It was interesting to read your reflections on teaching in a charter school and your connections to the greater problems of the public school system. Your ideas on the distraction of charter schools in general was of particular interest to me. My first years of teaching were at a public school, and when I was deciding between continuing in education or attending law school I visited charter schools as an alternative. After spending a day at a local charter school, talking with the teachers and observing the students, I left feeling that the model of charter school education which I was exposed to that day was bound to fail. My opinion came more so from observing the teachers and discussing the amount of time involved in teaching classes that are double the size of a public school. From your experience, how much of IDEA's mechanisms do you think were attributible to funding, or to holding on to the notion of charter schools' ability to outperform public schools? If charter schools are able to receive money without the same regulations, I would lean towards believing that some of these schools are acting with an alterior motive. AbiolaFasehun - 10 Jul 2012