School rivalry

The headline says "Charter Schools Causing Public Schools To Suffer," which, if you take it literally, suggests that roaming gangs of privately managed places of learning are giving their publicly managed cousins wedgies, stealing their lunch money, and otherwise paving the way for years of expensive therapy. The actual story, though, is a bit different -- and a lot more interesting.

What's happening in Pueblo, Colorado, is that students are fleeing the private schools for charter schools, filling the classes and waiting lists -- and taking their funding with them. The waiting list for one school, Cesar Chavez Academy, is in the thousands at an institution that currently teaches 1,100, students.

Just this year the district has lost $1 million and here's why.

"Charter schools get 100% of the per pupil funding for every one of their students", says Lueck.

That leaves less money to go around for public schools.

If we were looking at two competing brands of anything else -- toothpaste, say -- we wouldn't worry about who was "suffering." Instead, we'd be remarking on the success one vendor was having in pleasing customers -- and so winning patrons from the other. That's a market success story -- and an opportunity for the failing vendor to change its ways.

So it is with charter schools in Pueblo, Colorado; they're clearly a brand (or multiple brands) that meets the needs of the customers. Public schools are losing students to the charter schools because they don't satisfy their students and those students' families to the same extent.

But competition doesn't have to meet the death of one brand and the ascendance of another. Smart participants in the market change their ways to win back customers. School district officials say they're "figuring out a way to adjust" to the loss of students to charter schools. If they know what they're doing, they'll start providing better-quality education to compete with the competition.

And then everybody will benefit.