While we’re on education today, I want to comment briefly on the absurd column by Alice Armstrong in the State Journal Register yesterday. In her column, Alice criticizes Collin Hitt (Disclaimer: I’ve co-written several articles with Collin) for allegedly “oversimplifying” the issue when he suggested that Illinois’ charter schools have been successful and that it’s time to lift the legislative cap on the number of schools allowed.

Alice writes:

If charter schools were the key to student success, I would be right next to Collin Hitt advocating an increase in their numbers. The data, however, doesn’t merit such a movement. Until it does, charter authorizers and legislators are wise to limit the number of charter schools allowed to operate in Illinois.

This is patently dishonest. I would like Alice, and all charter school opponents, just once to explain what they mean by “key to student success” and why understanding it should be a prerequisite to making public policy about educating children. Are public schools the key? Clearly not.

Alice herself notes that the “key” to student success is likely to be different for every child. She writes:

… each child has unique circumstances that shape his or her life. Biology alone plays a huge role in a kid’s school success; illnesses, vision and hearing deficits, sleep disorders and attention span are just a few of the conditions that impact a child’s ability to learn. Add environmental factors into the mix and the number of variables impacting kids’ learning skyrockets. Even two children raised in the same home by the same parents can perform very differently in the same school. What does this say about our ability to isolate all the factors that make one school a success and another a failure?

Here here. Every child is unique. But our public education system treats them as if they are all the same. If anything, charter schools are more sensitive to childrens’ special needs and put more effort into innovative curriculum to reach different kinds of children. KiPP is a great example. But state law prevents KiPP from opening more campuses in Chicago.

Public school defenders go to great lengths to point out that charter schools aren’t perfect. By doing so they purposely obscure the real point: BECAUSE all students are unique, BECAUSE we don’t completely understand the “KEY” to educational success, we must have various different options for parents to choose from.

We shouldn’t deny parents the right to choose charter schools just because there’s a chance it won’t help them. We should give them enough charter schools so that if one doesn’t work, they can try another.