Green Dot's Barr: 'Make Private Schools Illegal'

How can the Federal Government Help Expand Charter Schools?

This from guest blogger Lesli Maxwell at Politics K-12:

With President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan talking so much about charter schools as a key part of their strategy to remake some of the nation's worst public schools, it was just a matter of time before charter founders and advocates would be summoned to Capitol Hill to tell their success stories. A half-dozen of them appeared today before the House Committee on Education and Labor to do just that.

... it may have surprised some of the committee members to hear Steve Barr, the brash founder of the Los Angeles-based Green Dot Public Schools, who was recently profiled in the New Yorker, offer up some of his more unconventional notions about how the federal government could help.

"Make private schools illegal and it will scale really fast," said Barr, who can't resist being a provocateur and is one of the more colorful schools pitchmen you'll encounter.

He suggested other more realistic, but still politically difficult, ideas:

• collaborte with teachers unions
• encourage states to designate someone other than a state schools chief (a governor or mayor, perhaps) to step into a school district that hasn't taken action to turn around chronically failing schools.

Keep your eyes on Barr, who has been in discussions with Secretary Duncan about expanding Green Dot's high schools to other large cities ...