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September 10, 1999
Hello and welcome to the Center for Education Reform’s weekly hotline, this week beginning Friday September 10.
Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, the featured speaker at the NAACP’s annual gala in Tallahassee said Thursday that public schools will improve academically because of competition from the kind of tuition vouchers that the NAACP is suing to stifle in Florida.
Young, a top lieutenant of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,’s during the civil rights movement, told the press at a news conference prior to addressing the NAACP, "I think the public school system has had a monopoly that's gotten a little stodgy, and it needs to be shaken up. I've supported vouchers for people in low-income, failing schools, and I think that's what the Florida program does."
And in Massachusetts a new study commissioned by the Pioneer Institute showed that charter schools are serving a higher percentage of minority students than their traditional public school counterparts. And the state's relatively small inter-district choice program is increasing racial diversity in some of the host districts.
"Overall," says the study, "this update confirms that the Massachusetts school choice programs continue to benefit many while harming few. Further, those that experience a negative impact appear to be modifying their programs in order to stem or reverse losses, a highly desirable consequence. As long as the benefits outweigh the costs, efforts should be taken to ensure that all students have access to inter-district choice and charter schools."
Cleveland parents agree. On a recent CNN & Company show that featured CER president Jeanne Allen, parent Christine Suma, a recipient in the beleaguered Cleveland voucher program said, “… I will not sacrifice my children into a public school system that does not work. I just won't do that. They need a good education, not just a public education.”
Parents in general seem to be under attack this week.
In Michigan a mother of a student at the North Hill Elementary School in Rochester was outraged by a handout brought home by her son from school. The handout quotes questionable author Jonathan Kozol saying “People who support vouchers tend not to know very much about vouchers.” It goes on to claim that Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman was an advisor to Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet, and continues on by claiming that vouchers actually began as a means to segregate black from white children! Are our PTAs race baiting and name-calling and using our children as conduits of misinformation?
And to wrap with the most outrageous, a Vermont home-schooling mom is in jail and her 3 and 15 year old children have been taken away from her because she refused the school district's request to have her teenager come in for assessment testing! Go figure.
Thank you for checking into the Center for Education reform’s weekly hotline. For further information browse this website or call the center directly at 800-521-2118. Have a great week!
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The CER Newswire is published by The Center for Education Reform, the nation's leading authority on school reform. CER is dedicated to making schools better for America's children by improving educational access and excellence for all. CER works with parents, teachers and policymakers to advance meaningful education improvement initiatives.
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