This AP story (Charter schools expand with public, private money) is best understood as a courtesy to the charter school folks who are having a big annual conference this week, or a "beat sweetener" (a story written to curry favor with powerful sources) or ... a mistaken reaction to a press release? Because charter schools aren't in great shape, no matter what the charter folks say. They've lost a lot of their national expansion funding; there's increasing awareness that the quality isn't uniformly any better than anyone else's; they're involved in less than 5 percent of the turnarounds going on
