THE fast-spreading charter-school movement is challenging three hoary axioms about American education: that only private schools can elude bureaucratic micromanagement, that worthwhile school choice can be achieved only through vouchers, and that the left-leaning politics of public education have barred the schoolhouse door against any encroachment by entrepreneurial capitalism.
No, this familiar trio hasn’t been vanquished, and this is no time to relax. But all three assumptions are in retreat before what some are calling the “reinvention of public education”-a battery of new sorts of schools and educational practices, among which charter schools are the most significant. Today, some seven hundred of these are in operation, enrolling about 170,000 youngsters. Twenty-nine states have authorized charter schools. In some jurisdictions—notably Arizona, Michigan, California, Colorado, Texas, and Massachusetts—they have become major parts of the education-reform scene. In the District of Columbia, despite a rocky start, the prospect of a dozen charter schools is the brightest spot in a grim picture.
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