School Choice Garners Increasing Support From All Political Quarters
Here’s another piece of evidence that school choice has become, more than ever, an issue favored by people of all ideological stripes. Juan Rangel, CEO of Chicago’s United Neighborhood Organization, has an article in the Huffington Post arguing in favor of using stimulus funds to expand charter schools:
Governments should devote stimulus funds to charter school expansion and encourage public private partnerships to ensure efficient use of the funds. Charter schools have illustrated the ability to improve the quality of education in the communities they serve. Yet, across the nation, these schools struggle to finance new construction or capital improvements.
I’d rather that the current federal stimulus program didn’t exist at all — the best thing government officials could do to jump start the economy would be to cut both spending and taxes to the bone — but as long as the spending is going to happen, providing kids an escape route from failing public schools is a pretty good cause.





One of the problems that some choice in schools might solve is a situation in a rural district in Missouri, where a number of parents are choosing to home school or send their kids to private school due to a dysfunctional school board, an inexperienced superintendent, facilities problems, and an inability to pass a bond issue to fix its problems. Only when a sizable portion of the student population can choose to attend a neighboring district will this district understand its deficiencies and step up to address them. Of course, another possible outcome would be that the students would leave and the district would completely fail, requiring the state to step up and divide the district into surrounding districts to solve its problems.
Comment by susan — June 22, 2009 @ 2:08 p.m.