It's safe to assume that no middle-class kids go to Green Dot schools, since middle-class parents aren't likely to put up uncomplainingly with school-hired security guards tear-gassing their kids:

http://tinyurl.com/ooxrba

     To quote from the link you give ("economic theory supports this"): "Compared with the middle class or the wealthy, the poor are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, to have children while in their teens, to abuse drugs, to commit crimes, to not save when extra money comes their way, to not work."
     Perhaps if more poor students had decent schools to choose from, they'd be less likely to drop out of school.

To which I would say, as long as they are poor, and dealing with ALL the problems that come along with that, they will not "perform" better, and your smoking grass if you think education alone will help with that. It never has, it never will. You need to change POVERTY, not just education. You can give poor parents LOTS of choices, many will take them, but most won't for a variety of reasons.

This is different version of the same argument that led me to write my piece which is WHAT the heck do we do to build a sense of community and belonging and SUPPORT for parents so we can improve our public schools to that I would now add AND make sure that some of the charters are inclusive so we can see if the experiments they are doing work with a variety of student? Saying something, like "more choice" is simplistic and banal. Saying, we go out into the community and participate in the local institutions, like churches, etc. and get to know the community and make ourselves part of the community, now that's a useful suggestion. When you say, "choice" is the answer, that's braindead without consideration of the context that those choices will be made in.

"You can give poor parents LOTS of choices, many will take them, but most won't for a variety of reasons."

If you're going to make strong claims like these, please back them up with data.

"your [sic] smoking grass if you think education alone will help with that. It never has"

Never said that.  I do believe, however, that choice is better than no choice; that having no choice is inherent to the problem of poverty; and that it's paternalistic to assume that people aren't capable of making choices just because they are poor.

Do you really believe that children would be worse off if their parents had school choice?

You know that's  really cute to SELECTIVELY read my citiation and when I call bullshit on your broad banalities, you ASK me to cite my sources, look BELOW this thread.  If you had read that entire that you "pulled" that quote from, and understood it, it would have told you WHY offering choice alone would not be enough.

Could you kindly provide some studies that proof your vacuous statement that if poor students had better school choices that would improve their condition?

For the most part I don't believe charters reach the "lowest families" any more than many of our traditional public schools do.  However, because charters can specialize in the needs of a particular demographic and can be built from the ground up to serve that demographic many are better equipped to retain students and have a prolonged positive impact on them where the same students might simply drop out of a traditional public school.  However, poverty is not a primary issue I think charter schools (or other school choice options) address.  My point in this post was traditional districts need to start supporting and sponsoring alternatives like charter schools if they want to survive in any appreciable way in the future regarless of whether or not they are better than the traditional system.  In many ways at the moment these alternative are not better.  Certainly they are not better for all students and possibly at the moment they are not better for most.  But sustaining innovations applied to alternative schooling methods will very soon make alternatives to traditional schools a better option for the majority of students.  Before that time comes we will see large enough drops in enrollment that our programs will be significantly reduced.  At this point it is not about whether or not moving forward with school choice is good or bad for our poor families, it is about how we move forward.  Do we try to compete against choices or do we embrace school choice and allow it to grow and flourish?  I have no doubt that school choice will transform the traditional school system, even possibly run it into the ground.  What kinds of choices do we want to be run under by?  Big box charters sponsored by Walmart or independent schools sponsored by school districts?  Do you want your children to some day take over the family business or do you want Walmart to move in and take all your customers?

Not all charter schools are started or run by "executives."  It is a gross fallacy to believe that all charter schools are "big box" schools.  I actually advocate for the other type of charter school that is teacher run.  These tend to be smaller schools with alternative pedagogy.  My point here is that the traditional system is in trouble either way and we have the choice right now whether we want to help shape the future of education into something good for all or if we want the market to do the shaping for us.  When we let the market shape things we end up with Walmart.

I just finished reading Joanne Jacob's excellent book Our School, which anyone interested in what an independent charter school can accomplish should take a close look at.