Rodney Hubbard is not only unapologetic about his pro-voucher stand for the St. Louis city schools, and not contrite about taking $30,000 from Rex Sinquefield, he is passionately ready to defend his ideas.
I interviewed him by phone on Monday about his candidacy for Maida Coleman’s state senate seat. As soon as I explained that I represented a progressive state news blog, where many of our readers would disagree with his stand on school choice, Rodney went on the offensive. He was fortunate enough to be a deseg student, able to get a decent education, he said. Today’s students in the city don’t have that option, what with superintendents in all the surrounding districts refusing to take city students at their schools.
So the city’s poor have no other option than to attend substandard schools. Those who aren’t poor can move or send their kids to private schools. As proof that people who aren’t poor flee the schools, he pointed out that 58 percent of the city population is African-American, but 90 percent of the students are.
He asked me how I and others could call ourselves progressives and not deal with the travesty going on in the city, where 70 percent of African-American males drop out before graduation. Rodney would like to take such progressives on a tour of inner city schools and streets to show them what really goes on.
Hubbard is concerned about the high rate of incarceration in the African-American community and points out that 65 percent of those in prison have no high school diploma or GED. Obviously the crime and the failure of education are linked, and we ALL–whether we’re Republicans, progressives or indifferent to politics–pay the price of neglecting this segment of society.
Because of the lack of educational options for city students, Hubbard is sponsoring a bill that will ask for tax credits–but credits that are narrow in their scope. To qualify for the tax credit, a student’s family would have to live within the city limits of St. Louis or Kansas City–in those two locations only. The student would have to qualify for free or reduced lunch and have a G.P.S. lower than 2.5.
I’m sure some of you will respond to what Rodney said. I hope he will find the time to answer some of your comments.
I’ll write tomorrow about other topics we covered in the interview, but I didn’t want to bite off too big a chunk today. This posting isn’t long, but there’s plenty of food for thought and comment in it.
(Next week, I’ll interview Robin Wright-Jones.)
but what would happen in this case to public schools, even with this targeted plan? If students are leaving to go to private schools, would the reduced enrollment be a justification for further spending cuts for those public schools?
Rodney Hubbard was a passionate advocate for the people in his community long before he was elected to the House. I’ve never believed one word of the attacks that he supported vouchers in order to curry favor with moneyed interests. I’ve heard him talk about the critical condition that many African-Americans find themselves in. I believe he is genuinely worried about his constituents. Hotflash, I think your diary nicely captured things I’ve heard him say on this subject.
I think that those St Louis and KC politicians attempting to resolve the terrible condition of Public Schools there, need to consider who it is they are receiving their support from. The supporter of my particular single issue is not necessarily my friend.
Consider Ron Paul. He has garnered a lot of attention and progressive blogosphere money for having the cajones to speak up during Republican Debates on the Iraq war. Yes…he is good on that issue, but he would also completely do away with public education, the Department of health and Human services and just about every Government agency intended to level the playing field and help those in need in this country.
As tempting as Rex’ money may be…he has another agenda.
School vouchers “just in St Louis and KC” is the camel’s nose under the tent. The goal is to eliminate what the Neocons consider the “socialized education” of Universal Public Education.
but I don’t see how vouchers does anything toward that goal. It removes funds from the system and removes even more students from the system. It appears that he is thinking of the kids that are in the system NOW who are hurting – and I applaud him for that. But I see nothing in this to effectively fix the long term problem.
As far as being a short term solution (which he doesn’t say anyway) as a personal matter, I WANT my tax dollars going to education but I don’t want my tax dollars going to religious education. The only reason the voucher system could even be feasible in St. Louis is because of all the private, religious schools. Otherwise it wouldn’t even be close to a short term solution because there wouldn’t be enough schools to take in all those students. Sorry. If I want to support a religion I’ll choose the one and support it directly. Not through my tax dollars.
I agree with all of you. I know I sound like Casper Milquetoast, but it’s such an impossible situation that everyone who spoke has a valid point. As Clark pointed out, Rodney’s plan would further damage the public schools, but at least, as St. Louis Liberal says, Rodney is trying to do something for some of the kids, and I believe his stance is a matter of conscience. Still, to take money from that destructive wingnut Sinquefield? And give our tax money to religious schools? It’s a conundrum.
which is not to say that the many urban school systems are not in a terrible state already. One can understand the appeal of a seemingly pragmatic solution to the “right now” situation.
The problem with vouchers, though, is that they do nothing to address the real problems which go way beyond the schools. There are many persuasive arguments demonstrating that while privatizing eduction (which is what we are talking about when we talk about vouchers) may provide a temporary fix for a few children, it will inevitably fail the majority of low-income children and ultimately will decimate the entire public educational. It is possible to argue that the passionate desire of people like Mr. Hubbard to find a solution to the crying problems of his constituents is being manipulated by those whose goal is to do just that.
It doesn’t matter whether Hubbard means well or not; the fact is that the people bankrolling him will not be happy until the great American tradition of good, public education is a distant memory and THEY control what your children learn (or don’t learn).