By Earl Simms

The recent outcry by Jay Nixon over campaign donations to Kenny Hulshof’s campaign is a red herring to distract us from the state of Missouri’s education system. By every measure Missouri’s education system is not delivering to the vast majority of the state’s children. The St. Louis Public School system is unaccredited and Kansas City Public Schools is likely to follow suit by 2010. It seems every week we are reading a story in the newspaper about another Missouri school that did not meet federal benchmarks set forth under No Child Left Behind. Why anyone would want to maintain the status quo on Missouri education is beyond me.

For this reason the Children’s Education Council of Missouri supports a wide array of education reforms that have had proven results in other states. One of these reforms is the expansion of charter schools. A charter school is a public school that is just organized differently than a traditional district public school. It is free and open to anyone in the public living in the district where the charter school operates. The only difference is that the school is responsible to the organization who opens, or charters, the school, usually a university or a national organization. If a charter school is not educating children it is closed by the chartering organization. Wouldn’t you like to see that as an option for the schools currently failing our children? Currently charters are only allowed to operate in the St. Louis and Kansas City Public School districts.

The charter model allows the school to respond quickly to changing needs for students. Quick response is not in the vocabulary of many school districts steeped in bureaucracy. As we are seeing, change can take years or even decades to implement. In Missouri, charter schools have proven to be a solid alternative to the failing traditional school districts in St. Louis and Kansas City. In 2007 MAP testing, charters have performed better than many of their traditional district counterparts in various grade levels in Math and Communications Arts.

This and other types of education reform can be powerful tools in reforming Missouri education. Any attempt to blind the public to the real goals of these reforms does a disservice to the children of Missouri who so desperately need for politicians to stop the rhetoric and produce results. In this case, Kenny Hulshof has presented a plan that calls for solid reform. Unfortunately, Jay Nixon has stuck to the status quo that has a proven record of failing Missouri’s children.

Earl Simms
State Coordinator, Children’s Education Council of Missouri
office: 314-454-6544

Related:

The Monsanto Fund recently presented UrbanFUTURE with a $30,000 grant that will allow the organization to expand its IMPACT Tutoring Program.

Pictured, from left, are: Frank Van Bree, president and chief executive officer of UrbanFUTURE St. Louis; Tiffany Hoeckelman, administrator for UrbanFUTURE St. Louis; and Dannette Ward, senior scientist at Monsanto.