent of charter high school students rated at or above proficient in math compared to 27 percent of their conventional public school peers. And Rhee may want to expand her pool of management applicants to the for-profit realm as well, if a look north to Philadelphia is any indication.

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