How do the candidates feel about charter schools?

[HassleCat]

I oppose them, and feel they should be eliminated, or at least denied federal money. Do the candidates support or oppose charter schools? Here's a link to a post indicating how Clinton feels about them.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/110725871

[pinebox]

1. Depends on what kind of charter schools you're talking about

Here in Colorado we have charter schools but some are run by the school districts and are actually trade schools that have heavy concentrations in certain areas, think music, art, etc
I fully support those.

[HassleCat]

2. That's true

Different states issue different charters, and some states seem very responsible about keeping an eye on charter schools.

[MineralMan]

3. Which charter schools?

In my city, St. Paul, MN, we have both outstanding charter schools and really crappy ones. We have excellent specialized charter schools that focus on the arts, science, and languages. We also have terrible charter schools that appear to be trying to instill right-wing religion beliefs on children and had a couple that were just bogus money-laundering schemes by their founders.

There is no general statement I can make about charter schools. I support the excellent ones and abhor the terrible ones.

[HassleCat]

4. Throw the baby out with the bath water, I guess

That's the situation in many places. The problem is, the charter schools run on public funds, at least in my state. Many of them are taking only the students they want, and leaving the public schools to deal with the difficult students. Maybe we should have a federal program that pays the public school double or triple for every time one of its students leaves to attend a charter school. Unfortunately, the practical solution is probably to eliminate charter schools and start over. Or here's an idea! Fund public education the way we fund the military, by giving them more money than they ask for.

[MineralMan]

5. Yah, well, I'm not in favor of shutting down things just because

some of them are bad. We have multiple public schools in my city. Some are excellent and some are awful. The thing is that we need them all to handle the student load. Shutting the bad ones down does not solve the problem. Instead, we need to make the awful ones as good as the excellent ones.

Charter schools are funded here by the same funds that pay for the public schools. We've been shutting down the lousy charter schools and praising the excellent ones. That makes sense for charter schools. The students can go to our public schools.

The school system needs a lot of work in most places. Where charter schools fill an unfilled need, they are a good idea. Bad charter schools are a bad idea. I'm not in favor of shutting down all public schools just because some are bad. Why punish people who are doing a great job?

[azmom]

6. I hate charter schools.

What's wrong with investing in public schools? Public schools need to be funded differently then they are now. A school is a school no matter what neighborhood it is in. Equal funding for all.

[yeoman6987]

7. We have been funding public schools. Heck in DC we spend almost 20 grand a year per kid

What does that get us? Horrible results compared to the rest of the world. Now what we need to do is find a way to teach the kids math and reading. And what about science? Charter schools actually are a simpton to the problem. How do we get our students on the same page as other countries? Throw more money? Id say yes if that worked.