Good news: a failing charter school is shut down

The key idea behind charter schools is that good ones should be expanded and bad ones shut down. This is working in East Palo Alto, where the school board has voted to shut down a charter that is the worst-performing school in the district. The school is run by the Stanford Ed School and was founded by Linda Darling-Hammond, a prominent teacher educator. One of the highest-performing schools in the district is also a charter school, run by Aspire. Ironically, the Stanford team partnered with Aspire when it initially launched its charter. The partnership collapsed, reportedly because Aspire was too focused on academics for Stanford. The schools went their own ways, with vastly different results. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/education/16sfcharter.html