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It’s time to learn from success and stop a silly argument. Thatís my reaction to attending a recent meeting in Nashville, where researchers compared charter and district public schools.

Professors tried to answer the question: which are better: charter or district public schools? As has happened in dozens of other studies, the results, as one researcher explained, ìare mixed.î

So how’s this for a stunning simple statement: There are some excellent, adequate and mediocre charter public schools. The same is true of district run public schools.

Instead of spending thousands, even millions of dollars trying to figure out whether district or charters are better, why not identify the most effective ones, and learn from them?

Former U.S. Congressman, and former Minnesota Governor Al Quie had a wonderful idea in the early 1970s. He applied the Agricultural Extension model to education. In agriculture, extension agents have been used to share research-based strategies with farmers. This allowed the spread of what educators now call “best practices” and helped American farmers be among the most productive in the world.

Quie helped write legislation that did the same general thing in education. Congress created a group to evaluate different approaches to teaching reading, math, and other subjects. Those approaches were then shared with educators in various states, along with funding to help educators learn from, adapt and adopt what had worked well elsewhere.

The “National Diffusion Network” worked well for many years (Full disclosure requires me to note that I worked at a Minnesota k-12 public school selected as a “carefully evaluated, proven innovation.” We helped educators adopt ideas we used, such as holding August individual family/student/teacher conferences, developing an advisor/advisee system so each student would be known well, and creating internships for high school students. Many researchers recommend these strategies now, more than 30 years we began using them.)

Back to the charter/district school debate. Over the last decade, the Center for School Change, where I work, has helped educators learn from, for example Parham, a fantastic district school in Cincinnati, from Minnesota New Country, a marvelous Minnesota charter, from Frederick Douglass, an inspiring district school in New York City, and KIPP, a series of terrific charters around the country.

Can’t we agree on what seem like two obvious facts?
* Charter public schools vary dramatically, as do district-run public schools.
* The best of each have much to teach others.

The charter idea, originally developed in Minnesota, has now spread to 40 states, including almost 4000 schools and more than a million student. That’s up from just one charter school, serving less than 100 students in 1992. The charter idea has allowed educators, parents and other folks, to create some wonderful schools. But there also have been failures.

It’s time to stop spending limited tax money to resolve an irresolvable question about which is better. Wouldn’t we be wiser to use some of our taxes to identify some of the best charter and district schools, and use their successes to help more kids?

Joe Nathan, a former public school teacher and administrator, directs the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute.  This article originally appeared here.