James Davis: “One thing we can all agree upon here tonight is we have a fundamental obligation to confront the facts as we debate what…”

“One thing we can all agree upon here tonight is we have a fundamental obligation to confront the facts as we debate what is going to happen to children around the country in our public school system. I think it is clear the burden has not been met by those who are advocating the vouchers to prove that this will have a substantial impact that is positive to a substantial number of kids in our public school system. It has been suggested our schools are broken. It is our fundamental obligation to fix those schools, working with the State, working with school boards, working with cities and counties to make those schools work. If we were to invest a fraction of the time and energy that has been devoted to these vouchers in trying to come through with positive reforms for our schools, we would have some positive impacts for all of our kids. Let me give Members one specific example. Charter schools. Charter schools in my State, in Florida, are resulting in a serious reduction in the administrative costs in school systems. What the schools are doing is they are taking that money and they are putting it into class size. An average class size is 17 children in the charter schools that have been opened in many places in Florida. That gives a teacher more opportunity to provide attention to the gifted child, to the child with learning disabilities and to the average child.”