(Washington, DC) Today, I will be meeting with students and staff of the Chavez Schools in DC. This blog shows that I have visited before–in February and April 2003. The Chavez network has since grown to four schools and 1,300 students. Its founder, Irasema Salcido, not only wanted to provide an excellent education for DC students by engaging them in the critical study of public policy; she also wanted to improve DC’s governance by developing a new generation of mostly minority leaders who had the skills and motivations to run the city. It was an inspiring vision from the start, and the early outcomes were impressive. I look forward to catching up.

See also my posts on Charter Schools and Democracy, The Argument for Small Schools, and Illumination from the Charter Debate–and especially a great series of case studies and policy briefs on “teaching citizenship in charter schools,” from the AEI Program in American Citizenship.