Good news! 200 charter schools closed last year

Legalize School Choice

The news that 200 public charter schools closed across the nation in 2013 is almost as good as the fact that 600 new such schools -- adding 300,000 more students to charter-school classrooms -- opened.

Why?

Because, as Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, points out: "it means low-performing charters cannot continue to take students and tax dollars."

When anti-choice members of Kentucky's public-education establishment play up the closing of charter schools, they unknowingly make a great case for school choice in the Bluegrass State and answer their own claims that charters are not held accountable.

After all, what speaks of accountability more than closing a failing school? (Incidentally, how many traditional public schools would be forced to close if the same level of accountability were applied to their performance?)And what speaks to a fear of accountability more than Kentucky educational labor unions' resistance to bringing charters to the commonwealth, despite support from education Commissioner Terry Holliday? http://eagnews.org/charter-school-enrollment-climbs-13-percent/