Dr. Diane Ravitch, chief apologist for the status quo movement, blogs on Bridging Differences,

My beef with charter schools is that most skim the most motivated students out of the poorest communities, and many have disproportionately small numbers of children who need special education or who are English-language learners. The typical charter, operating in this way, increases the burden on the regular public schools, while privileging the lucky few. Continuing on this path will further disable public education in the cities and hand over the most successful students to private entrepreneurs.

In the same post she analyzes data on charter school performance vs. traditional public school performance, adding, “No one else has done this, so our blog will be the first place in which these results appear.” She might want to check out Bruce Baker’s School Finance blog, where he has done a similar analysis.