Correction #2: On Experimentation:
Charters are not “part of a bold new experiment.” Of the 32 states that have adopted charter school law, only a handful with very modest programs considered these an experiment. Most viewed charter schools as a necessary addition and innovation to the existing public school system.

Correction #3: On Ideology:
Proponents of charter schools cannot be boxed into categories of either “political conservatives” seeing charters as a step towards vouchers nor “moderates” seeing charters as a way to avert this step. Charter proponents are more representative of American diversity than any similar reform can boast to date. Most charter proponents see them as a way to finally educate kids. And they represent all (and no) political ideologies.

Correction #4: On Documentation and Study:
“Weeks of reporting in two states . . . and visits to nearly three dozen charter schools” are not the stuff that yields good research or journalism. Charters have been around since 1992, and now there are nearly 800 of them in 23 states and the District of Columbia. By fall, there will be over 1,000 in 25 states.

Correction #5: On Accountability:
USN&WR asserts that charter schools are commonly “beset with problems as bad as--and in some cases worse than--those found in traditional public schools.” Then that should mean that:

A: There are no waiting lists (but there are),
B: Parents are not satisfied (but over 90 percent are),
C: Teachers won’t flock to charters in search of better opportunities (but they do),
D: Charter growth and this alleged “free market” breed stupid consumers (which they don’t).

Correction #6: On Quality:
USN&WR asserts that while the best is good, “the worst has problems rarely encountered in traditional public education.” Consider these facts from traditional public education:

• 68% of ninth graders in Detroit never make it to graduation day; in Indianapolis, it’s 72%; 52% in Chicago and Denver; 73% in St. Louis, MO.
• With few exceptions, district employees get life tenure regardless of performance É
• É and as a result, it cost on average $150,000 in legal and administrative fees to fire an incompetent teacher.
• Nationwide, school bureaucracy represents in excess of 50% of all school employees.
• Achievement scores have lagged so significantly and steadily that the SAT was recalibrated in 1996 to artificially bring student scores back up the median.
• Financial abuses in district schools are uncovered daily of misspent, embezzled and privately consumed public funds.
• In California, scores for the entire state’s third graders skidded to the national basement after the state made a wholesale conversion to whole-language reading over phonics.
• In Maryland, 46% of state college entrants require remediation. In Florida it’s 60%.

Correction #7: On For-Profit Involvement:
Private companies are scorned for getting into charters, targeting (and succeeding with) at-risk and other “problem” children, yet making money at the same time. Questionable practices at a few schools in Arizona seem to breed generalizations across the 23 states and DC that now have operating charters, even though less than 10% of the national total are for-profit. Traditional district schools have actually set the pace in passing the special education task on to private providers – contracting for the education of at least 100,000 special-ed students nationwide, with about 40% of those representing students with the most serious emotional disturbances.

Correction #8: On Teachers:
The story shifts back and forth from Arizona to Michigan, and from specific information to sweeping generalities, including that “many of the charter teachers are low-paid neophytes [and] as a result staff turnover is high.” Yet in Michigan even the unions could uncover few neophytes. Where is the data on the other thousands working in charter schools? It doesn’t exist; the reporter’s “facts” are fiction. But here’s what we do know about traditional public school educators: 36% of public school teachers of academic subjects in 1997 had neither an undergraduate major nor minor in their main teaching field. Among social studies teachers, 59% were teaching what they had not studied. Other subjects also have similar proportions of such “neophyte” teachers: 39.5% in science, 34% in math, and 25% in English. The problem is most acute in schools where more than 40% of the students were from low-income families. In these schools, 46.7% of teachers were teaching outside the field in which they had prepared.

Correction #9: On Nepotism:
USN&WR alleges “widespread” nepotism in charters (giving ONE example). True or not, just how is this a problem? The difference between public schools and charter schools when it comes to nepotism and other issues of quality and accountability is this: public schools, in Arizona and elsewhere, should be forbidden from engaging in nepotism, because they are entirely unaccountable to any child or parent. Charters, on the other hand, can be — and have been — closed down within just months. If a family team, or any charter team, is not delivering, parents can and will withdraw their child and funding.

Correction #10: On Accountability, Part II:
USN&WR decries the alleged absence of state oversight to handle failures or problems. Researchers have argued that the right system that provides step-by-step practices and solutions for children at troubled charters hasn’t been created. The absence of state authority however, doesn’t mean no one’s minding the store. Operating under the authority and responsibility incumbent on all charter sponsors, Paul Hanley, Window Rock, Arizona’s new superintendent, has taken steps to close four charters. Similar action has resulted in about a dozen charter closures nationwide. When failures reach ten percent, we should rejoice -- it will mean that public schools are finally being forced to succeed or face the music. Would that failing district schools face such judgement and sentencing.

Correction #11: On Veracity:
“In Michigan, the majority of charter schools are sponsored by state universities … all of whose boards of trustees were appointed by Republican Gov. John Engler.” The innuendo is that somehow, Michigan charters are the result of an irresponsible Republican-induced free-for-all on the part of charter sponsors – despite threats from the state teachers’ union to blackball those universities’ schools of education. What the reporter cleverly conceals is that all public universities and school districts can charter. The fact that they don’t doesn’t make those who do disingenuous.

Correction #12: On Testing:
USN&WR says charters in Michigan and Arizona are not implementing testing systems, insinuating that they are seeking to dodge comparisons to their district counterparts and keep parents in the dark. In fact, all Michigan charter schools administer and report on MEAP tests, the same as districts do. In Arizona, all charter schools administer the Stanford 9, and this spring, the state is pilot testing a new assessment of state standards that the state superintendent there has called “non-negotiable” for all schools.

Correction #13: On Creaming:
Educational choices afforded by charters “may be fewer than many consumers realize”? Though still not available to many, the mere prospect of charters may indeed suggest to families that their children would be better off elsewhere – CER gets queries daily from parents desperate to know if charters are available in their state or city. Meanwhile, many a traditional public school knows that parents are seeking alternatives but do little or nothing to convey relevant information to parents.

Correction #14: On Selectivity and Special Ed:
The article implies that many, if not most, charter schools engage in pressure tactics to discourage “bad apple” students, but declares that “traditional public schools don't have that luxury.” Actually, non-choice district schools perfected the practice: excusing away scandalously high expulsion and dropout rates; relegating square peg students to special education classes; at magnet schools, administering admission tests. Meanwhile, study after study shows that charter schools target and teach a disproportionate number of at-risk students, including teen parents, adjudicated youth, and students who’ve fallen two and three years behind in their district schools.

Factually speaking, the Mr. Lyle Voskuil the reporter quotes as “the director of special education at 8 Grand Rapids area charters run by the National Heritage Academies” neither works for that company nor works for any Grand Rapids area charter schools. Voskuil is a private psychologist. It is unclear at this point whether his quote is actually accurate. The rest of the facts are not.

Correction #15: On Balkanization:
“The segregation of many charter schools along ethnic, racial, and religious lines has also created church-state conflicts.” Truly? How many? Where? On what basis? And how is it that textbooks used in public schools are now required and encouraged to promote African cultural tenets like Kwanza or alternative life-styles (remember “Heather Has Two Mommies?”), but it’s not OK, according to the reporter, for a parent to choose a school that more directly embraces an African school of thought or emphasizes moral character development? It seems some would prefer that children be forced to learn and abide by non-academic programs or ideas they may not want, but choosing one’s own environment is balkanization.