We can get you that number
Q: And how many charter schools are there in the country about?
SECRETARY DUNCAN: I don’t have a hard number for you. We can get you that number.
Q: Thousands?
SECRETARY DUNCAN: Yes, thousands, thousands. Yes.
(Press gaggle aboard Air Force One en route to Madison, WI - 11/4)
4,578.
That’s the answer you were looking for aboard Air Force One yesterday, Mr. Secretary. We’ve counted it, reported it, documented it. Sorry it wasn’t at your fingertips.
Thanks for supporting good charters. We actually support great charter schools, and we know that most are great, through scores of studies and reports over recent years. We also know by seeing who attends them, who waits to attend them, who escapes bad alternatives when they are available.
But we also support great charter laws, because without great laws, you can’t have great schools.
The small percentage of schools that some data suggest aren’t working are compromised by two things - first, bad charter laws that leave the same bureaucracies in control of the schools that are in control of the other bad public schools, and second, political opposition that sucks the energy and resources of the average charter school leader working on a shoestring budget with no PR department to fight the lies that are often spread about them.
Yes, good charter schools are right. There are boatloads of them.
And bad charter schools get closed.
657 of them have been closed over the course of the movement’s history.
How many bad public schools have closed? Not many.
Help us make all charter schools great, Mr. Secretary. Push for more than lifting caps and start talking about how most of them are really good. We can give you that data, too…
