Ron Sparks Says 'No' to Charter Schools
November 2nd, 2009Davis Supports Ineffective, Unfair Experiment for Children
Democratic candidate for governor Ron Sparks again voiced his firm opposition to charter schools in Alabama today, while his primary opponent, Artur Davis, continues to be emphatic in his support for this “ineffective and unfair” initiative, according to a press release from the Sparks campaign.
In August, speaking to a candidate forum hosted by the Christian Coalition of Alabama, and again last week, at a forum hosted by the NAACP, Davis stated that he is firmly in support of a charter school initiative.
Unfortunately for the school children of Alabama, charter schools are far from being innovative or visionary. The record shows that charter schools are not working. They prevent Alabama children from having equal access to education and perhaps violate federal law regarding discrimination.
Sparks says his vision for education is all about equal access, while Congressman Davis and charter schools fail that test.
“Whether you live in Wilcox County or in Mountain Brook, I want every child in Alabama to have the same quality of education,” Sparks said. “That’s not happening today.”
Charter schools are funded by public money yet are generally exempt from the high standards and accountability that Alabama’s public schools have achieved since the passage of the Foundation Law in 1995. Any movement in support of charter schools supports a movement to set up “dual” public schools at the expense of an already underfunded public school system.
Sparks says taxpayer funds earmarked for public schools would go to pay for new or alternative facilities leaving other public school facilities further underfunded. Serious questions have also been raised regarding charter schools discriminating against children with disabilities.
“All available funding should be applied equally across the board for all of Alabama’s schools and not doled out on some intellectual experiment,” Sparks said. “Alabama is on the right course with high standards for public schools, and with additional money in the past six years, grades have gone up compared to national scores, especially in low performing schools,”
There are no conclusive studies that show charter schools outperforming public schools. Charter school programs have had severe problems. Arizona’s charter schools, for example, have been rife with failure and corruption.
Stanford University conducted a study that shows that only 17 percent of charter schools recorded any substantive academic improvement, with nearly 83 percent of charter schools recording worse or equivalent academic gains as their public school counterparts.
“If Congressman Davis and his friends in Washington have extra money for education, why hasn’t he made sure we already have that money here in Alabama?” Sparks asks.
“When I’m governor,” he said, “I won’t insult the people by improving one or two schools that most children will never have the opportunity to attend. We’ll take the money we currently have, coupled with the new revenue we’ll generate from taxing gaming, and make all our schools better and give every child in Alabama a world class education.”
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November 3rd, 2009 at 9:52 am
It’s an over-generalization, I believe, to say charter schools aren’t working. Some in some states are not, but some are. DC’s charter schools, for example, were doing well a few years ago. (I am not sure, but DC may have pulled the plug on them for reasons of revenue and politics.)
In terms of the quality of education delivered, by contemporary standards, public schools were doing a much better job in the early and mid-twentieth century than today. There are studies which link this to control being more localized, i.e., many more school districts a half century ago than today, more direct input by parents as a result, etc.
Certainly there were problems in those days. However, the average eighth grade graduate of a century to a half century ago had a far better grounding in the basics — reading, math, basic sciences — than the average high school graduate today. Public schools of those times resembled today’s charter schools in many respects.
And, if charter schools were a bad idea, why is there always a rush by parents to get their children into a new one, and keep them there? Jam-packed charter schools in Harlem and similar low-income areas testify that at least some charter schools are doing something right.
In my opinion, Sparks is on the wrong side of this issue.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:27 am
Didn’t George W. Bush push the charter school idea basically to screw inner city minority schools and help white flight schools? Does anyone find it odd that the black Democrat in this race is against the public school system and for white flight suburban schools? Obviously this is not about votes. For Davis, it is about raising campaign money. Same too for Sparks, I suspect, since AEA is probably not for the idea.
I don’t have the answer for how to solve the problems of education, but I don’t think giving some well to do students an advantage is in the long-term best interest of everybody. I need to finish Malcolmn Gladwell’s book Outliers and do a full review. He’s got some good research and ideas about removing some of the disadvantages built into our education system.
November 4th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Charter schools have not been exclusively, or even primarily, related to the white flight issue. There is actually the phenomenon now — which I saw in the DC area first hand — of middle class African-American flight to the suburbs because of the same issue, quality of schools.
Charter schools can be found both in suburbs and in urban areas, and are popular wherever they are for the same reason: they give parents an opportunity to send their children to schools in which they, the parents, have a good deal of input and which are relatively free to ignore bureaucratic nonsense and go about the task of educating the kids.
Neither NEA nor, so far as I know, any of its state affiliates have backed charter schools, although I am not sure why. Charters are still public schools and the teachers are hired and evaluated in nearly identical fashion to other public schools, I believe. Maybe it’s because NEA, like other big lobbying groups in DC, loves anything that is gigantic and centralized and abhors anything that is local and democratic.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Well, this proves one thing that counters the right-wing attack machine. I do run comments I disagree with : )
Like I said, I’m no expert on this issue. You know more about it than I do, but as far as I am concerned, anything that takes state funding way from improving all the schools for everybody is discrimination. I think that’s the position Sparks and AEA are taking.
I have in the past commented in typical radical fashion that high school, in my experience, is a useless waste of time for teenagers anyway. Maybe a few learn something, but if kids had to work for two or three years before college, they would most likely be in a better frame of mind to actually study and not just party. That’s what I did, although the work just happened to be playing in rock ‘n’ roll bands : )
But when I went back to college, I was ready to learn everything I could about everything. Maybe it could work for others…