I visited a KIPP Charter School in Washington, DC, on behalf of a niece with learning disabilities. I'm a retired teacher with two Masters' degrees, so I feel comfortable both evaluating schools and assisting students with learning difficulties. I NEVER SAW A WORSE FARCE FOR EDUCATION IN MY LIFE. The all-electronic teaching method was not useful, and I explained to the part-time person in charge of managing Special Ed. that if a child had been in their school since age four and was reading at only a second-grade level by age 10, then the fault was the school's, not hers.

Charter schools are great at marketing and at cherry-picking promising students and ignoring the rest. It is a crime against education and an indictment of public ignorance that we know so little of the great harm the charters do. Is the promise of a free and appropriate education over?