We fully anticipate seeing another ALEC charter bill to expand charters in Kansas next legislative session. Here’s part of why we’ll oppose it.
“As large as the gulf can be between charter cheerleading and charter reality, it doesn’t represent the greatest danger of these schools. They have become the leading edge of a long-cherished ideological crusade by the far right to turn education into a consumer choice rather than a civic obligation.
“Abandoning public schools for a free-market system eviscerates our basic obligation to support them whether our own children are in public schools, private schools or religious schools, and even if we have no children at all.
“The campaign to ‘reform’ schools by turning public money over to private corporations is a great distraction from our system’s real problems: Academic performance is low where poverty and racial segregation are high. Sadly, the U.S. leads other advanced nations of the world in the proportion of children living in poverty. And income inequality in our nation is larger than at any point in the last century.”
Read more here: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/01/opinion/la-oe-ravitch-charters-school-reform-20131001