Secretary Spellings Delivers Remarks Launching Charter Schools Week "We must stop rationing opportunity by limiting the number of charter schools."
U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today delivered remarks to the National Charter Schools Program Showcase at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. Spellings will launch the celebration of Charter Schools Week and discuss the importance of charter schools as one of the public school choice options under No Child Left Behind.
Thank you, Chris Doherty, for that kind introduction.
I want to thank Chris and Dean Kern for their leadership at the U.S. Department of Education's charter schools office and for organizing today's charter showcase.
I'm proud to be here to kick off National Charter Schools Week.
I've visited charter schools all across the country.
And I've seen how they are doing whatever it takes to leave no child behind in low-income, inner-city neighborhoods.
These schools take the most at-risk students, and they refuse to give up on them.
Like lots of charter school students, students at Robert Treat often go to school six days a week.
When we passed No Child Left Behind, we as a nation made a commitment to do something that's never been done before.
We set a historic goal to ensure every child in this country - regardless of race, income, or zip code - can read and do math at grade level.
And we gave ourselves a deadline to do it by 2014 because parents have waited long enough.
States like Delaware, Kansas, North Carolina, and Oklahoma are already on track to meet our goal for elementary school reading.
And I'm pretty sure almost all parents feel this way regardless of where they live or how much money they make.
And when schools fall short of these standards, we must empower parents with choices in public education.
According to a recent study, charter schools receive 27 percent less funding per student than traditional public schools do.
At the federal level, President Bush and I are committed to doing everything we can to support existing charter schools and help build new ones.
The demand for these schools is far outpacing the supply.
That's why the real action in the charter movement is taking place in your states and your communities.
It's happening in Indianapolis where Mayor Bart Peterson has taken matters into his own hands as the only mayor in the country with the authority to grant new charters.
And it's happening in Louisiana where state board of education Vice President Leslie Jacobs is working to rebuild the New Orleans school system with charter schools.
That's because charters can cut through bureaucracy and red tape to hire their own teachers, set their own schedules, innovate new teaching strategies, and do what's best for kids.
And they're even more accountable for results than traditional public schools because when charters fall short of standards, they close.
All of us - from the federal government to the states to districts to schools - must do a better job of reaching out to inform parents about their options.
In other districts, public school choice is almost non-existent because no schools are meeting state standards and waiting lists for charter schools are out the door.
We've seen the power of choice right here in Washington, DC, where the first-ever federally funded opportunity scholarship program has given low-income families the chance to send their children to the private or parochial school of their choice.
Last year, I visited the KIPP Academy Charter School in the South Bronx.
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