Cory Booker's speech

I saw Cory Booker speak about school reform (among other topics) on Thursday evening and he saw even more amazing than usual.  It's not often you see a black Democrat from an urban area get a standing ovation from a room full of wealthy, white Republicans -- further reason why I think he will be President someday (now if only Obama would be as bold!).

 

He spoke at length about how his views have changed over time about school reform, especially how he came to embrace school choice for low-income parents with children trapped in failing schools.  He said when he was first elected to Newark's City Council in 1998, he was staunchly opposed to choice, buying into the standard line that it's a Republican plot. 

 

And then he started to hear heart-breaking stories from his constituents like this one: a woman came to him, crying, because she had tried to get her son out of the awful, violent Newark schools by falsifying her residency and enrolling him at a school in a nearby suburb (for more on the horrors of Newark's schools, see my post: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/04/horrifying-statistics-for-newarks-high.html).  The school hired a private investigator to follow her son home, discovered the ruse, immediately threw him out of school and -- get this -- sent her a bill for his tuition!

 

After many stories like this, Cory changed his views completely and is now championing this bill in the NJ State Legislature:

The proposal is called the Urban Schools Scholarship Act, and it would grant corporations up to $200,000 in tax write-offs if they were to provide scholarships to privately run secular or parochial schools.

If passed, it would establish a five-year pilot program in seven districts. In the program's first year, corporations would be limited to $24 million in tax credits, with increases of $24 million in succeeding years.

Believe it or not, this bill stands a good chance of passage -- in the bluest state in America no less!

 

Cory had two great quotes that I wrote down: 1) From Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and it never will." and 2) “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, but the unreasonable man tries to adapt to the world to him.”  (Which reminds me of a great poster I saw at KIPP once: "Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone.")