More than 2.5 million students attend an estimated 6,400 charter schools in 42 states, with the number of these “independent public schools” — as President Barack Obama called them in his National Charter Schools Week proclamation last year — increasing dramatically. For the 2013-14 school year, more than 600 new charter schools opened their doors nationwide, while 70 more are slated to open in North Carolina alone. But as the charter school model of education grows, so does the likelihood for fraud and mismanagement.

You can be the best science teacher in the world, but if you’re not in the right environment and there is not solid leadership, then those problems will show on the science test.