None of the Democratic candidates for mayor has a plan for the city schools other than not being Mike Bloomberg. That’s it.
Well, not quite: They have one education policy: Bashing Eva Moskowitz, founder of the highly successful Success Academy Network charter schools. At every forum, you’ll hear them spit out Moskowitz’s name as if it were a curse.
The applause-line rhetoric about ending co-location is chiefly targeted at her. But in reality, the majority of co-locations involve traditional public schools sharing a building.
Charters, and education reform generally, are now personified by Moskowitz. Her schools are safe and academically successful — yet some Democrats seem to want to shut them (and other successful charters) down.
Unlike Department of Education school managers, Moskowitz got the PCB-laden light fixtures in her section of a school building replaced. Yet Democrats vilify her for prioritizing the health of her young minority scholars.
In a ludicrous bid to curry favor with the teachers union, the Democrats would wall minority children into failing neighborhood schools. And nail their savior upon a cross of empty talking points.
Education reformers, parents of children in public charters and those on waiting lists all fear what candidates promise. The leading Democrats are each angling for the endorsement of the United Federation of Teachers, to be announced June 19.
In The Bronx recently, Public Advocate Bill deBlasio told a Hispanic audience that it’s time to address the responsibility of parents to be a part of the education discussion. Yet two weeks ago, he and Bill Thompson skipped a chance to address engaged parents who as active stakeholders are taking responsibility for their children’s education.
DeBlasio and Thompson, now third and fourth in the polls, skipped an education forum organized by charter school parents who’d spent weeks organizing the event. John Liu showed and had a “Sista Souljah” moment, denouncing the cause dear to his hosts.
These parents had devoted themselves over 10 weeks to planning the mayoral forum. I sat in on one public planning session; it drew parents from Washington Heights, Queens, Brooklyn and The Bronx. They were drawn together because, as one said, they “care for all of the children and not just our own.” They dream of “creating the best schools and students in the nation.” Like many New Yorkers. they want to hold the next mayor accountable.
For their honest efforts, they were essentially shut down by candidates (except Speaker Christine Quinn and ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner) toeing the UFT’s anti-charter school line.
At times, it seems that some Democrats running for mayor and their union allies want to punish diligent parents for voting with their feet and marching their children into charters.
At the Bronx Hispanic forum and last Friday’s NYC Parents Mayoral Forum on Education, the Democrats doubled down on their opposition to “high stakes” testing by pledging to end the specialized high-school-admissions test. Fortunately, that’ll take an act of the state Legislature.
The anti-reform rhetoric is getting tiresome — and scary, if you care about the future of education in this city.
Instead of repairing our broken schools and restoring excellent gifted and talented feeder programs in minority neighborhoods, these candidates want to undermine most of the good schools we already have — not just successful charters, but also a key to excellence at schools like my alma mater, Bronx Science. They’d destroy 75 years of scholastic excellence based upon academic merit.
The UFT’s endorsement announcement Wednesday will probably be carried live on NY1 as though it were the Tony Awards. Many New Yorkers — not just the Democratic candidates — are anxious about who will be carrying the union’s banner in the rest of the primary season and probably in general election. Whoever earns that UFT endorsement will give charter parents and education reformers even more cause to worry.
It’s sad and outrageous that the only schools issues the candidates will address are those on the UFT’s wishlist. The future of education in New York should be more than not being Mike Bloomberg.