K-12 Public Education: Front and Center in the 2020 Election
At last! At last! At last! A candidate for President of the United States has recognized that the bedrock institution of our democracy is in peril, that the same forces of greed and racism that are working to destroy other elements of our society are also eating away at the very foundation of our society: K-12 public education.
That presidential candidate is Bernie Sanders.
Honoring the 65th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court case, which outlawed segregation in public schools, Senator Bernie Sanders unveiled his education plan, a comprehensive 10-point agenda, called The Thurgood Marshall Plan for A Quality Education for All.
The first principle of the plan is that every child has the right to a quality education. A simple statement to be sure but a principle that is far from being practiced in this country at this time.
In his plan, Senator Sanders wholeheartedly supports The NAACP Task Force Report entitled “Quality Education For All … One School At A Time”, which calls for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools because:
- Charter schools have failed in fulfilling their original purpose, which was to innovate and infuse new ideas into the traditional public school system. There has been no carryover from the charter schools to traditional public schools. Charter schools have not, in any way, been learning labs, free from the restrictions imposed on public schools, which try out new ideas that benefit the larger population of students in public schools.
- The education that charter schools provide their students is questionable. The large scale study of student data from the Center for Research Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute found that 17% of charter schools produced academic gains better than traditional public schools, 37% of charter schools performed worse than their traditional public schools counterparts serving similar students, 46% of the schools showed no difference. Reducing class size, not charter CONTINUE READING: K-12 Public Education: Front and Center in the 2020 Election | Real Learning CT
