Would charters or vouchers solve it, in your opinion?
Charters and vouchers only solve the problem if the kids want to learn and the parents want something better for their kids. Unfortunately, it seems that modern day poverty in the U.S. is not so much a matter of circumstance, but choice. There are more than enough programs to get people out of poverty but those people have to want to use them.
“Would charters or vouchers solve it, in your opinion?”
As long as parents are not interested in helping their children NO school can make up all of the disadvantages these children start with and have to endure.
If public schools could discipline, dismiss and choose their students like private schools their success rate would be the same.
Vouchers only help a small minority of students and are a bailout for the parochial school system which in many cases in no better that the public system. Their shining examples are usually selective high tuition schools. This is why in many areas the parochial schools refuse to be tested and compared on an even footing with the public schools.
Before we start another “government program” lets see where we stand on both sides. Bleeding one system to help another may be a bad idea in the long one. My wife has taught in both and she hates the Priests (ministers) and the teachers unions equally. They have their own agendas.
I think so, because parents that care enough to use vouchers have decent kids.
The problem is that even the kids in these urban schools who are halfway decent, are being brought down by the thug kids, because one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.