Up with charters
An estimated 25,000 parents and children — repeat: 25,000 — rallied in Prospect Park Wednesday in hopes of persuading New York to double charter school attendance in the city. The show of strength in numbers dramatically highlighted that — presently enrolling 10% of public school children — charters have become not just a powerful educational force in the city but a powerful force for good.
More than 200 charter schools serve 106,000 students. Collectively, they are outperforming traditional district public schools in raising achievement levels.
On recent standardized state exams, 43% of charter kids scored proficient in English versus 38% of their peers in district schools, while 49% of charter students rated proficient in math, compared with 36% of district pupils.
Because charter students gained at twice the rate of district children on the English exam and at four times the rate on the math test, charters accounted for 19 of the city’s 50 top-scoring schools, even with a student body that is 87% minority and 61% low income.
Doubling charter enrollment would boost achievement among thousands more black and Hispanic kids now trapped in failing district schools. An analysis by the advocacy group Families for Excellent Schools indicates that, if charters continued to similarly outpace district schools, increasing enrollment to 200,000 would close the performance gap between white and minority kids.
Regardless, Mayor de Blasio, Chancellor Carmen Fariña and much of the Democratic establishment balks at boosting charters — even though a Quinnipiac poll showed that 51% of voters would prefer to send a school-aged kid to one of the privately operated, publicly funded schools.
De Blasio and many self-professed progressives move in lockstep with the United Federation of Teachers, which fights charters because most are not unionized.
The mayor and comrades are also frozen in the amber of viewing charters as destructive competitors to the school system — simply because they don’t answer to the Department of Education.
Forward-looking elected leaders recognize that charters are, in fact, improving public education rather than weakening it. Among the most prominent is Brooklyn Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who told the Prospect Park rally:
“For decades the system has failed tens of thousands of children who in many cases have been doomed to life sentences of disadvantage and despair. We need to turn the situation around. And what has become clear to everyone who is paying attention is that the charter school movement has been a tremendous part of the solution.”
It took more than 15 years for charter enrollment to break the 100,000 mark. Let’s double that number in, say, five.