Is the UFT Racist?

When it comes to minority city families’ efforts to get their children a quality publicschool education, Michael Mulgrew, his United Federation of Teachers and their politician pawns are literally standing in the schoolhouse door (albeit less blatantly than Alabama Gov. George Wallace back in 1963).

We’re talking, of course, about the UFT’s relentless drive to prevent more public charter schools from opening in the city, even though charters plainly do better by their students.

In the last pre-COVID year, 62.2% of city charter kids scored proficient on statewide math tests vs. just 45.6% at regular public schools. In reading, it was 57.3% vs. 47.4%. The gap for black students: 63.9% vs. 28.3% in math, 58.2% vs. 35% in reading.

On a different front, charter enrollment of English Language Learners has been rising rapidly, perhaps because these public schools manage to teach ELL students to be proficient in English at twice the rate of regular city schools.

In neighborhoods across the city, the only highquality public schools are charters.

Insofar as they can, parents are voting with their feet: 29% of city black students now attend a charter, with another 8% at private or Catholic schools. Many more are on charter waitlists.

Put it another way: Almost half of all NYC charter students are black, with most of the rest being Latino — and interest is growing among Asian Americans, too, after the de Blasio years saw excellence downgraded at many once-high-performing regular public schools.

Membership in the United Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, is predominantly (about 60%) white. The statewide parent union, New York State United Teachers, is 80% white.

That is: The unions’ war on charters is a case of well-organized, privileged whites striving to preserve that privilege by denying opportunity to lower-income non-whites.

We don’t believe Mulgrew’s motive is racist, but the facts fit what lefties these days routinely call “racism,” and maybe even “white supremacy.”

To cover the reality, the UFT uses its resources to buy minority politicians and create fake grassroots (“astroturf ”) support for its agenda. But polls show most New Yorkers want more charters, with 2:1 support for expansion among both African Americans and Hispanics.

As far as “equity” goes: The city’s 275 charter schools enroll 142,500 students (again, overwhelmingly low-income, minority kids), about 15% of total public-school enrollment. But thanks to years of UFT and NYSUT backroom maneuvering, charters get just 10% of city education spending — roughly $3 billion out of the Department of Education’s $31 billion budget.

Yet charters still vastly outperform the UFTdominated DOE schools.

It may not be racist if the UFT and NYSUT succeed in stopping Gov. Hochul’s proposal to allow dozens more charters to open in the city, but it certainly will be rank injustice.