The colorful shirts marchers wore in support of charter schools yesterday included some that declared “Charter Schools ARE Public Schools.” That mere statement of fact is a miracle to some and a nightmare to others.
Eva Moskowitz, the education leader who helped organize the demonstration across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall, told me recently that even some parents in her Harlem Success academies insist her schools are private. Their logic tells you all you need to know about education in New York.
“Our parents feel that their kids are getting a private education,” Moskowitz said. “They can’t imagine that a government-run school could be transparent and customer service-oriented and that they could actually meet and talk to the people in charge.”
She added, “To them, the word ‘public’ has negative connotations.”
Oddly, the same issue stirs charter opponents, with one major difference: Opponents distort the truth about charters because they can’t handle it.
To them, the success of charters is a threat to the vast ocean of mediocrity and failure that marks most of the public system. If charters can educate the same kinds of students who fail down the block, or down the stairs, the excuses for failure peddled by the unions and educrats in regular schools are exposed as a giant fraud. So the opponents hunt for ways to deny and diminish charter success.
Thanks to yesterday’s march, the divide is taking center stage in the mayoral race. And it comes as a poll finds that 56 percent of New Yorkers want more charters.
That’s the position held by Republican Joe Lhota, who, along with wife Tamra and daughter Kathryn, joined the crowd, underscoring his promise to double charters. “The parents and children who are marching today are precisely those who want and deserve charter schools — they are low- and moderate-income families,” Lhota told a business group earlier. “These parents cannot afford a private school and, more importantly, their children’s future cannot afford their local district school.”
His comments were aimed at Democrat Bill de Blasio, who wants to cap charters and threatens to charge rent to those that share buildings with other schools. He also promises not to close failing schools — all positions that parrot the teachers union.
In other words, de Blasio’s promise to reduce income inequality collapses when a chance to achieve it collides with union muscle. Instead of trying to duplicate the best charters to give more kids a better education, which would increase their chances for success in college and careers, he prefers to quash success, lest it upset the union cartel that supports him.
We shouldn’t be surprised. De Blasio’s first political heroes — Fidel Castro and Nicaragua’s Sandinistas — were communists inspired by the Soviet Union. They, like their patrons, confiscated private property and created state monopolies on everything from farming to manufacturing.
The collectivists’ aim was not only to harness those endeavors, but also to crush competition. They viewed personal initiative as a threat to state control. Individual freedom of choice is their nightmare.
Charter schools offer a similar threat to the education monopoly. They experiment with new ways of teaching and learning, and often do it with less money or, in some cases, raise substantial private funds.
Some fail, but the success of others on standardized tests, among other measures, strikes fear in the hearts of state monopolists like de Blasio and the unions. For if charters expand and more parents see their children getting a “private” education for free, failing public schools won’t stand a chance.
Then the marches and the crowds will grow as the barren educational wasteland blooms with hundreds and hundreds of good schools. That is the nightmare de Blasio and his union pals fear — liberated parents and well-prepared children.
Talk about being on the wrong side of history.
One red state loves him
If you just landed from Mars, President Obama sounded like a reasonable man at his news conference. At least for the first 30 seconds.
Then he was off into his usual demonizing of Republicans. Though he’s made a fetish of refusing to negotiate, he accused them seven times of demanding a “ransom,” and other times of “extortion,” of threatening to “blow the whole thing up” and “burn down your house.” He called them “ideological extremists,” knocked the “Tea Party’s extremist agenda” and said they were prepared to “cause a recession.”
He contrasted that with what the public wants: “civility, common sense, give and take and compromise.” Naturally, he reserved those qualities for himself. You can ask Michelle, he actually told reporters.
The limited shutdown and the debt-ceiling battle are serious business, which makes you wonder why the president is unserious about a solution. There are two possibilities.
One is that he’s so narcissistic that he doesn’t realize his inflammatory accusations are like throwing gasoline on a fire.
The other possibility is that he doesn’t want a solution, at least yet. He believes Republicans will get blamed if the shutdown drags on, and he’s willing to play chicken with America’s creditworthiness. Not incidentally, that’s a charge he levels at the GOP.
Seen in that light, the news conference was just another speech. The reporters played props, and mostly obliged by lobbing softball questions that let him ramble about how bad Republicans are and how reasonable he is.
All true — if you’re from Mars.
Albany ‘ethics’
The reports from Albany are discouraging. They say Gov. Cuomo is looking to duck the ethics confrontation with the Legislature.
The trouble started when Cuomo’s Moreland Commission hit a stone wall over its demand for details of lawmakers’ outside income. Both parties lawyered up, and the panel is stumped about how to force compliance.
At the same time, other reports say Cuomo’s team is actively directing the commission, and ordered that some subpoenas not be sent. If true, that could undercut his promise of independence.
That could also signal that Cuomo was backing off his goal of tracking legislators’ income and contributions and whether they sold their votes.
In late June, when I asked how serious he was about the probe, he assured me he was “as serious as a heart attack.”
If he backs down, I’m calling a doctor — for him.
Mike too Book-ish
Add this one to the goofy sayings of Chairman Mike. Asked why he was spending over $1 million to buy ads for his pal Cory Booker’s Senate race in New Jersey, Mayor Bloomberg told The New York Times that Booker was a great mayor of Newark and compared him to Rudy Giuliani’s tenure in New York.
“He changed the zeitgeist from ‘Newark is ungovernable’ to ‘Newark is governable,’ ” Bloomberg said.
That was too much even for the Times. It noted that “Booker raised taxes, and violent crime has remained largely unabated.”
Otherwise, he’s just like Rudy!