It's clear that the United States of America is not educating its children at the level it needs to.  In numerous books, Jonathan Koziol documents the dismal conditions present in urban schools.  Not only do these schools not have enough textbooks they do not have enough toilet paper.  These dismal conditions are made even worse by the fact that large urban school systems have layers of bureaucracy in their central offices. 

I'm not arguing that charter schools are the only way to improve America's schools.  Instead, I'm emphasizing that our children deserve an opportunity to receive the highest quality education possible.  Appropriate resources should be spent to insure that the brightest minds in America can develop excellent school systems.  Perhaps the New Orleans experiment will demonstrate that charter schools have potential in urban settings.  Perhaps this experiment will demonstrate the opposite.  If this occurs we must go back to the drawing boards.

The New York Times article explains that a study conducted by the Council of Great City Schools has found that charter schools do not teach differently than traditional public schools.  This might be the case.  However, I hardly trust a Council of Great City Schools study on the quality of charter schools. If charter schools are indeed effective, the ineffective school systems in the great cities of our nation will have the most to fear.  

 Only time will tell the effectiveness of charter schools.