Rand Paul and Lamar Alexander Visit KIPP Nashville

On Monday, Senators Rand Paul and Lamar Alexander visited KIPP Nashville and they had plenty of great things to say:

U.S. Sens. Rand Paul and Lamar Alexander, leading a one-sided education talk in Nashville on Monday, concluded that the autonomy of charters has advantages traditional schools can’t match as they discussed ways to expand choice and strengthen charter funding.

For Paul, the next step is to push a state law to allow charters in his native Kentucky, where one has regularly died. Both Republican senators, meanwhile, have put their weight behind federal legislation to enable Title I education funding to follow students to schools of their choice.

“When I first heard about charter schools 20 years ago, I said something like ‘Why shouldn’t every public school be a charter school?’” Alexander said at Nashville’s KIPP Academy, site of a roundtable talk Monday stacked with charter school founders, teachers and enthusiastic parents.

“But I still think that: Over a period of time, why shouldn’t every public school be a charter school?”

Alexander and Paul gushed about publicly-financed, privately-led charters for more than an hour as they heard Nashville charter leaders discuss their longer school days and freedom to set curriculum. Parents and former students chimed in with personal stories on how school choice changed their lives.

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