Ortiz y Pino Nails it on Charter Schools

A while back, the Legislative Finance Committee published what can only be described as a report that is biased against charter schools (the original study link was broken at the time of this writing). Criticisms included performance, expense, and a supposed lack of accountability. We at the Rio Grande Foundation believe that charters, while not a panacea, can be a valuable alternative to traditional public schools. In fact, my own cousin is a charter success story.

So it was with great interest and pleasure that I read liberal lion of the New Mexico SenateJerry Ortiz y Pino’s opinion piece in today’s Albuquerque Journal in which he spells out the specific flaws in the LFC study and explains why charters actually operate at a significant disadvantage relative to their traditional public school brethren.

Ortiz y Pino’s column not only effectively defends charters against the repeated attacks by those who oppose education reform, but shows that left and right can agree that reform is indeed needed.