Published
4 years agoon
Elections have consequences, and while some are unintended, one major impact of last year’s California elections is very much intended.
“There has been, for many districts, a significant fiscal impact and loss of revenue directly attributed to the growth of charter schools,” Thurmond told a Commonwealth Club forum moderated by Calmatters education writer Ricardo Cano, citing a report from the left-leaning research center In The Public Interest.
During the forum, Thurmond went on to decry competition for students – a hallmark of charter school advocates, which see competition as driving instructional improvement.
“Here’s my concern: you cannot open charter schools and new schools to serve every single student in our state. If you take the competition approach, that means some students, a lot of students, will be left behind. And again, I don’t believe that that’s what our mission is.”
Related Story: More Democrat Governors, More Skepticism of Charter Schools
He added, “So for me, that means that competition is OK in some environments, but when it comes to education we’ve got a responsibility to make sure that every single student gets an education.”But logic is often a casualty of political rhetoric. Thurmond clearly wants to kneecap the charter movement and is grasping for justification.
The bills now pending in the Legislature would place a cap on charters at their current numbers, make it much more difficult to open new charters and allow school districts to deny charters based on financial impacts – something now specifically barred by current law.
Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers. He has written more than 9,000 columns about the state and its politics and is the founding editor of the “California Political Almanac.” Dan has also been a frequent guest on national television news shows, commenting on California issues and policies.
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