Washington, D.C.: Mr. Mathews, I come from a long line of teachers (I myself am not one). Whenever I talk to my relatives, I walk away believing that the breakup of families is a major cause of our educational problems. They often cite that students do not do their homework, discipline problems are worse than they used to be, and parents are not available for after school conferences. For example, these problems do not plague the school system in Japan. I would appreciate your comments on these changes in society.

2X2=4, "ai" is pronounced long "a." Charter schools cannot perform magic; some rules of learning are simply that: rules that must be memorized.

Jay Mathews: I am afraid i would have to agree with you, although the effect has not been as disastrous as i would have expected. if you look at very long trend lines, schools are no worse and students are not learning any less than they were 20 years ago on average. And in high schools, there is definitely a higher level of learning for the best students because of the growth of AP and IB. Since family income is such a strong determinant, broken middle class families still produce kids that do pretty well. It is the broken working class families that have suffered. For them, just one parent at home means much less supervision and much less stimulation, and that is why schools serving those kids have to work so much harder. Some, however, including charter schools like KIPP, are doing very well by those kids.

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Alexandria, Va.: The annual Phi Delta Kappa educational survey has consistently shown that parents prefer school systems where they have choices, and that having choices is one of the more, if not the most important elements in creating support. This seems to be borne out by your reporting. Do you feel that the increased level of parental support occasioned by having choices will itself ultimately lead to better schools across the board in D.C.? And is there a lesson in this for school systems across the country?

Jay Mathews: I think that is exactly right. Notice one thing that we didnt emphasize, but perhaps should have. Regular public school enrollment is done since charter schools came to DC, but OVERALL public school enrollment is way up in the city. That is a good sign, and the sucess of many of these schools shows to me this is a good idea that more cities should adopt.

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Washington, D.C.: Excellent article today's paper. It covered the significant issues about charter schools, especially parents'support of inadequte and failing schools. In some future piece, you should unmask the SAT 9 scores. They are reported as an average across grades. Break out the scores by grade and you see that the longer students are in school --regular and charter -- the lower the scores. Thanks.

Jay Mathews: Interesting topic. i will encourage Justin Blum, our DC schools reporter, to get into it. I must emphasize that much of the best stuff in these stories is Justin's. He is half my age, but twice as good a reporter. He would have been handling this chat except for the fact he is down in Guatamalan, brushing up his Spanish for future interesting assignments.

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Springfield, Va.: I had to lower my standards for my GT World History classes to "teach to the SOL's." My GT students passed with flying colors a practice SOL test the FIRST week of school. I had to spend the rest of the year doing non-enrichment "stuff." Did you find that you had to lower your own personal standards as I did and how did you cope with this issue? Do you agree with me that administators just simply do not have what it takes to challenge this program and why do you suppose they do not just declare a war against the program?

Jay Mathews: First you have to explain to me why you lowered your standards. It makes no sense. If your students were sure to pass the SOLs, why pay any attention to preparing for them at all? Why change anything that you were already doing? The many good teachers i have asked about this say they just keep doing what they have been doing, and the SOL results come out fine.

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Boston, Mass.: As a college student becoming certified to teach public school, I couldn't help but notice some of the teachers' behavior--both good and bad -- as described in your article. My question is regarding whether or not you believe some additional training is in order for these teachers and if so, what form should that training take? (e.g. if not actual state certification, then perhaps something similar to the six week program TFA gives its corps members etc.)

Jay Mathews: The more we can do to train teachers ON THE JOB, facing real kids with a coach nearby, the better off we will be. Most young teachers still get thrown in with little help, and that is bad. It is impossible to learn the important things you need to learn in an ed school lecture hall, listening to some professor.

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Arlington, Va.: You write today that the Montessori school in Frederick County, Md., was the first and remains the only charter school in the Washington suburbs. As the parent of two children who attended H-B Woodlawn, which you rated very highly in Newsweek recently, I wondered why Woodlawn doesn't qualify as a charter school?

