It's a fun type of fear. Like other holidays, Halloween gives people a chance to break out of their routine. It's a benchmark for fun. While there are differences between the presidential candidates on the issue of education, both Al Gore and George W. Bush support charter schools. Just about every politician is for school choice.
Charter schools introduce choice within the public funding mechanism.
The charter school movement, says Waks, is an outgrowth of concern in the 1980s about students' poor showing on test scores. At that time, he says, politicians linked low scores to the nation's poor economic performance and schools were given some freedom from regulations in exchange for the promise to raise scores. Now the economy is booming despite low scores. And, in fact, there's a total disconnect between economic performance and school test scores. If you want to improve test scores, you need to raise the minimum wage and do other things on a national level that are truly pro-family.