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.

4,578 charter schools.

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…

Maybe it’s a good thing that the President-elect hasn’t chosen his education secretary yet. While education buffs are chomping at the bit to be the first to have predicted the winner, and ready to read into the selection (in error) what will happen to education over the next decade, we’re thinking that the trouble in Chicago may not bode well for a leading contender, Arne Duncan.

We’ve not been the biggest cheerleader, even before the feds whisked away his Governor in the middle of the night. Duncan is praised for upsetting the status quo but in reality, he’s been a reformer-lite.  Don’t get me wrong. I’ll take a little over none any day. But Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 was carefully scripted to close down only the very, very worst schools (not all the bad ones) and to replace them with only a handful of  new  providers, who have  to contend  with many of the  same rules that  have  long interfered with  well-intentioned  efforts in  urban school  systems.  Chicago’s charter environment – 30 strong  - is stuck there, thanks to a legislative environment that has capped its growth. We can’t find much evidence that Duncan has been roaming Springfield’s halls trying to lift that since he arrived. He thinks he has enough authority to do what it takes. We disagree. The proof is in the figgy pudding – Chicago school kids are thankfully no longer in the worst school district in the nation (1987, Former Ed Secretary William J. Bennett) but they are still pretty near rock bottom. 

More “Not So Fast”