Would someone explain the charter school concept to me? Are these schools publicly funded private schools? I am one moderate who would support a school voucher program with certain provisions so I am not hating on charter schools. My concerns have always been with cherry-picking the best students and families out of the failing school systems. Shoot, I could teach those good kids but if you want to be really impressive reach those “Stand By Me” students. The cute part about vouchers is that difficult kids’ parents would not have the remaining amount of the tuition so they would not sully those precious private corridors.
People make money in the city and drive into the suburban communities with their tax dollars everyday yet wonder what is wrong with the urban areas. When Marion Berry was mayor in D.C., he considered taxing them on the bridges. What was he smoking?
We must fix the inner cities and failing school systems but good kids shouldn’t be penalized in the meantime. In rural Georgia, teaching has always been an important path into the middle class but teaching unions can’t justify these horrible results. Something has got to give.
Are charter schools required to take a certain percentage of difficult learners? Retired military veterans (Navy Seals, Army Rangers, Black Ops) should start charter schools for the worst of the worst and when the weak parents comes to complain drop them for 50 pushups.
On the whole separation of church and state thing, the History Channel is tripping me out with all of the information about the Founding Fathers efforts to support this concept. Can charter schools function like Christian, Jewish or Muslim schools? We take this P.C. stuff to far at times. The local high school cheerleaders have always done the standard cheer, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, all the Rams are going to heaven…when we get there, they will say..the other team went the other way.” Can they say that or is the ACLU in route.
Project Logic Ga 
As far as I know, Charter schools choose children by an open lottery drawing. Normally they have an equal percentage of each race and each sex.
Also parents must sign a contract agreeing to devote a certain amount of hours to the school each year.
The resident expert on charter schools would be former State Senator (and current GAGOV candidate) Eric Johnson.
I know that they operate on a “charter” that allows them to exempt from certain rules and regulations in return for higher test scores, and I’m pretty sure admittance is pretty much what Donna describes, but that is about the sum total of my knowledge on the subject.
Jeff: my friend from Savannah talked me to death about Johnson’s views on vouchers for years…I have always told her that she could get a nice amount of support from the Black community from those weary of the public school system. Clearly, she is the sista and was writing about in my newest post.
On a side note, you guys really blew up with your blog this year. After the New Year, I am dialing it down but you’ ll shook things up.
Thanks. Hopefully you haven’t seen ANYTHING yet 😀