Mayor Dixon promised many things in her first State of the City speech. One of her biggest promises was to immediately relocate children and families exposed to lead poisoning.
That is an admirable goal. We wish she offered to extend the same assistance to those children stuck in one of the 11 failing schools in the city in the form of automatic vouchers to pay for the school of their choice. Is their plight any less dire?
Why must they wait to be rescued from near-certain educational death?
Dixon and Charlene Cooper Boston, interim Baltimore City Public Schools? chief, both said after the speech Monday that the city targeted those schools for extra assistance.
They have received and will continue to receive extra tutoring, Saturday classes for some, and family assistance for those who may need counseling or other types of social services.
Many of the children in those schools face multiple challenges, including poverty, broken homes and little or no adult supervision. So of course multiple types of assistance can offer help.
But they do not change the fact that the schools are failing. For those parents and students who want the option to leave it must exist.
It is the only way they will gain the “skills to thrive” that Mayor Dixon wants for all the city?s students.
It is also the only moral choice for children who have so obviously been failed by the system.
And as Jay P. Greene of the Manhattan Institute has noted, the 10 studies of expanded school choice on public school student achievement in Florida, Milwaukee, Maine, Vermont, Michigan and Arizona show that student performance goes up.
So districts cannot argue choice will hurt students who remain in public schools.
Besides, parents in those jurisdictions overwhelmingly love the programs.
And Mayor Dixon said she “wants to start a conversation about out-of-box ideas and solutions.”
This is one that has proven to work in other cities. The children in the 11 failing schools deserve a choice of where to attend school. Don?t make them wait any longer.
