In case you hadn't heard there's a big charter conference going on in Atlanta (AJC, EdWeek). The House Republicans have conveniently revamped the federal charter school law at the same time. There are even some of those controversial Harmony charters on the new Newsweek best high schools list. There's a big push to create more charters (thanks to Team Duncan's mystifying focus on charter expansion in Race To The Top). But it's still unclear to me what kind of a future role charters have going forward, given the unaddressed issues surrounding quality -- as well as cost and self-sufficiency concerns and the seeming lack of any real impact on the rest of the public education system. I'm generally pro-change, and perfectly fine with the idea of charter schools, but, two years after studies showed us that charters might be popular with parents, and safe, but weren't much better academically there's STILL no real movement on quality issues --just lots of talk. Indeed, one of the most pro-charter groups out there, Democrats for Education Reform, this morning issued a list of concerns about the House charter bill focusing mostly on quality (see below). I get that charters have helped a lot of kids, and brought a lot of energy and talent into public education. I don't want that
