Chicago Tribune on Charter School Limitation Legislation

An editorial in teh Chicago Tribune yesterday:

No one makes a better argument for why charter schools should exist than the very person who leads the state in opposing them. State Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago), vice-chairperson of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, wants to limit charter school growth. She filed legislation that would effectively halt Chicago's plans, already in the works, to open 10 new charter schools in the next two years.

Why? Because charters have become too popular. Heaven forbid, they're creating ... competition among parents for public schools. Charters offer students a choice where none previously existed.

If parents are turning away from the traditional public schools in their neighborhoods, Davis says, teachers and administrators should figure out why and fix the problems.

Amen. That's partly why charters exist -- to allow room for experimentation and to create new models for teaching disadvantaged students.

Charter schools have done for teh education system what 30 years of ever-growing public expenditures and "reform efforts" have failed to do, provide real world, measurable success in areas where success was not thought possible. Charters are the engines of innovation in public education--not traditional public schools. Roughly 20,000 studnets in Illinois have attended charter schools in the state's 10 year program and another 10,000 sit on waiting lists to get in. Although the editorial doesn't say so, my guess is that every charter school in Illinois has to hold a lottery for admitting new students.

According to Davis, as quoted in Thursday's Tribune, the rise in applications to charters "is a sad commentary on our existing public schools." Again, agreed.

Then her logic ends. "Instead of opening charter schools, we need to go in there and see what the hell is going on in our schools," she said.

How about both, Ms. Davis? Without the success of charter schools, most parents stuck in perpetually failing neighborhood schools might not know better alternatives exist for their kids.

So Davis' response to the growing popularity of charter schools around the state -- and in her own Chicago district -- is to prohibit existing charters from adding new campuses. Chicago has nearly reached its charter cap, so schools have been created by adding new campuses under existing charters.

So waht is Rep. Davis' motivation--politics:

But leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union dislike charter schools. Charters drain money from traditional neighborhood schools, they argue. Never mind that they are public schools, open to anybody. Never mind that charters receive less state money than traditional schools. Never mind that most have shown impressive results. Or that a handful have shown astonishing success and have been recognized nationwide.

Here's the real reason this stinker of a bill made it out of a House committee: Charter teachers don't have to be union members, which drives the teachers unions bonkers.

snip

But Ms. Davis won't listen to the thousands of parents or their kids trying to get into a charter school. All they want is a good education.

What do they know?

Of course, parents don't know anything, right.