Point/Counterpoint |
On Board Online • March 29, 2010
Point
Charter schools: Separate and unequal
By Sen. Bill Perkins
The Civil Rights movement was championed around a fundamental ideological flaw in American society – racism. The political, economic and organizational expression of this ideology was “segregation” – the right, by law, and authority to separate people with the benefits to one over the other. Today, the battle over charter schools has once again put this segregationist platform into focus. In October 2006, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, during an interview with the Amsterdam News, stated “Charter schools are the private schools for the minority community.” The mayor, in one brief sentence, defined an educational policy that says the public school system of New York City will allow and support a doctrine of separate and unequal.
I have been identified as the most prominent elected official opposing charter schools. I reject this characterization of my work in a public education debate that has been narrowed and derailed by a massive, well-financed media campaign that supports a segregationist premise – a campaign that seeks to transform a public educational system into an entrepreneurial investment portfolio. I, however, accept and take pride in the necessity for our school children to have principled leadership defending their right to a quality educational experience – one that can only come about through the re-construction of an equal and quality public education system.
My insight and experience with charter schools began with me serving on the board of directors of New York City’s first charter school. It was founded 10 years ago with the promise to educate our children better and cheaper than public schools do. Freed from “bureaucratic red tape ” and “arbitrary union rules,” charters would be low-cost laboratories that would unleash the creativity of educators, yield new educational techniques and pioneer new methods that could then be applied in the public school system.
Many parents in my district and elsewhere clamor to get their children into charters. They do this because they believe it is in their best interest. I understand.
But 10 years into the experiment, we have a record to judge how charter schools are working. Do they really teach better than traditional public schools? If so, what is their secret? And why isn’t Mayor Bloomberg implementing these successful charter strategies in public schools instead of asking for more charter schools?
Originally charters were supposed to find their own facilities and funding. Today, we see charters competing with public schools for limited space and resources. Increasingly they encroach on public school space and public dollars.
[Editor’s note: In New York City, the Department of Education has allowed charter schools to operate in portions of public school buildings, resulting in “co-location” – two schools with different resources operating side-by-side under one roof.]
The political clout that charter schools use in pushing into public school space creates a trend of usurpation – never simply co-habitation – depriving public school children of basics, like library access. They force public school kids to see the disparities between their own facilities and those of the privileged. Charters have freshly painted classrooms, modern equipment, smart boards, and renovated bathrooms. These amenities exist, often side by side within the same building, with dilapidated public schools. How would you feel, as a child, to see the kids across the hall enjoying privileges that you cannot touch? In addition, charter schools discriminate by not taking children with the greatest challenges, like English language learners, etc.
When Mayor Bloomberg asks for more charter schools at the same time he is closing 19 public schools in low-income communities of color across the city, it is easy to connect the dots and see an agenda to undermine the public education system.
Charters have opened doors to an insidious form of segregation. If you doubt that, note that the big push for charters exists only in low-income communities of color. In Manhattan, below 96th Street, this city’s unofficial Mason-Dixon line of race and class, there is an emphasis on traditional public school “gifted and talented” programs. In Harlem and similar communities of the city – and state – there are charters.
Charter school parents have asked me to chair a public hearing on transparency and accountability in the charters. It is important to look at the books of charter schools, and we will. I have also proposed legislation that addresses the issues of co-location of charter schools in public school facilities, and the saturation of charter schools in low-income communities of color.
More charters alone will never resolve the inequities in public education. Charters are businesses run by profiteers. They are nonunion. They are not obligated to deal with student’s inequities and special needs. Charters could never be systematized to the level necessary to meet the entire city’s educational needs.
Like most citizens, I yearn for a public school system that prepares all students to be productive. I believe one of the key ingredients of academic success in any system is parental involvement and support. We need to understand how successful schools harness the nascent energy of concerned parents, and then apply that strategy throughout the public school system.
A state of the art education is possible for all children but is being denied to the vast majority because of the pre-occupation with privatization in the form of charter schools.
