The 1,700 charter schools need to be seen alongside 87,000 regular public schools and enroll less than one percent of all public school students. An all-charter system is not completely fantastical. Ten percent of all the kids in the District of Columbia are attending charter schools today. These are still small numbers but they are not nothing and one begins to wonder what would happen if it was 30 percent. Charters can indeed be an example of reinventing and renewing public education not abolishing public education, not surrendering the community's obligation to see that the next generation gets educated, not turning it over to a purely private marketplace, but not leaving this vital function in the hands of a government monopoly, either.
Charter schools point in a very promising direction.
Pioneer Institute Dialogues are a series of publications that offer perspectives on specific policy issues. Dialogues are the reproduced remarks of speakers and participants at Pioneer conferences, forums, and roundtables, and are published with their permission. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of Pioneer Institute or as an attempt on its behalf to aid or hinder the passage of any legislation.