On February 12, 2013 the Courier-Journal’s editorial board interviewed Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday and Associate Commissioner Susan Allred about the commissioner’s charge that “educational genocide” is going on in some of Jefferson County’s public schools.

In the course of the discussion, a Courier person made an off the wall comment about charter schools. The allegation: they’ve closed just about every charter school in New York. Find that ignorant assertion at 39 minutes and zero seconds into the Courier’s webcast.

Well, here are some facts, obtained from the New York State Department of Education’s web site.

As of September 18, 2012, New York had closed 20 charters. Here’s the list.

However, for the 2012-13 school year, the New York State Department of Education cheerfully indicates that 244 charter schools are currently approved to operate in New York State as of January 2013.

Adding the number of closed schools to the number currently authorized to operate gives a total of 264 charters that have been authorized in the state at some time or other. Doing the math, the 20 closures amount to less than eight percent of the total.

So, some math-challenged board member at the Courier (who probably places far too much trust in what the teachers union tells him) thinks closing less than eight percent of all the charters in New York constitutes closing just about every charter in the state. I suspect that Courier person must be a product of one of those disastrously under-performing math programs found in far too many Kentucky public schools.

May I suggest that Kentuckians expect better research from our news media’s staff before those media folks spout off and provide compelling evidence of ignorance.