The city is now a living education laboratory, with more charter schools than non-charters.
In doing so, we have also been able to provide families with more and better options, both charter and non-charter, by creating 400 new schools.
Bad laws make bad charter schools.Ms Raymond says traditional public schools no longer have the excuse that they cannot be blamed for the poor performance of children because of their background; so competition from charters may improve standards in non-charters, too.Moreover, if charter schools go downhill they can usually be closed more easily than traditional schools.
Researchers found that charter schools actually spent more per-student on administration and less on instruction than non-charter public schools.
I think, however, it's a mistake to conflate the politics of charter schools with those of new non-charter schools.
If you count only the students in non-charter schools, Detroit's shrinking base of 45,000 students would not place among the top 100 largest districts.
This is pretty astounding, particularly when you consider the fact that virtually none of the students from these non-charter public schools qualified before the program was instituted.
By looking at charter and traditional public schools in Michigan, where both receive about the same operational funding, researchers found that charter schools actually spent more per-student on administration and less on instruction than non-charter public schools.
Students First has supporters such as Daniel Loeb, Paul Tudor Jones, billionaire hedge fund managers, Carl Icahn, another billionaire and Joel Klein, the former chancellor of the New York City schools who is an ardent supporter of charter schools at the expense of non-charters.
The union contends with reasonable logic that a dramatic multiplication of charters — not all of which are necessarily a better alternative — would drain money from non-charters, leaving many of the district's poorest students in the lurch.
Charter school leaders also have the freedom to adopt structures and processes that are often discouraged in non-charters, like extended learning time for students and performance pay to reward teachers for outstanding results.
