Adams’ duty on charters
New York City’s families are voting with their feet, exiting the traditional public school system (and private and parochial schools to boot, with a dozen Catholic schools now closing due to falling enrollment). What’s growing is the charter sector, now 142,000 students strong. Good thing, in contrast to Mayor de Blasio and his schools chancellors, the city now has a mayor and schools chancellor committed to treating kids who attend the independently run public schools fairly.
But Mayor Adams and Chancellor David Banks need to make sure practice lines up with theory.
Adams and Banks appeared to give into parental and union pressure last month on approving three co-locations that would’ve allowed kids in highly successful charters underutilized space in public school buildings, yanking the issue off the Panel for Educational Policy’s agenda.
And even though Adams supports pieces of Gov. Hochul’s excellent plan to unlock more than 100 charters for the five boroughs, the mayor Wednesday told Albany legislators that the plan could cost the city $1 billion. His willingness to assign such a high price tag gave valuable ammo to charter foes, even if he’s just kicking off budget negotiations with a high opening bid. Of course, legislators last year imposed a huge unfunded mandate by rigidly capping class sizes.
We’ve said it often: There’s nothing magic about charters. There are great ones, good ones, average ones and bad ones. And there’s certainly nothing inherently wrong with traditional public schools, which have an obligation to serve every child who comes through their doors, no matter how challenging they may be to educate. But it is a fact that over four years covered by a rigorous Stanford study, “students in New York City charter schools experienced more learning gains in a year, on average, than their traditional public school counterparts. The benefits for charter students amount to 23 days of additional learning in reading and 63 additional days in math.”
New York has an opportunity and obligation to let charters grow to meet rising demand. It should seize this moment.