Charter Schools are all about experimentation and choice.

The broad range of different Charter Schools results in mass experimentation and choice.  One school tries to combine multiplication tables with the active physical exercise of running in place.  Another school tries to focus on meditation and remembering what 7 times 8 equals.  Another charter school simply tells their students that they are staying in class until each student can recite perfectly what 4 times 9 equals.

Parents then choose the school that “appears” to produce the best results.

On the other hand, some believe that education is simply too important to allow citizens choice when it comes to which school their children should attend. So these perfectionists and central planners form a committee and this committee votes on various choices (remember the quote “a camel is a horse designed by a committee”?)  

Unfortunately the more important the “controllers” think the function is, the more likely they will demand exactly how you do it, where you do it, what you charge for it. They hate mass experimentation, and they generally fight consumer and citizen choice.

It is too bad because experiments tend to demonstrate what works and what doesn’t.  Committee decisions reward the ability to talk longer and wear down the opposing ideas.

John