Hillary Clinton: Most charter schools ‘don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them’
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who is running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, was campaigning in South Carolina this weekend and sat down with journalist Roland Martin for an interview in which she talked about a number of topics, including one that has not featured in any of the Republican and Democratic debates: charter schools.
Martin, host of “News One Now,” a one-hour weekday morning news show on the TV One network, spoke with Clinton on Saturday just before a town hall meeting hosted by the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus on the campus of Claflin University in Orangeburg. Martin brought up the subject of charters by saying that a poll in South Carolina among black parents found that most of them were interested in enrolling their children in charter schools because they were not satisfied with traditional public schools. He then asked Clinton whether she supported the expansion of charter schools and vouchers.
Here was her response:
CLINTON: 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.MARTIN: So let’s get rid of all the bad….CLINTON: 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 takeHillary Clinton: Most charter schools ‘don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them’ - The Washington Post:
