Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 By Matthew Hisrich
The “local accountability” red herring
["Lottery to pick new charter schools," The Columbus Dispatch, 27 July 2005.]
Legislators claim they are concerned with the quality of charter schools and then develop a way to limit their number that is so far removed from evaluations of quality as to be absurd:
More than 30 proposed charter schools will be denied the ability to open this fall at an Ohio Department of Education lottery Friday.
Of the 62 hopefuls not sponsored by a school district, only 30 will be allowed to open because of a new cap set by the state budget.
Schools not selected in the lottery – which will pick the winners in a bingo-style method – might have to turn away students, fire staff and try to get out of building leases.
The amazing thing is that The Department of Education has the gall to defend this nonsense:
“This is all about local accountability,” said J.C. Benton, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education.
If the purpose is merely to restrict choice in education – which playing bingo with children’s futures clearly is – trying to claim the opposite only rubs salt in the wound.
[Matthew Carr, "The Real Story Behind the Charter School Cap," The Buckeye Institute, 27 May 2005.]
