TODAY is Lottery Day: Across Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Manhattan, thousands of parents will be crowding into school gyms, auditoriums and classrooms, hoping that this will be their year.
They’re not trying to win a pool of money, new car or free vacation – they’re just trying to get their child into a good school.
Thousands of city kids will be vying for spots available next year in the city’s nearly 80 public-charter schools. If last year’s numbers hold, only one student in three will win a coveted charter-school enrollment. The rest will go home disappointed.
Most of these families live in the city’s toughest areas – the South Bronx, Harlem and Central Brooklyn. And many, to be frank, have had their fill of the regular city public schools.
That’s not to say that traditional schools haven’t made great strides under the leadership of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein; they have. But they’re still held back by bureaucracy; they simply don’t have the flexibility to innovate, as classrooms must to improve, or the accountability to ensure that such changes happen – and in the right way.
Charter schools’ success largely arises from strict accountability for their principals, teachers and students. School personnel who fail to achieve often get shown the door, so the students get the best possible teachers and administrators that the schools have at their disposal.
It’s simple: If you don’t perform, you don’t teach.
The numbers don’t lie. Since New York’s first charter opened in 1999, these schools have showed better results across the board. Look at the 2006-07 test results:
* In math, charter students scored 12 percentage points higher than those at their neighborhood public schools, and nearly 8 points above the citywide average.
* In English, charter students beat their neighborhood peers by 9 points and the city average by nearly 6 points.
Plus, the city’s two top-performing schools in 2007 were public charters, reports the city Department of Education.
By operating outside the bureaucracy that strangles many traditional city schools, charters can give their students a more rounded education with strong curricula in science, the arts and even phys-ed.
After a decade of charter success, city parents now recognize those advantages. That’s why, every spring, families living in the city’s poorest areas turn out for Lottery Day, hoping that they’ll be able to enroll their child in a charter school.
Again, far too many go home disappointed.
But there are solutions.
First, the state government should eliminate its cap on the number of charters allowed statewide. Why limit how many high-performing schools you’ll allow?
Second, the state should institute public-facilities-financing for charter schools. Right now, where the public pays to build new schools for the traditional system, charters can’t even get public aid in refitting a building: They have to come up with the cash from grants and donations.
The lack of such financing makes it especially tough to open a charter here in New York City, where adequate space is hard to find and expensive to build.
Finally, the energy that’s gone to fighting to stop charter schools – to denying their merits and sowing public distrust – should be channeled toward positive efforts, toward making sure every New York school holds more promise of being a great school.
James D. Merriman is CEO of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, a non-profit committed to increasing the number of high-quality charters in the city.