Reminder: Charter and Voucher Schools Suck

Charter schools will absolutely be at the top of the agenda for the Kentucky General Assembly in three weeks, if only because the Beshear administration needs authorizing legislation in order to compete for the Obama administration's ridiculous, destructive, public-school-killing "Race to the Top" bribery.

So remember two things:

The purpose of charter/voucher schools is to transfer taxpayer dollars from public schools to private corporations and freakazoid madrassas.

The purpose of Race to the Top is to force states to allow charter/voucher schools that transfer taxpayer dollars from public schools to private corporations and freakazoid madrassas.

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

It's been about eight years since congressional Republicans first created a D.C. school voucher system, overriding the wishes of local elected officials and voters in the District. The program has been a mixed bag, but the Washington Post had an interesting piece over the weekend on one of the system's more glaring flaws.

Congress created the nation's only federally funded school voucher program in the District to give the city's poorest children a chance at a better education than their neighborhood schools offer.

But a Washington Post review found that hundreds of students use their voucher dollars to attend schools that are unaccredited or are in unconventional settings, such as a family-run K-12 school operating out of a storefront, a Nation of Islam school based in a converted Deanwood residence, and a school built around the philosophy of a Bulgarian psychotherapist.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because there's a similar problem unfolding in Louisiana, where Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) has established a voucher program that uses tax dollars to finance truly bizarre lesson plans, by some religious leaders who are, shall we say, a little eccentric.\

To reiterate what we discussed in July, this has always been one of the key problems voucher proponents couldn't resolve. The basic framework is easy enough to follow: (1) identify underperforming public schools; (2) give some of the students at those schools tuition money for private schools; (3) watch those kids' test scores improve thanks to the unproven wonders of private education; and (4) wait for the struggling public schools to get better with less money and fewer smart children.

Aside from the faulty assumptions and serious constitutional questions surrounding giving tax dollars to religious ministries, there's the basic question of accountability.

 Read the whole thing.

Charter/voucher schools are a scam to enrich the friends of politicians. Right this minute, Kentucky legislators are scrambling to get on the charter school gravy train. Every vote for charter schools is a prima facie acceptance of a bribe.

Make sure your legislators know that you know they are taking bribes by supporting charter schools. And lying about the reasons why.