Success and Opportunity Through Quality Charter Schools Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. I want to thank Chairman Kline and Ranking Member Miller for bringing this legislation to the floor, as it is so important when you talk about the things that we need to do to help give our children better opportunities.

Mr. Chairman, the charter school movement has literally transformed the public education system in New Orleans. If you look at what was happening in the city of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, it was the most failed and corrupt public school system in the country.

After Hurricane Katrina--I was in the legislature at the time--many of my colleagues came together, and we passed a charter system that empowered communities to get involved in the education of their children.

What we saw was revolutionary. What we saw were parents finally having options and choices to send their kids to schools that were competing for those children, schools that were actually providing better opportunities.

Before Hurricane Katrina, 75 percent of the students in New Orleans' public schools were attending failing schools, schools that were giving them no opportunity and no hope for their future.

What has happened since with this revolution of the charter school movement in New Orleans? What we have seen is that, now, over 91 percent of the public school students in New Orleans attend charter schools.

What does that really mean for quality? That is ultimately what really matters. What kind of education are these children now being able to get?

As I said before, before Katrina, 75 percent of the students in the public schools in New Orleans were attending failing schools. Today, fewer than 15 percent of those students are attending schools with either a D or an F rating because, now, there is competition.

Parents have multiple options of where to send their kids, and those schools are competing for the students. I visited Hynes Elementary School last week in my district, in the Lakeview part of New Orleans. It is a charter school that is incredibly successful.

You see such enthusiasm from these young kids. They have an over 450-person waiting list to go to this charter school. It really is working, the fact that you have invoked this competition.

I want to applaud Majority Leader Cantor. Majority Leader Cantor actually came down and toured a number of the charter schools in New Orleans.

Of course, New Orleans is not the only place, but it is probably the place in which you have such a dramatic change--again, a revolution--that has literally served as the model for how you can transform failed public education systems that were denying students the opportunity to have a future, to achieve that American Dream.

When we talk about opportunities for children, this is not a Republican idea or a Democrat idea. This is our ability to pass on the franchise of the American Dream to our children.

Charter schools have helped expand that opportunity, and that is why it is so important that we pass H.R. 10, so as to help replicate those successful programs and to help highlight what is working with the charter school movement.

You can look to New Orleans and see just how it has transformed people's lives for the better. This is

something we need to do. It is great that this is a bipartisan effort.

Again, I applaud Chairman Kline for bringing this bill to the floor.

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