I know everyone must be shocked—shocked—to find that charter schools in general don’t live up to their promise and in some cases are actually run by grifters.  I mean, no one could have predicted that a school run by a for-profit organization might not have its focus completely on the educate-the-kids thing.

(side note: Am I the only one to whom it has occurred that if it were possible to make a profit from running a school, we educators would be rolling in it?  Or states would be able to fund the rest of their budgets with the profits from the public schools?)

Still, let us agree that the basic principle behind the charter school movement is a valid one: if you allow these people to avoid standardized tests and/or “restrictive” rules and regulations, then Step 3: Profit!  Or at least highly educated, self-motivated learners.

If this is all it takes to lift children of poverty out of their slough of despond, then I’m all for it.  And so I propose the Lyles Accountability Trigger Law [LATL].

It is a very simple law.  Any time that a charter school is approved in any school district, whether by the district or by the state, then whatever terms are approved for the charter automatically apply to every school in the district.  See, that’s easy, right?  If freeing the charter school from <insert talking point here> will improve the education of its students, then why would you withhold that benefit from the rest of the children?  Ethically, how could you withhold from the majority of your students the great and glorious good that universally obtains to any charter school student ?

It is literally win/win/win for everyone everywhere!