As I was doing some research about virtual charter schools, I came across an article that caused me to laugh out loud.
It appeared in the Star-Ledger, the main newspaper in New Jersey. It was titled “State Has Virtually No Reason to Not Give Online Charter Schools a Shot.”
It said the state should stop “dithering” and should promptly approve an online charter school. No delay, no moratorium, approve the online school now.
It was published on July 11, 2012, as the state’s Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf and the state board of education were mulling a decision to authorize the megacorporation K12 to open an online charter school in New Jersey.
The reason I laughed out loud was that the article appeared on the same day that the FBI raided the offices of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter. See here too.
And it appeared several months after the New York Times published a withering expose of the terrible academic record of K12.
And it appeared fourteen months after the CREDO study of virtual charters in Pennsylvania, which showed they get awful results.
The invaluable New Jersey blogger Jersey Jazzman showed the fallaciousness of the claim that the state should not wait for more research but should promptly approve a virtual charter school.
Truly, this is one of those laugh out loud moments. They are so few these days that we should enjoy them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The reason I laughed out loud was the split infinitive in the article’s headline. Time to go back to school.
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it has been ok to split infinitives for going on 20 years now….maybe you should go back to school…
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I want to really know. Can you find someone to truly agree?
Where is the Academie Francaise when we need them?
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wanna know what else is funny? i just turned on c-span2 to see that the dept. of ed. is having a bullying prevention summit. how ironic.
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“Truly, this is one of those laugh out loud moments. They are so few these days that we should enjoy them.”
The only humor I see here is of the gallows humor genre, because moronic “reforms” like the one discussed here are being approved, with little consideration, every day. If you’re able to laugh as the executioner tightens the noose around your neck, you can laugh day and night every day of the week.
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Maybe it is not right to laugh when someone looks ridiculous. But it is laughable when someone writes an article saying “there is no reason not to approve a K12 franchise” on the same day that the FBI raided the office of Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter. It suggests something like irony. Irony makes me laugh. Sometimes. And when you add to that coincidence the overwhelming evidence that students in cyber charters do worse than those in real schools, the article is even sillier.
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Dear Star-Ledger Onion,
You might want to know that you misspelled “Onion” in the heading for this section.
Best Wishes,
A Thinking Reeder
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Pitiful how many NEVER pay any attention to research or to breaking news.
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