Richard Whitmire and I have a post over at Real Clear Education: Invest in Great Educators, Not Dysfunctional Schools.

The key point:

The federal government should ramp up annual spending on charter schools from $250 million to $1 billion. This could provide new educational opportunities for over 1 million children.

The feds recently spent over $3.5 billion on trying to turnaround failing schools.

At the very least, we should spend the same amount of money on growing schools that are actually working.

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National charter enrollment is up 14%. At nearly 3 million in enrollment, this is insane growth.

Remember: the most powerful force in the universe.

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Yesterday, I testified at the Georgia legislature on their bill to create a Recovery School District. Some reflections:

1. I found the experience enjoyable and highly interesting.

2. The testimony opened up with a prayer.

3. I found it challenging to speak to the tribe. There were, to my knowledge, at least three distinct political coalitions there. I tried to connect with each one of them while still remaining true to the substance of the message.

4. I found their questions to be quite political astute. Nearly every question was at least, in part, a political statement – and these statements were clearly made.

5. Someone asked me a question based on Mercedes Schneider’s NOLA ACT blog posts. I responded based on my own NOLA ACT blog post. It is interesting to see blogs framing the debate in legislative hearings.