Success and Opportunity Through Quality Charter Schools Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Chairman Kline and Ranking Member Miller for their work, and Representative Bass for her leadership in working with youth and foster care, and homeless youth in particular, on this bill.
Before I came to Congress I founded a charter school with the focus of serving homeless youth and youth in transitional housing called the Academy of Urban Learning in Denver. Not every area, not every city, not every county might have a charter school with a particular focus of working with kids that are in transitional housing, so it is incumbent upon us to ensure that all public charter schools that are supported under this bill ensure that they don't have barriers for foster youth or barriers for youth in transitional housing.
There are a lot of particular needs around kids that are going through turmoil in their home life, whether it is at the elementary level or whether it is at the high school level. By adding the language Representative Bass introduced in her bipartisan amendment, we can ensure that any participant in the Federal charter school program doesn't have any barriers to enrolling kids.
This week here on the floor of the House has been characterized by partisan rancor around Benghazi and Lois Lerner. How wonderful that Democrats and Republicans can come together not only around this amendment by Karen Bass, but also around the bill itself. The upgrade of the Federal Charter Schools Program to the 2.0 version takes into account the learning of the last 15 years to ensure that our very limited Federal footprint and investment has the maximum possible impact on increasing student achievement and increasing transparency and accountability for public charter schools.
I thank Representative Bass for offering her amendment, which I am proud to support.
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Messer amendment, which encourages States to support the opening or replication of charter schools that are secondary schools.
The area that this impacts and improves in the bill is one of the most important policy changes over the previous authorizing program. Under the current Federal Charter Schools Program, only new schools can be funded and participate in this program.
What we allow under this bill is the replication and expansion of models that we know work. For instance, if there is a K-8 school that wants to expand into high school or there is a school that wants to growth from 400 to 600 students, if we have the evidence-based information that shows that that school is transforming lives and helping kids achieve, we want to ensure that we can have the maximum possible impact with our limited Federal dollars.
What this amendment does is it ensures that States as part of their plan allow for the replication and expansion of public charter schools.
I want to thank my colleague from Indiana for recognizing the importance of charter schools in serving high school students and the opportunity that these models have to provide a flexible educational environment for older students to prepare them for college and careers.
The charter school models that are allowed give schools the flexibility they need to meet the needs of the students, whether it is longer hours, longer school years, additional support service, or daycare vouchers for pregnant or young mother teens. This flexibility can be critical to helping students succeed at the secondary level.
This amendment improves the bill and makes sure that States encourage the opening, replication, and expansion of public charter high schools. Having founded two public charter high schools myself before I served in the United States Congress, I can personally give testimony to the transformational impact that it has on young people every day. In many cases, young people that would otherwise be dropouts or not even in the public education system are able to have a specific educational product that is tailored around their real world needs. There is a charter school for pregnant teens in Montrose, Colorado. Whether it is a vocational or work focus school that gives kids the skills they need to compete in the workforce, the Messer amendment is a step forward in building upon the language which is already an improvement over the existing authorization, and brings it to a better place that we can all be proud of, Democrats and Republicans.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, in this week of partisan divisions here on the floor of the House of Representatives, we have a unique opportunity in this amendment, in this bill, to come together around supporting public charter schools.
This week, Mr. Chairman, is Public Charter Schools Week. What better way to celebrate than to upgrade the
Federal Charter Schools Program with language that Democrats, Republicans, and all important stakeholders can agree on. Truly, all stakeholders are part of this discussion. Authorizers, including districts and States and special districts, public charter schools themselves, teachers unions, teachers, were all at the table to ensure that we can create a program that builds upon the successes of the two decades of the public charter school movement and will allow it to reach even greater heights in the next decade.
On behalf of Ranking Member Miller and myself, we are proud to support the Messer amendment. We are also proud to support the underlying bill.
By ensuring that States that apply for this program explain how they will work with applicants to encourage replication and expansion at the secondary level, we can ensure that the needs of all students are better met. Particularly, in many areas of our country we have high schools that are persistently failing, with dropout rates of 50 percent year after year, where half the kids coming in the door in ninth grade don't leave in 12th. Through upgrading with better opportunities for parents to choose, we can turn it around and make sure that kids have the opportunity to graduate and have a good job in an economy in the 21st century that increasingly relies on both a high school education and a college education.
I rise in support of this amendment, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. POLIS. I thank the gen tle lady for working on this important amendment.
Mr. Chairman, public school choice is only as good as informational options are placed before parents. Too often, only the already enfranchised parents have the ability to choose a school that works for their kids.
What this amendment ensures is that all parents are able to find publicly available information, consistent with State law, about the quality of public school options in their areas, in order to help make better informed decisions in the education marketplace.
For public education to work and for competition to have a constructive impact on public education, parents and families need to be able to make informed decisions.
This amendment is an important step towards helping families have the information they need to make public school choice work, to make sure that public charter schools that offer the transformational opportunity to help kids succeed have the information placed in the hands of the most at-risk families, as well as of the families who are already enfranchised through active parents.
I strongly support this amendment, and I encourage my colleagues to include it in the bill.
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