North Carolina charter schools made the news last week with a pair of reports with vastly different viewpoints.

A report from the John Locke Foundation, a conservative Raleigh think tank, said that 150 traditional schools across the state would be forced to close if the State Board of Education extended new charter school performance standards to all public schools. In the Wake County school system, that would include three regular schools and one alternative school.

The Locke Foundation argues that it's unfair to hold charter schools to stricter standards than traditional public schools. New standards for charter schools say they can be shut down if for two of three consecutive years they don't meet or exceed 'expected growth' in test scores and have an overall performance composite score of less than 60 percent.