Latest News and Comment from Education

Sunday, August 19, 2012

The Future of Public Schools in Arizona? « Diane Ravitch's blog

The Future of Public Schools in Arizona? « Diane Ravitch's blog:


The Future of Public Schools in Arizona?


Robin Hiller of Tucson’s Voices for Education writes that while it is true that charters in Arizona represent 25% of all schools in the state, they enroll only 9% of the state’s children.
The 25% number is misleading, because we have charters that have 17 students and public high schools that have 3,000. In 2008, Arizona had 1,480 ‘traditional’ K-12 and 477 charter schools. But according to the Arizona Dept of Ed and reports from each county’s superintendent’s office:
85% of Arizona students attend public schools, 9% attend charter schools, 4% attend private and less than 1% attend home schooled. If we want to fix education, we need to invest where the children are.
Another reader in Arizona writes in response to this post about “the wild west” of unregulated charters:
The situation in Arizona is distressing.  A significant number of charter