You've stated clearly my thoughts, and some of my experiences, clearly.

I just decided it might be helpful to share my family's experience.

including among Charters. My daughters, after 'alternative-type' early education, attended parochial school(s), and we were happy with the schools' ability and interest in focusing on individual students.

Good friends/neighbors attended a good charter (in DC,) sounds like yours, which closed too soon. They ended up in public high school (Maryland) and one to Cornell, the other to U. Md, both doing fine public service work, as young adults.

Its possible, but its not easy.

who see all that tax money and are using so called schools to syphon off as much as they can. This is a cruel hoax perpetrated on desperate parents who want a good education for their children and the best results for their tax dollars.

Many politicians are assisting in this swindle because they are bribed with campaign contributions and other emoluments.

It must be stopped.

and not likely it will be stopped in today's $$$ environment.

Or are some "nonprofits" paying out absurd salaries and bonuses to "consultants", rather than reporting profits ?

I would stay away from for-profit schools; they should be called "corporate" schools.

There is a huge variation in charters and you illustrated that well. State regs also vary. I suspect charters in your state are not required to hire certified teachers. That's the policy in my state.

In my city, we have 20 charters. One has consistently done well for 10 years. Another has improved in the last couple years. The other 18 are not succeeding. They serve 10,000 kids and the traditional public school district serves 15,000.

It's too bad that they had to sell to a chain. The profit motive does not have a place in education, imo.

I work in a high school that is a model for teacher-driven reform, that has great buy-in from the community. It was part of Stanford's redesign project for education. It has some bumps, and I think our scores went down this year, so that will probably be a focus of concern in the new academic year. Sadly the drive for high-test scores takes priority in the US. I would love all students to go to learning-driven schools, with lab schools and schools for focusing on vocation or avocation as the student might like.

It's the main reason my kids were in private and then a charter school. I believe that constant testing is a form of child abuse. Both my kids are bright but anxious people - they don't need the added stress of test after test after test. None of those tests actually measure real world performance anyway.

The focus on testing is one of my biggest issues with public education in the U.S.

This year was really one of the worst. Kids looked ill all during the month of April, during STAR testing. Parent groups are starting to organize an opt-out movement, which is great. I hope it catches fire!

http://www.fairtest.org/get-involved/opting-out

Parents Across America is also a fabulous group:

http://parentsacrossamerica.org/what-we-believe/

we homeschooled for 8 years, unschooled really. my kids did great on some tests and sucked on others. in the end they all have amazing brains, which is what i was trying to build.
test scores tell you damn little.

in each of those models, you will find more and less successful schools.

I am an educator. I attended mostly public schools, with a couple of private schools in the mix, in the 10 schools I attended K-12. I have taught in public schools and public "schools of choice;" not charters, but schools in the regular public school district that were not neighborhood schools, that offered alternative structure and methodology.

My experience has taught me a few things:

1. A small operation with deeply committed teachers and families will almost always outperform larger, more institutional type settings, regardless of the structure or methodology or philosophy. This is something that tptb definitely don't want to get any attention.

2. While some charter schools are worthy, the whole charter school movement is about privatizing public education, which is dangerous and destructive.

3. The same positive effects can be achieved through the regular public school system when there are fewer top-down mandates and policies, less standardization, and more flexibility at the local site level.

4. Most regular public schools would be thrilled to be given more flexibility and more autonomy to best serve their particular population of students.

5. The challenge is how to wrest the power away from the non-educators, the politicians, the deformers, and invest it in the actual stakeholders: the educators and the families they serve.

I agree with all your points. The solution, it is clear to me, is not to privatize and take funds away from the public schools. Rather, the solution is to reform the public schools to make them better. I believe that the Obama administration's approach to this has been misguided. I don't agree with bigger and more testing.

Teachers know what we, and schools, need to better serve our students, but the "reformers" aren't educators. They have an entirely different agenda.

High-stakes testing doesn't accomplish anything positive for students, schools, or the system as a whole.

most such "mom & pops".

Charters = "education deregulation," and just as the initial 'choice' in the deregulated airline industry ended with a much more limited 'menu,' much worse service, more fees for service & a lot of personal intrusion -- so will education deregulation -- schooling by impersonal globocorps unless you are super-rich.

This is not going to be good for most human beings. Only the 1%.