A second one is already scheduled for this coming spring, to be declared by President Bush. In the District of Columbia, meanwhile, the movement is perhaps at its strongest. Ten percent of the city's 70,000 public school students now attend charters such as the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom School, and the Techworld Public Charter School. Nearly everyone on either side of the debate agrees that D.C.'s charter population will grow even bigger in coming years. Predictably, the charter experiment has spurred considerable speculation among education experts.
Proponents say it'll free teachers from bureaucratic red tape.
Opponents say it'll wreck teachers' standard of living while channeling tax dollars to educational hucksters. What no one has talked about, though, is the movement's cultural impact. From inner cities to suburban tract districts, the big general-interest high school has for decades been a common piece of the American educational landscape, and more importantly, of the adolescence of most Americans. For all the differences between Hughes' Highland Park, Illinois and most other places, his movies appealed to wide audiences because they took place in an arena whose rituals and stock characters most viewers could relate to. That's no reason to support or oppose charters, of course.