Charter schools, publicly funded but independent of local school officials, run on a shoestring. They receive, on average, 80 to 90 percent of the funding that regular public schools get. So what is the Clinton administration doing to help? Not pressing states to provide fuller funding for charter schools. It's convening a conference in Washington in November that will eat up hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal charter-school money.
Who's coming? Education officials from every state, many of whom loathe charter schools, and representatives of at least 300 of the 491 charter schools currently functioning. Many of these same people have gotten together often in the past year at 10 privately funded conferences on charter schools. Those gatherings, however, weren't geared for exploitation by Clinton administration officials eager to play up their supposed attachment to a popular education reform they would probably rather see fail.