Jay Mathews: Because it answers to the Arlington school district like any other regular school. it is instead, in the common parlance, an alternative school, with different rules and traditions, more student democracy, part of a movement that grew up in the 70s, but it does not have an independent director and board. It is still a sensational school, of course.

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Washington, D.C.: How much is the budget for each of the two Chartering Authorities? And who decides the amount of money for these offices? Compare this with the amount of money the DCPS central office receives to oversee the public schools.

Jay Mathews: An excellent question to which I do not have the answer. That was Justin's part of the story. Both of the monitoring offices are pretty small, however, so i suspect their costs are not high, and would certainly be less per student than the DC central administration.

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Austin, Tex.: Do any of the charter schools have alternative forms of assessment? The point is raised in the article that tests should not be the sole factor in judging a school. What other ways are there to determine if a school is succeeding- and not just in math or reading, but in self assurance, confidence, ability to keep students away from gangs, drugs, and teen pregnancy, etc.? It seems to me that standardized tests completely ignore some of the deepest problems with youth. Are these problems more or less important than proficiency in math and reading?

Jay Mathews: The leading charter supporting group, the Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS) has, i believe, a regular poll of parents to get the satisfaction rates for each charter school. that is a very telling measure, but sadly they have declined to share those results with the press so far. They do give awards to the schools that score highest.

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Washington, D.C.: Research is always a key factor in choosing the right school and in your article you stated that Simms family chose Hyde Leadership PCS based on a flyer that came in the mail. But Hyde is a sister school to character focused, college prep board schools in Main and Connecticut which were founded in 1966 and they have a well developed application and interview process in place which introduces both parents and students to Hyde. They also have a website that describes the schools focus and history, and Hyde’s stellar record of over 95 percent of the students going on to college. There is also an open house that provides additional information and an orientation program for new families. On top of all that the current Head Master is a graduate of the Hyde Bath, ME boarding school and has an in depth knowledge and unique perspective of the Hyde schools that can’t be found at any of the other charter schools.

Jay Mathews: Yup. There are lots of ways to learn about Hyde, but most of the parents in DC who picked it did not go that route, as far as we can tell. They heard it was good. They liked what they heard at a meeting, and they signed up.

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Herndon, Va.: Mr. M: A view from the "burbs:" I've had two sons graduate from high school, one two days ago at Herndon HS, the other two years back at Thomas Jefferson. If nothing else, having them at two different schools taught me your child can get an excellent education at any school IF, IF, the staff, teachers and cirriculum are right for YOUR child. It should be the same for a charter school -- it won't be good for your child just because it's different -- there has to be a "match."

Jay Mathews: Truer words were never typed.

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Washington, D.C.: I recently read about the founding of a D.C. Charter School Association by the heads of local charter schools to foster quality. I believe that a such an association will do a better job of regulating the quality of public charter schools than the cash-strapped D.C. public schools could. What is your opinion?

Jay Mathews: It is a nice idea, and has great possibilities. But one must note that it has no real legal powers, as the chartering authorities do, over individual schools.

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Arlington, Va.: How are charter schools being affected by state cuts in education? I've read about public schools in Maryland and Virginia laying off teachers. Are these cuts causing similar situations for charter schools?

Jay Mathews: I don't know what is happening in other charter heavy places, like Arizona, although i suspect they will suffer from state budget cuts. The DC schools have been doing all right, and none of the charters we spoke to complained about cuts in the funds they are entitled to. Most of their problems have to do with their buildings, spotlighted in tomorrow's pieces.

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Washington, D.C.: I'm enrolling my child into the New Barbara Jordan PCS this fall and wanted to know how they were rated for their first time being opened.

I really believe from my interviewing and talking to the teachers and staff that Barbara Jordan is really ideal for my child and my child will learn skills in which weren't taught in past area schools.

Jay Mathews: We visited them very early in the year, when they were still recruiting students and getting started. I thought the staff was very energetic and said all the right things. It is too soon to see how their test scores look, but i am pleased to hear your assessment. Keep me in touch at mathewsj@washpost.com.

