While preparing my latest Spotlight report, Buildings Don’t Teach Students, I stumbled on this comparison. It seems that the entire ruckus in Wake County is about how to provide seats for 60,000 to 70,000 new students over the next ten years.
I had an eureka moment when I noticed that 80,000 seats were added over the ten-year period 1996 to 2005 in Arizona without any state or district capital funding.
No contested bond issue elections. No fights over year-round schools. Nothing, but the market quietly adding seats that were filled with eager students in schools that parents selected. Arizona?s charter schools, which don’t receive capital funding, enrolled 80,000 students during that time period. How about following that model in Wake County? Read about it here.
