This fall, more than 70,000 students will𒐪 attend charter schools in New York Ci♔ty. But, sadly, another 50,000 are now on waiting lists.
You’🅺d think that this would cause oꩵur city’s mayoral candidates to advocate increasing the number of charters. But most of the Democratic candidates oppose this to curry favor with the teachers union. Indeed, some of them have adopted an approach to the charter-school issue that is as brilliant as it is vile: exploiting parents’ envy.
Sadly, many children, including those who ended up on waiting lists, are trapped in failing district schools. It’s heart wrenching for these children’s parents to know that other kids are getting opportunities that are denied to their﷽ own. And this leaves these parents subject to manipulation by conniving politicians.
To fan the flames of these parents’ envy, the politici꧟ans have come up with the phrase “separate and unequal” to describe charters. It🐽’s genius — because it both equates charter schools with racial segregation, an astonishing leap, and turns our strength against us.
Those of us running charter schools naively thought that, once we could show that we were providing kids with better opportunities, we’😼d be embraced. But the politicians have figured out how turn this on it its head: They claim that by educating some kids better, we’re actually creating inequality — since we haven’t improved the education of every single child in New York City simultaneously in some type of miraculous educational Big Bang.
If the politicians don’t stop us, we will over time expand charter scho🎀ols until every family that wants this option can have it. But this can’t haဣppen overnight — and the politicians have figured that, in the interim, parents can be manipulated.
These politicians are telling parents with children in failing district schools not only that it’s unfair but also that charters are causing their schools to fail.
For exam♒ple, Bill de Blasio has charged that district schools are harmed when they 🉐share excess space in their buildings with charters. He’s never presented any evidence for this claim — he can’t, because none exists.
In fact, the test scores at schools co-located with thꦍe schools I run have actually improved compared to other district schools.Indeed, in Harlem, the neighborhood with the most charter schools, the district schools have improved r෴elative to other district schools in the city.
Only buildings that are vastly underused are shared. Take PS🍒 241. It has 102 students in a building with nearly 100 rooms, almost 🐻one for every student. It couldn’t possibly use all those rooms. Even after sharing space with a school I run, PS 241 has ample space and an average class size of just 14.
And it’s completely fair that charter-school children be allowed to use the excess space: Their parents, just like district-school parents, pay taxes that go to build and maintaꦅin these buildings.
De Blasio🧸 also claims that charters do better than district schools due to preferential treatment by Mayor Bloomberg.
Nonsense.
To be sure, Bloomberg deserves praise for supporting a system of choice. But when individual charter schools excel, it’s be♛cause the teachers in them work hard every day, are freed from government bureaucracy and are held accountable.
The idea that charters ﷽are to blame for the problems of district schools makes utterly no sense, since these problems existed long before we came along. But envy is a powerful emotion that causes irrational thinking, and the politicians know this.
Indeed, s𒉰ome are banking on this envy causing the electorate to act so irrationally as to send them to Gracie Mansion. If that happens,🍷 it will only delay the day when we can provide good educational choices to all children.
Eva Moskowitz is founder and CEO of the Success Academy Charter Schools.