Charter schools ruin education

Although Washington voters have twice rejected initiatives for state-funded charter schools in the past seven years, Stephen Johnson, R-Kent, presented a bill Tuesday in the state Senate to bring such schools to this state.

Voters were right in not sacrificing Washington state's quality of public education twice before, and legislators should listen to their message. Charter schools would take money from public schools already hurting for cash -- teachers in our state are underpaid compared to their counterparts in other states -- and could woo the state's best public teachers with larger salary offers.

Furthermore, under this proposal, charter schools would not be subject to the same educational standards as public schools. They would not be required to teach the same minimum subjects, and they would operate in a large part outside the control of local elected school officials. While citizens in this state should be able to receive education from whatever source they want, any school receiving state funding should be obligated to educate students how the state's voters and taxpayers deem necessary.

Although charter schools look like an easy, attractive solution to education problems, they have produced mixed results in other states. Washington should concentrate on reforming its currently existing public schools, starting by spending money to decrease class sizes and give cost-of-living raises to school employees as voters mandated in initiatives last November.