Liberia bet big on charter schools. One year in, what's it learning?

At first glance, Cecelia Dunbar Elementary School hardly looks like the site of a radical educational experiment.

Set in a cacophonously green village surrounded by lanky rubber trees about an hour from Liberia’s capital, its low-slung classrooms are unlit and streaked with dirt. Children – as many as 50 to a class – squeeze into a number of desks that is never quite enough, like an endless game of musical chairs. On a recent morning in the 4th grade classroom, two students – one who looked about 9, the other perhaps 15 – share a bench with no legs, propped up by large rocks, with tattered workbooks balanced carefully on their knees.

“Chairs are one of our biggest challenges,” admits principal Jacob Haiwulu. “And lunch,” he adds – as in, the school can’t afford to provide it, and most students don’t have the money to bring or buy it either.

In many ways, however, these challenges are small in the face of what ails Liberia’s public school system more generally. This corner