GOOD for Hubbard! We need educational choices in Missouri and it is great to see such an influential democrat do it. Many people think it is a strong republican issue, but it is not. I think it has become a rights issue…shouldn’t my kids have the same rights as the richer kids?

If charters were doing a better job than SLPS there could be a discussion, but they are not. I have a problem using my tax dollars for private profit while performing public services. When these companies have to make a choice between an investment to improve the educational experience or maintaining a profit. What do they do? If income is a problem many private/parachoial schools say don’t let that stop you, we have assistance. Hold them to that. Hubbard MAY be Democrat, but influential he is not.

Who needs school choice? SLPS is doing wonderful things for their students.

It may be true that a couple of charter schools have not been very good, but then again, unlike the public monopoly, those charter schools are no longer in business. If the public schools were subject to the same rigors of having to be successful, SLPS would have been out of business years ago and St. Louis would be a far better place because whatever replaced SLPS couldn’t have been worse than SLPS is or has been.

There is no financial incentive for parents to send their kids to a charter school. There is however an incentive for a better education than their kids get through SLPS. The charters in existence in St. Louis today are doing better than SLPS. They wouldn’t still be around if they weren’t.

The charters aren’t doing better, they just have the benefit of public perception that anything must be better than SLPS. Perception goes a long way. Just like the perception that all SLPS are failing when, in reality, we have good schools and many kids doing very well–but since public perception is overwhelmingly negative regarding SLPS, those stories don’t sink into public consciousness.

Before I get jumped on, what I meant to say is “we have SOME good schools.”

I think that perhaps we don’t understand charter schools. Charter schools are absolutely doing a better job than SLPS–if a charter did as poorly as SLPS, it would be closed. Also, tax dollars do not go to charter schools. The “chartering entity” pays for the school, it is public in that anyone in the area can go there. Charters Are Not Private Schools. SLPS is failing every measure of progress, and it’s not rocket science–they have to educate a lot of different kids under one roof, under one cohesive plan. Have you ever watched The Wire? That series about Baltimore’s public schools struggling to continue to get state money, often at the expense of the best innovative practices that could really help their kids, really hit home with me. Charters are more able, bc of their independence from state money, to try different classes, different approaches that may really reach those who are currently unreachable. I am grateful, as a democrat, that Rodney Hubbard is paying attention to these options–they aren’t political, they’re moral. It is immoral to be able to offer more kids a quality education and to deny that to them.

the fact is that the overwhelming majority of students in urban areas will attend public schools -regardless of how many charter schools are established or if there are vouchers in use.
One can’t ignore this fact simply to please someone’s political agenda. many people, including some that post here, could care less about the students of SLPS. They are simply using this issue as a political wedge to farther their own selfish ideological beliefs.

Maybe someone is able to point me in the direction that will spell out Brother Hubbard’s details, position statements or folk tales about how and why school choice is a personal issue in his case. My humble perception of the so-called school choice movement is that it is an effort based on the conservative mantra of “less government.” Many a capitalist is eager to start a charter school because it does in fact collect public dollars as revenue. The money that would have gone to the local school district for that student will not go to the district for the entire school year. Even if the student does not continue with the charter school through the entire school year.

Hmm. Wonder how this economic downturn will affect the FOR PROFIT charters? My guess is it won’t be pretty.