The District is at the epicenter of a recent nationwide explosion in charter schools. Once seen as an experiment in applying "private sector" solutions to public education, charters are now proliferating in many urban-- and some suburban-- school districts. D.C. now boasts nearly 60 charter schools. We begin a multi-part conversation about the future of the charter school movement in the Washington region.
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2010-01-11/future-charter-school-movement
The Future of the Charter School Movement
Listen Monday, Jan. 11, 2010 at 12:06 p.m. in Business, Education, Politics, Society
CD or 
TRANSCRIPT of this program.
Guests
Thomas Nida
Chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board; Executive Vice President at United Bank
Jay Mathews
Education columnist for the Washington Post
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Comments
Regarding school performance measurement, FOCUS (Friends of Choice in Urban Schools) has developed and placed on its web site easy-to-understand interactive graphs that show how all D.C. public schools have performed on the D.C. CAS since 2006. The graphs make it possible for you to compare each school’s progress over time to that of other public charter and DCPS schools.
You can view the graphs by following this link: http://focusdc.org/schoolquality.html
Thanks for this show and for the recognition that a series on the topic of charter schools in the Metro area is in order. Tom Nida and Jay Mathews did a bang-up job of educating listeners about how charter schools can work to offer choice and accountability in public education.
As a public school teacher and charter school developer in Montgomery County, I've learned that no matter how many times we explain it, many people (like my colleague who called in from Silver Spring) believe that charter schools siphon money from the public school system. As you know, this is simply not true: public charter schools ARE public schools and the per-pupil allocation follows the student, so it's a question of moving the money from one public school to another .
My suggestion for combatting this misconception--and Tom was careful about it--is to consistently use language that clarifies the relationship: charters should always be referred to as "public charter schools" as distinct from "traditional public schools" or "district-run public schools" so that it's easy to remember that charter schools are publicly-funded just like existing public schools. Until we get folks past this, it's hard to get them to hear how that money might be spent to offer children and families excellence with choice.