Ken Chavous spoke at the Rumi Forum today (http://www.rumiforum.org/).
He is a fan of vouchers, charter schools and openly says "thank God for those Catholic Schools" in cities where public education has failed the kids. His op ed. will be coming out in the Washington Post in a few days co-authored with Anthony Williams, former Mayor of DC.
Chavous is a product of a Jesuit High School education and has not forgotten where he came from. He notes that it is tragic that in this country about one half of all African-American and Latino male students will never graduate from High School. He noted that professional prison managment companies track and can project from the low and failing 3rd and 4th grade scores who is likely to end up in the prison population statistically and move to cities with projected high education failure rates. This is unacceptable. He noted that we can either put funding into all the best educational options or we can put it in the prison system-it's that clear a choice.
We currently have an educational model that was developed during the Industrial revolution and met the demands of a still largely agrarian population-where kids had summers off and were sent home at 3:00 to work the fields and the school day was during natural light from an age that didn't even have electricity much less blackberries and cell phones at the hip of all hip high schoolers. We have to look at a model that now fits the technological age that we are in.
He believes that no entity should have a monopoly on education at the grade school level or the quality naturally declines. There should be as many choices as possible-and Catholic education has made it possible for many people to have full lives that otherwise would never have made it through the public school system.
The rule we should follow -even if we have to fight the special interests of the party like teachers unions- is what is in the best interest of the kids. Can we save a kid with this policy-can we educate them out of the typical tragectory. He noted some of the success stories with the DC Charter schools; there is a Chinese immersion school, a co-ed "Seed" boarding school with a 90 plus percent college admission rate, charter schools that focus on other specialized educational outreach.
Ken Chavous gets this Month's Patriot Award for his devotion to the kids of America and Educational Reform that works to raise all boats.
Kevin P. Chavous is a noted attorney, author and national school reform leader. As a former member of the Council of the District of Columbia and Chair of the Council's Education Committee, Mr. Chavous was at the forefront of promoting change within the District public school system. His efforts led to over 500 million new dollars being made available to educate children in DC. A leading national advocate for school choice, Mr. Chavous helped to shepherd the charter school movement into the nation's capital. Under his education committee chairmanship, the DC charter school movement became the most prolific charter school jurisdiction in the country, with over 20% of DC's public school children attending charter schools. In addition, Mr. Chavous assisted in shaping the District's three sector education partnership with the federal government. That partnership led to fifty million new federal dollars for DC public schools, DC charter schools and it funded the first federal scholarship program to allow 2,000 low income children to attend private schools. Since leaving the Council, Mr. Chavous has emerged as one of the nation’s most respected and influential education reform leaders. He is a Distinguished Fellow with the Center for Education Reform and serves on the board of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. He also is a co-founder and Chair of Democrats for Education Reform and a founding member of the Education Equality Project. More recently, Mr. Chavous led the team working with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal that advocated for the recently passed scholarship program in New Orleans. As a result of that legislation, nearly 1,000 students are now attending private schools of their choice in the New Orleans parish. An early supporter of Barack Obama, Mr. Chavous served as a member on the Education Policy Committee of the Obama Presidential Campaign. Mr. Chavous is a partner at the law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP
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