Originally posted November 13, 2015.
“Most charter schools,” Mrs. Clinton said, “they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them.” But as the NY Post writes, her claim is “utterly false — and right out of the union playbook.”
Charters choose students by lottery. And the city Independent Budget Office found they retain more kids than traditional schools. That’s one reason waitlists for charters are so long — 50,000 here in the city (NYC).
Charter schools are public schools that are freed from bureaucracy and union work rules. In her 1996 memoir, Mrs. Clinton supported charter schools. “I favor promoting choice among public schools,” she wrote, and praised charter schools for being “freed from regulations that stifle innovation, so they can focus on getting results.”
So why is Mrs. Clinton now turning her back on charter schools? With the endorsement by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers to Hillary’s latest presidential run, it is apparently in her political best interest to flip-flop. The Post notes, “So now Clinton’s script on charters might as well be written by AFT President Randi Weingarten (an informal campaign adviser).”
The WSJ concludes, “Mrs. Clinton’s charter reversal suggests her Education Department would be a wholly owned union subsidiary. The losers will be the poor parents and children who Democrats claim to represent.” Read more here.
