Washington DC: How to Wipe Out a Public School System

When we met in Los Angeles last month with teacher activists from NY, Chicago, LA, San Francisco and Washington DC, the DC crew gave an excellent presentation on the charter school movement in DC area.

Notice in the chart how currently there are 46,000 public school students and 26,000 charter school students. Projecting the chart, the numbers will equalize within two years. They are certainly reaching the point where the charters will be fighting it out with each other instead of the public schools for kids to cream.

Your math problems of the day:
In what year will the entire Washington public school system no longer exist?

Make a similar chart for your city and project a) when will the numbers be equal and b) when will there no longer be a public school left in your city?


Another part of the presentation was an analysis of the differences in charter school laws in Maryland and Virginia. I put it up on Norms Notes.

Charter Schools in Washington DC and the Surrounding Areas

For up to date information on what's happening in DC, check out Candi Peterson's
The Washington Teacher

Her latest post is very revealing, and familiar to us in NYC.

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