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Maryland: Are charters schools also considered private schools? If not, what's the differences?

Jay Mathews: Nope. They are public schools. Nobody pays tuition to go there. There are no special entrance requirements. And they have to take the same standardized tests the regular schools take.

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Leesburg, Va.: What is the general process to getting a Charter School open? Is it like starting a non-profit? What has been the rate at which these schools have opened recently? I am wondering if the new start-ups are because of the general disapproval of the current system and is starting your own school the right idea?

Jay Mathews: You fill out a very long application and submit it to your chartering authority, in this case the two I mentioned. In some states, universities or state school boards can charter schools. In DC, they have only been chartering one out of every 10 applications or so recently, but the rate was much higher early on. The startups are fueled both by disdain for the general system and more importantly by a very specific idea of how kids could be taught better.

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Washington, D.C.: Mr. Matthews,

I thought the article in the paper today was was pretty objective about charter schools. The only concern I have is that people want to continuously compare the test scores of charter schools to traditional public schools. Most of the charter schools are less than five years old. How many years have DCPS schools been in operation? Is this a fair comparison?

Jay Mathews: Some people would say that the fact that the DC schools have been around longer puts them at a DISadvantage. They are stuck in old methods that have not worked. If you can think of a better way to judge schools objectively than standardized tests, i would like to hear it. But my attention is drawn to the fact that the KIPP DC: Key Academy, which I thought had the best plan and leadership when it started two years ago, has produced some of the highest test scores in the city. So those scores, in my view, were measuring something real.

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Augusta, Ga.: What, if any, commonalities do successful charter schools share?

Jay Mathews: An easy question. Focus, focus, focus. All teachers are teaching and disciplining in the same way. Assessing the same way. And cooperating closely with each other. The best schools generally have longer school days and school years, and have teachers that all believe in the schools method and mission.

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Washington, D.C.: I was part of two experimental, pre-charter schools at Capital Children's Museum in the early 90's -- OPTIONS School and the Model Early Learning Center.

OPTIONS was funded by the city as a place to take at-risk 7th graders and give them a boost to get them through high school. MELC was a pre-school based on the Regio Emilia schools in Italy.

Both did some amazing things and got some rather remarkable results, but not results that would be measured by national standardized tests. With OPTIONS, we were really impressed to find kids with perfect attendance, for example, when they had missed 140 days or so at their previous school.

I think the best of these experiments celebrate learning and inspire joy in children as they explore and learn about their worlds. At their worst, they become profit-oriented corporate brainwashing centers teaching to tests.

Our biggest obstacle, in fact, was the required testing, which took time away from real teaching and real learning.

Did you find much of a difference between the clearly corporate schools like Edison and Marriott and the others? Do you think it would be better to come up with local standards for excellence, and avoid the "No (or is it "Every"?) Child Left Behind" crud that is being forced on teachers?

Jay Mathews: If I am a parent and I send my child to your school, i want her to learn the basics---reading, writing and math---before we get to anything else. If you can suggest a way to show me that my child has learned things that does not involve standardized testing, I would love to see it and write about it. I have been looking for a long time, and short of the Central Park East high school methods----lengthy interviews with kids at the end of the year---nobody has come up with anything, and the interviews are, sadly, easy to abuse. It is not the corporate connection, but the leadership of the school. The two Edison elementary schools here, one of which I have visited often, are doing very well. The Marriott School less so.

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Washington, D.C.: Did you get information on whether the kids at D.C. charter schools improved or stayed the same in areas other than test scores? For example, greater student attendance, greater parental involvement, higher numbers of post-graduate plans (for the high schools), lower rates of school violence, etc.

Jay Mathews: We have some attendance figures, but they are hard to verify. The other assessments you mention, all good ones, have not been done in any regular way yet.

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Silver Spring, Md.: I was born and raised in the District and my parents divorced largely over the fact that my mother insisted on private schooling while my father wanted public education. The underlying point was the additional expenses that come with the private schools (even the so-called "cheaper" ones like St. John's where I went.)

