North Carolina Proposes Dropping School Buildings Full of Children from the Sky.

No really, imagine school buildings full of children falling from the sky and crashing to earth and exploding into balls of fire.

It's a little less dramatic and a lot less fun to watch those same kids suffer through 13 years of terrible North Carolina education but in the end the result is the same, a bunch of kids burned by North Carolina politics and with no future.

Change is not always progress, as evidenced by North Carolina's latest desperate attempt to placate the Feds to secure coveted Race to the Top funding.

Humiliatingly shut out from the first round of funding because of a stubborn and irrational fixation with a 100 statewide charter school limit, North Carolina conceded defeat and has started making proposals for more innovative ways to tackle its poorest performing schools.

Well, at least on paper. . .and without raising the 100 charter cap. . .and oh, without doing anything that by design means that kids in these horrible schools will have a fighting chance.

The proposed bill would allow the 135 worst performing schools in the state to convert to charters that would be run by the local school board.

Yes, local school boards that have for years allowed children to suffer and waste away in poorly run schools. . . will get to to run charter schools.

Granted with the right visionary school board this actually provides an opportunity to circumvent some bureaucracy and implement turnarounds quickly and push innovation. Durham County, for example, I can see being aggressive with such an opportunity and making a lot of good things happen.

However, in the vast majority of cases I can envision more or less clueless local school boards converting poor performing schools to charters, expecting magic to happen and being surprised with the whole thing crashes and burns.

Wake up North Carolina.