I will use Cleveland again as an example, because I know it well and I believe it is typical of many cities.  Ohio is a great place for clear analysis of educational outcomes, because the state accountability and data systems are among the best in the country.  The Ohio Department of Education publishes key learning data for every school and district.  Information is publicly accessible, transparent, and includes student achievement, financial and teacher data.  Importantly, Ohio's accountability system fairly takes into account student achievement growth in addition to absolute attainment, so that high poverty districts can be fairly assessed.  I wish every state (or maybe someday even the federal government) had a system this good --- it would be an enormous help in cutting through the fog, in my opinion.  

This was the situation in Cleveland last year:  the city had 137 taxpayer-funded schools that were rated under the state's accountability system. 102 of them were regular district schools, which received about $13,400 per pupil in tax dollars, and 35 were charter schools, which received less than $8,000 per pupil in tax dollars.  Of these 137 taxpayer-funded schools, only 15 were rated Effective or Excellent by the state of Ohio.  Of these, 9 were regular district schools (some of which accepted only high achieving or gifted students) and 6 were charters (which by law had to take all students, but may have had some parental selection effect).  Among all 102 regular district schools, about 8% were Effective or Excellent, and about 50% were in Academic Emergency.  Among the 35 charters, about 18% were Effective or Excellent, and about 44% were in Academic Emergency.  These are the facts.  Charter schools were disproportionately clustered at the top, and were much more efficient for the taxpayers, but, like district schools, they had far too many failures.

There are many things to understand about the variables that affect school performance, no school is perfect, and there is plenty of ground to quibble about the fairness of individual school ratings.  But we simply cannot ignore the facts.  I believe these facts lead to three inescapable policy conclusions:

• The small number of urban schools that are performing well, whether regular public schools or charters, should be supported and encouraged to expand as fast as humanly possible without sacrificing results.  They should grow internally, start new schools, develop educators for the rest of the system, and have opportunities to contribute to turning around failing schools.
• Regular district schools do not have a monopoly on failure.  Charter schools that cannot show success after a reasonable time should be closed.
• Successful charter schools are great deals for us taxpayers. They should continue to be supported financially and funded to expand, even as we seek to preserve and learn from their efficiency.   

These conclusions are supported by the increasingly broad base of academic research that compares the outcomes of charter schools throughout the country to those of regular district schools.

The Obama administration's proposals and incentives for charter schools are, in my view, right on target and desperately needed. Our children's needs are far too great, and our supply of high-quality solutions is far too small, for us to deny support to excellent charter schools.

Tomorrow:  Building an Excellent Workforce of Educators