EduShyster (aka Jennifer Berkshire) girded up her loins and attended the riotously happy National Charter Schools Conference.

There she found that it was all about the numbers–growth, test scores, dollars:

“The numbers that are adding up, of course, refer to the growing number of charter schools, their students, and their scores (their scores!), not to mention the swelling ranks of advocates, politicians, actors, TV news personalities, pollsters and [insert unlikely charter supporter here] that have leaped aboard the charter express, now headed direct to achievementville. But what of the lesser numbers—the ones that are, well, less than prime—and hence, don’t quite add up? Was there anyone who would speak for them?”

Well, no. No one talked about the charter schools that folded. Or the Detroit Free Press exposé of $1 billion for charterrs that got no better results and had no accountability. Bet there was no mention of the UNO charter scandal in Chicago, and no talk of the nation’s biggest charter chain, the Gulen schools, somehow affiliated with an imam who heads a powerful political movement in Turkey.

What was not mentioned may be more important than what was celebrated. A growing movement to siphon money away from public schools to pay for schools where administrators get exorbitant salaries, teachers get low wages and turn over at a high rate, and kids are excluded if they have disabilities or don’t speak English, and the common good is forgotten.