Columbia University Teachers College Professor Amy Stuart Wells writes,

policymakers should amend state laws to better support the high-achieving charter schools and close the rest. And I hope they will also remember the hard lesson learned from this reform: that free markets in education, like free markets generally, do not serve poor children well.

The economic argument for private schools, including charter schools, is that consumers will be able to close down those that fail. The test of the charter school system is not whether it produces bad schools, but whether the bad ones get winnowed out by the market.

It will be a great day when someone from a teacher’s college writes an op-ed saying that government should support the high-achieving public schools and close down the rest, and when it is recognized that government schools generally do not serve poor children well.

For Discussion. Do bad charter schools tend to be shut down more frequently than bad public schools?