As a tax paying American, and future parent, I am sick and tired of Politicians and for profit companies stealing our tax payer dollars to make their profits, all while failing our children!
During this campaign cycle each politician should be asked a simple and direct question: “Do you believe companies should be allowed to steal from our children to make their profit?” If a politician can not provide a simple and direct answer to this question they obviously believe in greed over our children’s education.
This is why I am disgusted with, but not surprised by, Hillary Clinton’s response to a question about the role of charter schools. Charter schools are the worst offenders in this war on our children’s education for profit. They steal our tax payer dollars to fund their profits all while destroying our children’s education either outside of their schools or even inside them. Charter schools that steal from our children should not exist.
When you read her comment below, please keep in mind this article from the NYTimes:
Hillary Clinton Caught Between Dueling Forces on Education: Teachers and Wealthy Donors
Already, she is being pulled in opposite directions on education. The pressure is from not only the teachers who supported her once and are widely expected to back her again, but also from a group of wealthy and influential Democratic financiers who staunchly support many of the same policies — charter schools and changes to teacher tenure and testing — that the teachers’ unions have resisted throughout President Obama’s two terms in office. And the financiers say they want Mrs. Clinton to declare herself.
“This is an issue that’s important to a lot of Democratic donors,” said John Petry, a hedge fund manager who was a founder of the Harlem Success Academy, a New York charter school. “Donors want to hear where she stands.”
Washington Post reports her full remarks:
I have for many years now, about 30 years, supported the idea of charter schools, but not as a substitute for the public schools, but as a supplement for the public schools. And what I have worked on through my work with the Children’s Defense Fund and my work on education in Arkansas and through my time as first lady and senator is to continue to say charter schools can have a purpose, but you know there are good charter schools and there are bad charter schools, just like there are good public schools and bad public schools.
But the original idea, Roland, behind charter schools was to learn what worked and then apply them in the public schools. And here’s a couple of problems. Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them. And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.
So I want parents to be able to exercise choice within the public school system — not outside of it — but within it because I am still a firm believer that the public school system is one of the real pillars of our democracy and it is a path for opportunity.
But I am also fully aware that there are a lot of substandard public schools. But part of the reason for that is that policymakers and local politicians will not fund schools in poor areas that take care of poor children to the level that they need to be. And you can get me going on this…. I mean, the corridor of shame right here in South Carolina, you get on there and you can see schools that are literally falling apart. I’ve been in some of those schools. I have seen the terrible physical conditions. That is an outrage. It is a rebuke to who we are as Americans to send any child to a school that you wouldn’t send your own child to.
And so we’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure that public schools serve people, but that doesn’t mean we don’t also provide options within the system so that parents can find what they think might work best for their kid.
For me there is no middle ground. The politically expedient thing to say is also the morally right thing to say too. Only our children should profit from their education, no for profit company should be allowed to steal from our children to make their profit. Charter schools that steal tax payer dollars from the public thus stealing from our children do not deserve to exist! That is why I will not vote for a politician who does not easily and succinctly stand with our children over this matter, nor should you.