On Sept. 4 the Washington Supreme Court threw out a 2012 voter initiative to allow charter schools. The lawsuit was brought by the state teachers union and argued charter schools violated the state's constitution. Justices agreed and now no new ones will be built and existing ones may get shut down. Are you OK with that? Did you vote for the initiative? Why?

If your child does not live in a poor neighborhood of a big city, the two studies suggest they would see no benefit from a charter school.

Yet, if the schools are no worse than public schools, and still provide options, innovation and creativity, then they should be allowed to continue educating and learning from their mistakes.

Some say the schools divert funding and talented teachers from public schools. Some say they are for-profit ventures thinly disguised as non-profit public schools. I suspect the truth of those claims may differ district by district.

Pasco struggles to educate its minority populations up to par with state standards. They say by the end of the 13 years of public ed the kids are on par. That's pretty good. But if charter schools sped up that process, and allowed more kids to fall in love with STEM fields earlier, that'd be good too.

What are your thoughts?

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