Now I'm Confused??

I’ve been known to be a staunch opponent of the idea of “school choice”, I have always felt that vouchers turn quality education into a financial market place. Schools are for education, and if that is not working, giving up and running away from the problem is not going to create change for everyone. Parents of students who attend a poor performing school will choose to utilize a voucher (which rarely pays the full cost of tuition at private schools) and send their student elsewhere. The poor performing school will begin to see falling enrollment and then will be forced to either change (which will be nearly impossible with no funds, no students and few teachers), or close down. Those students will then go to another public school, and the cycle will continue. Unless we are willing to completely do away with public schools altogether, the voucher system is only putting a Band-Aid on skin cancer. I believe that pay for performance, unless it is based on improvement, is fundamentally biased in favor of school districts in which students are primarily from upper, middle, and lower middle class families, who usually begin the school year at or above grade level. But after reading an article from World on the Web online magazine, about Obama’s (the love of my life) support of school choice in terms of charter schools, I find myself perplexed. I thought school choice meant vouchers? If school choice includes charter schools then I am all for it—hey I work at a semi-charter school. Charter schools are free, they are public, they must be accountable for student learning, and they have been proven to be successful for students from all educational and social backgrounds. If developing 7,907,189,743,097 public charter schools is our method of public school reform, which gives ALL students a free appropriate public education, I’m all for it!