If you are a charter school parent, no matter what your politics, I urge you reprint this article and pass it around to your friends,
While Minnesota is proud of its education system, its great achilles heel is the inner city. The Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, have among the highest achievement gaps in the nation between white and black students – and pouring money into the districts isn’t changing anything. Indeed, as the budget has skyrocketed, the situation’s gotten worse.
So for many parents in the Twin Cities, charter schools have been a lifeline – a place where their kids aren’t just numbers on a school district spreadsheet, where they have some input into how the school works. The vast majority of parents in inner-city charter schools are, ironically, minorities. Most are below the district income averages.
Mark Dayton wants to slash state funding to charter schools.
His budget plan (both of his tries at a budget plan, actually) will slash lease aid payments to charter schools.
This is a huge financial hit.
When people throw around figures like “it costs $11,000 a year to teach a student in this district”, remember that public districts can float bonds to build their school buildings, as well as get extra money from special local school tax levies. Charter schools are forbidden by (a stupid) state law from spending their money on buying buildings.
The state allots a certain amount of “lease aid” to charter schools, which helps them rent space.
Dayton wants to slash this aid.
It may or may not affect well-heeled schools in tony suburbs. But it will shred poor inner city charter schools.
So, all you black, Latino, H’mong, Native American, or Muslim parents who pulled your kids out of your wretched inner-city public schools? Most of you, statistically, will vote for Mark Dayton.
You are voting for your kids’ ticket back to sub-mediocrity. The ticket back to being treated like a number. The ticket back to being written off, and treated like make-work programs for the teachers’ union, rather than future people with immense potential.
Mark Dayton cares more about feeding money to the union that helped cause your neighborhood schools’ collapse than he does about your kids and the path to education that you, the parents, have chosen.
Think about it.
This issue won’t excite anybody. Obama sent his kids to private school and killed school choice in DC, forcing other Black kids to use public schools. Did you hear anybody complain about how two-faced that is? Of course not – nobody cares except some parents of school-age kids (not even all of the, only those paying attention) and even among the ones who care, they don’t vote on that issue alone.
Non-issue in the election. We expect liars to lie. No story here.
The cynic in me tends toward nates position – this issue won’t excite anyone and it’s a non-starter.
That said, MSNBC(!) is going to have a discussion on charter schools based on a new documentary coming out titled “Waiting for Superman” ( http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/ ) that is a devastating critique on the public schools. (FWIW, I think I confused the producers of this film with another, “The Lottery”, which while also regarding charter schools was not by the “Inconvenient Truth” producers in a previous response.)
Mornin’ Joe and his dreadful sidekick Mika will do a discussion ( http://www.educationnation.com ) after a screening of the film and this being MSNBC it will be a one-sided presentation of the issue. The one-side however will be the abject failure of the public education system, particularly for people of color, and how charter schools are a life raft in an ocean of despair, particularly in the Northeast where not getting in to a charter school dooms young children to a life of despair.
A Republican could truly have a Reaganesque “Tear down this wall” moment if he/she seized on the charter schools issue, in my opinion.
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