More than One Third of DC Public School Kids Now in Charters

All three of my kids head off to school this week in DC as the public schools reopen.  Buried in all the back to school stories is this remarkable passage from a Washington Post story by Bill Turque:

Regular public school enrollment in the District has declined by more than half since 1980, while the public charter community has grown dramatically since the independently operated schools began in the 1990s.

More than a third of the city's public students attend charter schools, which project an enrollment of about 28,066 this fall, up more than 10 percent from last school year's 25,363. Some analysts say public charter enrollment could surpass the regular school population by 2014.

I'm not sure even the people living here in DC understand what an extraordinary transformation is taking place in our local schools.  As someone who was a very early advocate of the charter concept (back when there were fewer than ten in the whole country) I am amazed to see this level of transformation happen so quickly; and in such a tough place.....