Excuse me?

White: Charters hurting IPS
Superintendent says he'll ask mayor to stop opening schools

Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Eugene White plans to ask the mayor and other officials to stop opening charter schools that siphon hundreds of students away from IPS each year.

Charter schools lured away many of the 1,000 students who left IPS in the past year, and White said the district will have to close schools and re-evaluate programs if that decrease in enrollment continues.

White will request the moratorium in a meeting with Mayor Bart Peterson, the only mayor in the country with the power to launch charter schools. Peterson sponsors 18 Indianapolis charter schools, which are billed as an alternative to failing traditional public schools.

And they pay you HOW much a year?

The solution, Dr. White, is not preventing new charter schools. The solution is to clean up your own house so that it's just as attractive to students and their parents as the charter schools.

That's the whole point of charters -- to bring some discipline and competition into education so that all education improves. Asking the mayor to stop creating charters is tantamount to an admission that you've failed before you've even started. It puts you on the same uneven playing field that IPS has been on for years -- all the advantages without any incentive to use those advantages to better inner-city education.

I hope the mayor gives you short shrift. This is one of the few areas I support him in.