Charter Schools? I Don't Think So

I don't have kids, but I think I still have a dog in this hunt, so to speak, since I prefer an educated citizenry to an uneducated one.

I don't have any statistics or links to back anything I'm about to say. I'm just going on observations, having lived in several different places and having several family members who are teachers.

Regardless of how much money is spent per student, if there is no support at home from parents and family members who care whether or not the child learns, the teacher will spend his or her time baby sitting. The parents who take advantage of vouchers and charter schools are typically the ones who read to their kids when they were little, made sure they learned their colors, their abc's and how to tie their shoes before entering first grade. The presence of these kids in public schools is supposed to help some of that "caring about learning" rub off on the other kids, although I'm not sure it does.

In any case, I'd prefer that my tax dollars go to support a public school system rather than to a for-profit or religious school. I don't think most for-profit private schools have the best interest of the students at heart. They're too concerned about the bottom line, like a business should be. And, although most religious private schools provide a good education, I don't think public money should be going to fund the schools. They usually offer scholarships to less fortunate, deserving kids anyway.

Just my two cents.

Expectations

I was talking with a co-worker of mine last week.  Her son is 13, just a few years younger than Trayvon Martin. She's educated - graduated from the Naval Academy. She's well traveled. She also can't fathom what the entire world has against black men, against her son. She wonders why the darker a mans skin, the more evil people perceive him to be. She worries about the world she will send her son out into. I don't blame her. I worry about it too.

Is it really any wonder that black men are looked at as being less than other people? All over the world, under the rule of English Imperialism, he started out enslaved. Most of the rest of the world awarded him his freedom because they eventually realized that he was just a darker, if lesser, version of themselves. Not us. We has to fight a war over it. After the war was over, we had to pass laws to make sure he didn't become uppity. We told stories about black men who would come into people's homes in the dead I might and rape white women. We turned the black man into a villain.
And we wonder why an entire group of people who's skin is dark have trouble rising out of the abject poverty forced on their fore fathers. Those stories are still being told. He's just living up to our expectations.