Education Commissioner Terry Holliday said Saturday that Kentucky must have a plan ready to make charter schools legal in the Commonwealth if the state fails in its bid for $200 million in federal Race to the Top school reform money this spring.
Speaking in Louisville at the KSBA annual conference, Holliday said the reason he feels Kentucky has only a 50/50 chance of having its application funded is the state’s lack of charter schools, an education option being pressed heavily the Obama administration.
“If we don’t get the money, then I’ve got to have a backup plan that will work. My back up plan is this: charter schools,” Holliday said.
Asking school board members and superintendents to keep an open mind, Holliday made a pledge to only support charter schools if local boards of education are the deciding authority.“I will support charter schools with the local school board as the authorizing agent,” he said. “I will not support any effort to take money away from local school boards.
“I will support innovation. I will support flexibility. I will support helping every child reach their potential and be successful....
5 comments:
The discussion can't begin soon enough. Students must have options other than staying in failing schools.
Interesting, that it is suddenly OK to discuss Charters-what exactly happened?????
To paraphrase Chuck Colson, when you've got 'em by the wallet, their hearts and minds will follow.
The trouble with school boards as the only authorizing body in charter creation is that the charters will be run by the retired administrators who failed these kids in the first place. I can see it now...Daeschner will come back to Louisville and hire all his retired cronies to run a charter school for low income African Americans. Good Grief! As they say, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
I propose the Kentucky Christian Charter School in Lexington as one of our options. Under the auspices of Martin Cothran of the Family Foundation, we can get our test scores up to par with a Christ-centered, creation based curriculum.
When they took Jesus out of the schools, things went don hill from there.
Well, we could bar any former public school officials from them altogether. That might help inspire public confidence. And, in regard to the remarks of the last Anonymous, I think a simply returning to the passing on of Western civilization might be a better route.
Post a Comment