The whole charter school phenomenon is a tragedy. Hopefully we’ll be able to stop it before it squeezes a huge amount of public resources into private hands, but given the past 30 years of upwards wealth transfer I’m not optimistic.

There will always be a place for small alternative schools operating alongside the main public school system, but the fact all these private schools are laying bare (which is obvious if you actually think about it) is that educating a large range of kids from diverse backgrounds is a hard thing to do, with no silver bullets.

I laugh whenever I see one of these “new management style yields results at inner city school” stories. Sure. Get back to me in five years’ time, when everyone’s settled, the paint has started to fade, and your idealistic teachers have discovered that without a union contract, teaching is a long hard slog* from which you can be fired at a moment’s notice if an influential parent gets on the wrong side of you.

* At times. Teaching is also vastly rewarding.