Unlike Kentucky, which is still part of a vanishing number of states with no charter schools, California has had this innovative school option for many years.

And, the leading newspaper in the Golden State’s biggest city has figured it out. In “Give charter schools their due” the LA Times says:

“Charter schools have been the spark to the education reform flame in the Los Angeles Unified School District.”

The Times article amplifies:

“Charter schools deserve credit for changing the discussion in Los Angeles about poor and minority students. No longer is it acceptable to assume that students from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot be high achievers. The new ideas that charter schools brought into the educational mix, and the competition they posed in attracting students, played a significant role in the improvement of L.A. Unified's traditional public schools.”

These are EXACTLY the types of attitude changes we have been promised in Kentucky schools ever since the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 190 was enacted. Still, relatively recent audits in some of Kentucky’s Persistently Low-Achieving Schools (recently renamed Priority Schools) show the staff in those schools doesn’t agree. Teachers in some of these very low performing schools are quick to make excuses that these kids could not learn due to poverty, etc.

Well, when teachers believe that, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. But, the charter school experience in LA shows it doesn’t need to be that way. And, the major newspaper in California’s largest city knows it.

Clearly, Kentucky’s kids deserve the same chance to escape a poverty and minority second class status that the LA Times reports is already happening in Los Angeles. It’s time to stop letting “adult interests” get in the way of what is best for Kentucky’s kids.

Much of the opposition to charter schools comes from the teachers union and its allies. The teachers union has certainly been the major force behind denial of badly needed charter school legislation in Kentucky.

However, the LA Times isn’t fooled by union tactics, which are sometimes incredibly brazen.

For example, at a recent meeting of the Los Angeles Unified School Board, union friends on the board tried to halt the expansion of charter schools in the district. The Times provides this amazing example of some of the nonsense that unfolded:

“Bennett Kayser, probably the board's staunchest ally of the teachers union, introduced a separate resolution to prevent board members from voting on any business having to do with a charter school if they had received a campaign contribution within the last six months from the charter organization involved. That might contribute to good-government practices in the district, but only if there were similar rules regarding campaign contributions from the unions, which have been foes of the charter movement and attempted to influence board decisions on a far wider range of issues.”

Union antagonism to charter schools is unlikely to go away, at least in school systems that really don’t want to face up to the requirement to teach all children well. That seems true whether we are talking about LA Unified, or schools right here in Kentucky, as well. But, it is time for our legislative leaders to step up to the plate of statesmanship and do something right for kids.

At last count, charter schools have been implemented in at least 42 states. Kentucky is now part of a vanishing minority of states that have yet to capitalize on the increasingly recognized benefits that public charter schools provide even in highly challenging, high minority, high poverty school systems like Los Angeles Unified.