In a recent piece by
DCist editor Martin Austermuhle,
The Atlantic Cities looks at how school closings in D.C. and elsewhere affect kids and neighborhoods.
"There's something romantic about the idea of a neighborhood public school," he writes. "Not only is it the place where your child can walk or bike on a daily basis, it's where you can meet your neighbors, attend a school play and otherwise build a community.
"But that neighborhood school—the school were a child goes as a matter of right — is withering in many American cities. Buffeted by declining enrollment, lagging performance and an education reform movement obsessed with choice, many traditional neighborhood-based public schools are being closed."
Charter schools aren't necessarily the answer, though enrollment is up here in D.C. and elsewhere across the country. What parents want, as surveys show, is a good school that's close to home. Whether that's a public school or a charter school is, in some ways, irrelevant.
Read the whole piece
here.