Education Reform Balancing Act

The Obama budget outline balances a line that was widely applauded by Republicans  from the president’s Wednesday night speech to Congress—“we will expand our commitment to charter schools”—with a line to appeal to teachers unions and other tradional Democratic constituencies who are skeptical of independent but publicly-funded schools.

The Budget increases funding for the Charter School program to support the expansion of successful charter school models, while increasing State oversight to monitor and shut down low-performing charter schools. [Emphasis added]

That, of course, is the advantage of a lousy public charter school as compared to a lousy public school run by a traditional board of education. The charter school can more easily be be shut down for low performance.