The District, in trying to attract a major league baseball team, is working the wrong side of the equation here. If city services and public schools were better here, they wouldn't lose taxpayers to Montgomery and Fairfax counties. It's unfortunate that charter schools aren't doing a better job, but what's the alternative to these schools? It's going to be up to the parents to do their due diligence and hope for the best.

Jay Mathews: Again, I cannot quarrel with anything you have written here.

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Augusta, Ga.: Would you agree that, rather than being "a determinant" of student achievement, family income is really "a predictor" of such achievement?

Learning is not determined by income, but by effort.

Jay Mathews: Very true. I stand corrected.

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Washington, D.C.: Hello --

How do you suggest parents evaluate a charter school they are considering sending their child to? Especially a new one, with little or no established track record?

Jay Mathews: If it is part of a chain that has a track record, search their website for other schools, call them, and ask for the names and numbers of parents who have kids there. If it is brand new, I think you have to have at least a 30 minute conversation with the principal to see if she shares your values and has a plan that makes sense. If she won't see you for 30 minutes, don't go to that school.

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Washington, D.C.: I volunteer as an after-school tutor at a NW D.C. charter school. I am really impressed by the dedication of the faculty, the administration, and the students. This school caters to at-risk youth, but does a great job of meeting the challenge.

However, I also soon became very aware that this school has a serious fund-raising machine working behind the scenes. I get regular solicitations for donations and invitations to fund-raising dinners complete with famous guest speakers including poets, diplomats, and local politicians.

I wonder how well the school would perform had it not had all this extra money coming in, or had its founders not had the political connections necessary to attract the attention it gets in the media (for example, The New Republic published an article by the founder of this school, discussing how the kids get harrassed by the police).

I'm not badmouthing the effect of the fundraising and media attention: I saw first-hand kids go from being dropout risks to being excited about learning. The high profile helps attract donations from charities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The extra money provides excellent services to the kids. The kids at this school have access to new computers and textbooks, have regular field trips, get free dinners every night, and a variety of other services way beyond what any DC public school could afford. The money pays for administrators to stay late, so that they can organize the hordes of volunteers that show up every weeknight to work with the kids.

Here's what I'm getting at: In the debate over charter schools vs. public schools, it is absurdly unfair to compare this school, with its top-shelf financial and political backing, to a typical D.C. public school. However, this school is now the darling of pundits that want to rip on the D.C. public school system in particular, and U.S. public schools in general, but these pundits always neglect to mention the big-time money supporting this school.

To these pundits, I would say "Yeah, charter schools work great, especially when they're founded by well-connected individuals, named after famous poets, and can attract hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from outside charitable foundations."

Like I said above, I have nothing but respect for this charter school; that's why I'm not mentioning its name. However, I feel like this private backing is a big part of why some charter schools flourish while other charter schools crash and burn, and, this little secret somehow keeps getting left out of the debate.

Any comments?

Jay Mathews: It sounds like they are somehow cheating, but i think both you and I agree that they are not. We both want more money to go into educating our kids. Charter schools provide a way. It is hard to get someone to pay more taxes to fund the neighborhood school with the tenured teachers who have gotten tired and phone in their lessons. It is much easier to raise money for the new charter school with teachers eager to show what they can do. The result is more money going to the schools, like yours, that do the best job in helping low-income kids. What could be wrong with that? What is the practical alternative?

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Vienna, Va.: Jay, I don't have a charter school question but a private school one.

There are certain area schools such as: Stone Ridge. St. Anselm's, St. Albans that are clearly "the best" schools in the area for overall education. They also cost the most. Is it just the money, or something else, that really separates them from the publics and the rest of the traditional privates like DeMatha or Paul VI? I ask this because as we visit the many schools we are considering for our kids and discuss this with others, it readily becomes clear that these schools are truly special. HELP?! Thanks.

