A Case for More Charters: Students’ Shining Success

The Post’s series of articles documents the superior performance of charter schools, funded at half the per-pupil cost of regular public schools in New York City (“Charter kids do better for less money,” Feb. 23).

I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron,” set in 2081, about a dystopia in which government forces equality across society: The Handicapper General ensures that people are “handicapped” if they are too intelligent or show too much creativity.

What do we do today? We take intelligent, eager-to-learn children and handicap them for life by placing them in underperforming and often unsafe public schools. Yet only kids from lower-income families get handicapped when charter schools are not an option. It is inefficient and wrong.

James E. Ciecka

Chicago

Thanks to The Post for exposing the Democratic-controlled state Legislature’s horrendous racism and unconscionable disdain for black and Hispanic children through its refusal to allow more charter schools.

As The Post documents, black students in New York City tested proficient in English language arts at a rate of 55% in charter schools vs. 36% for their regular-publicschool counterparts and 46%-21% in math.

The Post notes, “Charter schools are held accountable through a fiveyear ‘performance contract’ with the state focusing on student achievement. Low-performing schools are closed.” To United Federation of Teachers union head Mike Mulgrew: Do you have the guts to call for such “performance contracts” and accountability for regular New York City public schools? No, I didn’t think so.

David Chapman

Cape May, NJ

The Post’s article on charter success vs. regular-public-school failure points out the nexus between good education creating well-adjusted young people and failing education creating violent criminals.

An angry kid who can’t read and feels like a loser is a kid at risk of becoming a criminal. The answer is to ensure that each child gets a chance, and that is exactly what happens via the charterschool system.

By the time you are at the point of using bail reform and age limits to repeatedly let a person off the hook after they commit multiple crimes, you have failed not only him but society as well.

Sharon Wylie Westport, Conn.

The Post’s exposure of anti-charter-school pols sending their own children to private schools comes as a surprise to no one (“Foes’ kids attend elite academies,” Feb. 23).

Borne out by myriad statistics, the public schools they rejected are simply a lousy product.

Perhaps the only benefit of COVID was that it served as the canary in the coal mine to out the venal nature of the UFT, its propensity to indoctrinate and its deficiency in achieving what might pass as an education.

The demise of the UFT, along with the bloated bureaucracy it supports, can’t come soon enough — for parents, for children and for taxpayers.

Anthony Parks

Garden City

We learned that charter schools outperform regular public schools and at a significantly lower cost per pupil.

Shouldn’t New Yorkers be demanding the answers to the following questions: What is driving the performance of charters? What is driving down the performance in public schools — is it diminished focus on core subjects, lax discipline of students, the teachers unions, etc?

And, finally, why are New Yorkers spending significantly more money to have worse student outcomes?

Eileen Corr Brewster, Mass.

The reality is that New Yorkers can have both more charter schools and more money for traditional public schools.

The real question for New Yorkers is whether or not they can get past the posturing and accept that the best any kind of school can do is educate students to be the best they can be.

That means some students will outperform other students on certain tests. Who cares?

John Sheridan

The Bronx