Charter ramp-up

The state legislature hasn't even convened yet, but the Republican majority has vowed to quickly lift the cap on charter schools. The N.C. Alliance for Public Charter Schools, headed by former state Sen. Eddie Goodall of Weddington, is wasting no time. The group is taking sign-ups for a Feb. 7 seminar on starting new charters (click the link for details).

One of the things I'm curious about is how much monitoring there will be. If charter operators can get the money with little or no oversight, we're bound to get some bad apples in the new barrel. But expanding the state's charter-school staff to handle new applications and supervision may be a tough move with education money shrinking. I asked Rep. Thom Tillis of Cornelius, who's been tapped as speaker of the House, about that when we talked in late December and he said such details haven't been hashed out. It'll be interesting to watch.

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Shifting gears, reader Charles Gregory sent me a link to this Washington Post article on Raleigh's student-assignment battles and how they're connected to tea-party politics and the national debate over high concentrations of poverty. The headline signals a pretty one-sided perspective, but the article explores a variety of views.