Senator Rand Paul, a tea party and libertarian-Republican favorite, will be joining Lamar Alexander in Nashville on Monday at a Nashville charter school, KIPP Academy, for a roundtable discussion of federal legislation to benefit charters. They will be joined by Tennessee Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman.
With the eighteenth charter school to open in Nashville next month, Nashville is becoming a center of charter school activity despite the cool reception the local school board has given charter schools. Thanks to our Republican governor and Republican-dominated legislature and Commissioner Keven Huffman, charter schools are permitted in Tennessee and cannot not be locked out of consideration even if opposed by local school boards. By way of comparison, in the Democrat-dominated State of Kentucky, there is not even a law that allows publicly financed, privately led charters.
Both Senators Alexander and Paul are on the Senate Education Committee. Alexander, who served as Secretary of Education under George H. Bush, has been a long-time proponent of charter schools.
In speaking about the upcoming event in Tennessee, Alexander said, "Charter schools liberate teachers to use their own good judgment to
help children and give parents more choices of good schools. Tennessee has become one of the
national leaders in creating new charter schools, and so we want to
learn about it, number one, for the federal legislation, and the second thing is, Sen. Paul wants to encourage Kentucky to do
more of what Tennessee is doing.”
On Tuesday, July 30, Sen. Rand Paul will be at another event with Sen. Alexander promoting charter schools and school choice. At this event they will also be joined by another tea party favorite, Mike
Lee of Utah. Also on the program will be Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. This event
will include three panels composed of parents and students, and representatives of Washington D.C's top performing charter and private schools.
For source material and more information see here, here, here, and here.
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"Alexander, who served as Secretary of Education under George H. Bush, has been a long-time proponent of charter schools."
ReplyDeleteRemember all those charter school initiatives by Lamar when he was governor? Me neither.
He was chair of the NGA back then though, remember they hold the copyright for the Common Core "state" Standards.
"The summer governors' conference, held in Idaho, was marked by an unusual partisan fight over a fund-raising letter for the Republican governors signed by President Reagan. The letter took some hard shots at their Democratic colleagues for being too liberal with tax-and-spend policies, a violation of our unwritten commitment to keep the governors' meetings bipartisan. The Democrats were so angry we threatened to block the election of Republican governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee to the chairmanship of the National Governors Association, normally a routine action since he was the vice chair and the chairmanship rotated by party every year. I liked Lamar and doubted he had his heart in the attack on his Democratic colleagues; after all, he, too, had raised taxes to fund higher school standards. I helped to broker a resolution to the conflict, in which the Republicans apologized for the letter & said they wouldn't do it again, and we voted for Lamar for chairman. I was elected vice chair."
Guess what former governor from Arkansas wrote that about the NGA in 1985.
Then Lamar went to work for GHW Bush and helped create Goals 2000. His version of "school choice" is just like Newt Gingrich if you listen close. It must be federally controlled. Federal vouchers are a trojan horse to the pre-existing non-public schools. All new, federally controlled (via Common Core), charter schools are welcome.
Lamar's "brand new American school": year round, 6am to 6pm, starting at 3 months old:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVWDNvJ03FY&feature=plcp