Bill Perkins has represented Harlem, the Upper West Side and Washington Heights in the state Senate since 2007. He has announced that the committee that he chairs, the Senate Standing Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, will hold a public hearing April 22 to “look at the books of companies affiliated with charter schools” and investigate “reports suggesting corruption, self-dealing, the manipulation of test scores in charter schools and the politicization of the charter school movement.”
Counterpoint
Why ugly rhetoric in charter school debate
By Ken Peterson
Charter school advocates are always open to reasonable discussions and changes to enable charters to get their own facilities by providing equitable funding for building needs, serve more special education students or codify existing charter authorizer requirements for transparency.
Where the discussion and debate breaks down is over highly-charged and out-of-place attacks such as the “separate and unequal” nonsense emanating from the United Federation of Teachers and reiterated by state Sen. Bill Perkins.
In New York City, if any group has a legitimate gripe about equality of treatment, it’s the charter school community. It has been denied an equal share of public funding, as documented last month by the New York City Independent Budget Office and the Department of Education.
Disagreement over charter funding issues or the degree of their academic success will not end soon. Charters have introduced a competitive environment into public education, and that makes debate inevitable. But calling charters “segregationist” and introducing legislation to block them, as Sen. Perkins has done, is not constructive and benefits not a single child’s educational needs.
It’s hard to believe such ugly historical rhetoric has entered the charter school realm. Charters are schools of choice, mostly by the families of students of color. They receive less funding but achieve higher academic results than surrounding district schools.
Sen. Perkins himself acknowledged that “Many parents in my district and throughout [New York] City clamor to get their children into charters.”
Charter schools came about in this state more than 11 years ago as one means of providing a public educational choice for students, particularly those at risk of academic failure and whose families cannot afford to live in communities with good schools or obtain private education.
Today, 140 charter schools are in operation, and nearly three dozen are approved to open in the next two years. Most charters are located in high-needs communities and all of which are in demand by parents. Charter schools also have proven to be an academic success for students particularly as compared against state test scores in district schools. About four out of five charter schools have proportionately more students scoring levels 3 or 4 on the state ELA and mathematics exams for elementary and middle school than their respective school district or community school district.
Two recent studies using different methodologies – both out of Stanford University, one by Professor Caroline Hoxby and the other by Professor Margaret Raymond – confirmed comparatively higher student test results from charter schools in New York City.
A key part of the academic success of charter schools is that they are under rigorous accountability and oversight stipulated in their five-year renewable charter contracts. In fact, nine persistently low performing charters failed to achieve renewal of their charters and closed – and two more are likely to close at the end of this school year.
One indication of charter school success is the state Legislature, in 2007 at the urging of then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer, doubled the statutory limit on the number of new charter schools from 100 to 200. Accompanying this cap lift were additional process-related changes and a new state “transition” aid for school districts to reimburse them for charter school payments in cases where more than two percent of a district’s enrollment or budget is attributable to charter schools. (Charter students already are counted as district enrollment for state foundation aid.)
Charter schools are now being debated in the Legislature as part of the state’s effort to win potentially hundreds of millions in new education funding from the federal Race to the Top program. Charters are part of this discussion because President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan have encouraged states to expand charter opportunities as part of their education reform efforts. Charter policies comprise 8 percent of the points used to evaluate state applications for a Race to the Top grant.
Though New York is a “finalist” in the Race to the Top competition, it is likely to fall short in the first of two grant cycles due to its failure to raise the cap on charter schools, which has been reached by the Regents this month, and will be reached by the SUNY Board of Trustees later this year.
Charter school supporters wish to see the cap raised again so that more of this successful public education opportunity can reach more students.
Let’s focus together on how best to address parents’ needs and desires for their children by means of better district and charter school opportunities, so that children have a “passport to the future.”
Let us debate productively and respectfully, and arrive at reasonable solutions that can enable charters and district schools to operate even better for students – and obtain desperately needed Race to the Top funding in the process.
Ken Peterson is director of government relations for the New York Charter Schools Association.