Come Into My Lair, Said the Rapist To It’s Prey

Ron Russo’s argument boggles the mind…

There is no other way to put it:  “Come into my house and I’ll give you candy..”

In this case the candy is something called ” innovation”   As would any pedophile (no implication being made to Russo here) in making HIS argument, Ron Russo only mentions one side. He does not talk about the …”other”…   Which we know is the rape of the public school system that allowing charters will provoke.

How do we know this?

Philadelphia.

Milwaukee.

Chicago.

Cleveland,

Washington DC.

It’s been done… It’s always failed.

Those places went into the Charter House for innovation…. They came out broken and raped…. Sorry, there is just no other way to describe what really happens when you allow Charters to siphon resources away from the public school system…

Imagine if you had riots in Wilmington… And you pulled resources… “All right, all national guard, all policemen, all fireman, all public employed are commanded by the mayor to leave the city… Let them innovate themselves out fo their predicament”….  Would that work?

That is exactly what you do to public schools when you have charters… You take resources direly needed to hold their own against a plethora of problems,  and you take them away and give to someone else… someone who really doesn’t need them…

Why does Russo not mention this ugly part of charters?  Most likely because he has lived a lily white existence.  As head of St. Marks,  where one picks and chooses ones students… As head of Wilmington Charter… where one picks and choses ones students…. A charter school, where less than 5.7% are considered low income….   Yet they steal resources away from low income schools that desperately need more money, not less, but get less because of people like Russo who think innovation is good…

However, I must thank Russo for one thing… For bringing to the forefront the mission statement that was hailed to bring charter schools into the mix in the first place….

The purpose of Delaware’s charter schools, as stated in the “Charter School Law of 1995,” is to “… improve public education overall …” 

Research in Philadelphia has proven that since Charters were allowed into Philadelphia… the average score of the entire district, including both charters and public schools, as fallen considerably…. That means we were sending kids through the Philadelphia school system with a better shot at a good future before 2004 before charters were allowed, than we currently do today….

That is in direct opposite to Delaware desire….”to improve public education overall…..”

Seriously,  if you help 20% and hurt 80%…. how does the entire state perform better when for every 2 going forward, you have 8 going back?

Why does Russo not address this?  Because it completely destroys his argument. That is why.

There is one way to do both… And that is to cut the financial cord between charters and their districts… If you want the luxury of allowing charters to flourish, and try new things,… you need to put them as a line item in the state budget and tax the 1% who will have access to these charters sufficiently, to pay for them…

Then you can have your innovation and eat it too…..