Jay Mathews: I have gotten a pretty good look at DeMatha and its staff and they seem very good to me. The differences you are seeing are mostly reflections of a significant difference in the incomes of the parents. But I have found many good schools, public and private, that do a terrific job despite the fact that many of the parents are poor. I became an education writer because i stumbled across one such school, Garfield in East LA, 20 years ago. Take a good look at the courses and talk to the principal before you rule a place out.

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Washington, D.C.: Mr. Mathews, It seems to me your article is geared towards certain schools more than others. I'm familiar with The New School and I believe the picture you painted of them is incorrect. You spoke in great lengths about The New School, however your article quotes that of a disgruntled former employee. How creditable is your source?

Jay Mathews: Justin visited the New School twice, and in our story reported exactly what he saw---kids playing music rather than studying, kids booking vacations rather than studying, very low attendance. We quoted the teacher who had been fired. We also quoted a parent who liked the school, and we noted that they had been warned for deficiences.

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Washington, D.C.: I am a parent of a charter school student, and I must say the article was on target. They are not all equal, and parents should do their research. I did and narrowed down the schools that I thought would suit my child best. It was tough getting him in, but I am now hooked.

Jay Mathews: Very good to hear. Parents will make or break this experiment.

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Washington, D.C.: Has there been any comparison of the test scores of charter schools versus the test scores of schools current charter school students left? Seems like that would be easy to complile. I wonder if the better DC schools are not averaging out the worst ones where many charter school kids would be forced to go without this option.

Jay Mathews: It would be great to be able to do that, as we noted in our story. So far the computer systems are not sophisticated enough, but we are moving in that direction.

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Brookland, Washington, D.C.: Isn't some of the success of the good charter schools due to smaller class sizes and overall smaller size? I seem to recall some research that smaller schools are better, for some reason.

Also, do you have any idea what percentage of D.C.'s children go to public (charter or otherwise) versus private (parochial or independent). As a DCPS product myself, I've always wondered.

Jay Mathews: I think school size can have an impact, although in this group of 39 schools we found very small ones, like ARE, that were not doing well, and very large ones, like Friendship Edison Chamberlain, that were.
I am told that about 15 percent of school age children in DC are in private schools, which is 50 percent more than the national percentage. I just did a little arithmetic and that works out to approximately 74 percent of all DC school children in regular public schools, 11 percent in charters and 15 percent in private. I bet we will eventually have more in charters than private, but beyond that my crystal ball is cloudy.

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Washington, D.C.: I am somewhat confident the Charter School Board is there to ensure a better education and a better alternative to public schools. What other measures are there in place to ensure these students are getting a better education or a better alternative is being provided if in fact test scores are not the major indicator of success? I would also like to follow-up to statements in your article which note, charter schools are not found in upper middle class and affluent areas and therfore generally serve the same lower socio-economic population that urban public schools do. Therefore, if in fact test scores appear to be no better and even worse in charter schools, why are Federal funds used to support another overall failing system? Since there are successful schools in the public school system and a few in the charter system, why not merge and save the division and allocation of Federal Funds and the additional monies spent on administrative salaries and benefits? It seems as though the real reason these dual boards and administrative centers exists has be lost among all the titles. The real reason they exist is to provide the best education possible for all children in their jurisdiction? I believe any charter school in existence longer than two years that can not not produce concrete results in terms of sound curriculum and improving test scores, should be closed immediately. A day is too long in the life of a child's education to waste. For schools to remain in operation, where the "school is only a school on paper" is a travesty. After all, charter schools are designed to provide a better education and a better alternative to a public school education.

Jay Mathews: very provocative thoughts. i like the idea of watching the scores closely, and i like your emphasis on improvements in those scores, rather than reaching a benchmark. Some of these students come from homes where it is very difficult to learn, and the schools need to be preserved if they are adding some value. I think the comparison between charters and regular schools in DC is distorted somewhat by the fact that there are no charters in the largest middle class neighborhoods, and so i suspect the percentage of middle class kids in charters is smaller than it is for regular schools here. since income, we have agreed, is an important predictor, that should be kept in mind.

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Jay Mathews: Thanks for the great questions. Next time we will put Justin in the hot seat.

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