A good friend in Meridian, Mississippi, tweeted this article to me and he said, “Thank God for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.” To which I add: “Amen!”
Well, you won’t read this in the editorial columns of the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times or the Chicago Tribune, or any other of our major newspapers.
But you can read it here in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
The newspaper surveyed the usual proposals to “help kids escape” from low-rated public schools: charters, tax credits, etc. and it had this to say:
Taken together, those elements retreat from confronting and overcoming problems in low-performing or marginal schools, which has been proven possible when a district’s resources are fully energized, especially the support of parents and the larger school constituency.
Rep. Forrest Hamilton, R-Olive Branch, a town with schools in the state’s largest public school system, DeSoto County, asked why the state should get involved with private schools.
“Instead of addressing the real root of the problem, we are skirting the issue … We are skirting the issue of D and F failing schools, saying, ‘Let’s just send them to another school instead of fixing the failing ones,’” Hamilton said during the committee meeting.
His point is valid. DeSoto County, a bright red Republican County, wants its public schools to remain strong because the general public school constituency is highly engaged in keeping them competitive. The transfer-and-retreat approach focuses on scattered individual children rather than the obligation of quality education for all children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What does common sense have to do with it?
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“Hamilton, a silver-haired, 71-year-old retired pharmacist and the second-longest-serving member of the DeSoto County legislative delegation, noted, ‘Our economic development, everything, depends on our school system. We would not be DeSoto County, we would not have the growth that we’ve had if it were not for our good school system. We all know that, we’re business people. So we have got to stand up for our public schools.
As public schools go, so goes our community’ ” …
” ‘There’s too much silence these days about the centrality of public schools to communities, and the need to both support them as the foundation of community improvement and hold them to higher expectations.
Parents are free to send their children to private schools, and those schools or other private interests can provide scholarships to the families who can’t afford them. But it is not a public obligation to foot the bill for individual private preference. ‘ ”
A very astute assessment of the situation as it relates to local schools and the economic well being of the community and the region. What company wants to move to an area where the public schools are so poorly rated that other options abound? It speaks to the enire community/town/county/region.
As to parents sending their children to private schools, I too feel that public money does not need to populate the coffers of non-public institutions. There are lots of gray areas about tax revenues and how they are spent. This is not one of them for me.
Let’s just say that this life long Democrat agrees with this Southern Republican on this very relevant issue.
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Southerners don’t like outside forces from D.C. etc. to force their will on them. I suspect many of these districts have gotten wise to the “reform” movement and want no part of the scam.
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I wonder where they stand on gun control issues?
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“Instead of addressing the real root of the problem, we are skirting the issue…”
I first read this as, “Instead of addressing the real LOOT of the problem, we are skirting the issue…”
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