Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.

We will continue to chase rainbows unless we recognize that they are rainbows and there is no pot of gold at the end of them

We should totally ban for-profit charters. For-profit's first obligation is to its stockholders, not to its children.

If charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the rationale for authorizing for-profit charters or charter management organizations with high-paid executives, since their profits and high salaries are paid by taxpayers' dollars?

I support charters, but the right kind of charters. I support charters that support kids who have the highest needs. A charter should be targeting students who are in serious trouble. It should serve students who didn't succeed in public schools when it can help them. Or, at least, charters should agree to accept similar proportions of the kids with the highest needs.

There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions.

An attack on public education is an attack on democracy.