The sole purpose of charter schools is to kill the teachers union, public schools and the Democratic

[BrotherIvan]

63. I'm saying that charter schools suck money out of the public school system

Charter schools are not the answer and are meant to destroy public schools and most especially, bust the teacher's union.

There are many things that need to improve in public schools and charters are definitely NOT the answer. Read madfloridian's posts who has given ample evidence of why this is so. And has been proven definitively, over and over, the best way to improve education is through economics. If we have almost 40% of school age children living in poverty, it's no wonder our education system is struggling. When we have class sizes balooning, a mixture of languages and educational levels, high stakes testing up the ass, and our only solution is to beat up on teachers, we are never going to get anywhere.

We need to vastly expand head start, tutoring programs, allow parents to volunteer in classrooms again, add teacher's aides, reduce class size, and add in abundant help for ESL learners. This is not to even mention classrooms that don't have books, paper, pencils or computers.

Charter schools should be vigorously opposed and public education strengthened all the way through university. If we could do things like make corporations pay taxes and shave mere points off the Pentagon budget, all of that and more are easily achievable.