Of all the issues that divide the Democratic and Republican candidates for mayor — taxes, stop-and-frisk, the moral superiority of the Sandinistas — nothing divides them more sharply than charter schools.
If Bill de Blasio is elected mayor, he will do everything in his power to kill them. If Joe Lhota is elected, he will do everything in his power to expand them. And that is as clear a signal on the future of education reform in this city as we will ever have.
We appreciate that charters are not the sole vehicle for reform. There are also vouchers, improvements in the curriculum, teacher evaluations and the like. But no reform has done more than charters to get children — especially minority children — out of bad schools and into good ones.
Moms and dads with kids lucky enough to be in a charter know it. So do the parents of the 50,000 kids on waiting lists. They also know these schools are under threat from the teachers unions, which hate charters for taking away any excuse for failure by showing that children of all colors, creeds and backgrounds can learn.
So last week these parents marched.
Now they are asking each mayoral candidate to pledge to use his first term to open 100 new, co-located charters to meet the demand represented by the waiting list.
We already know the answer.
De Blasio says he wants a moratorium on charters — and to make them pay rent. Translation: I’m going to strangle charters, as my backers in the teachers union demand.
Joe Lhota, who stood with the marchers, has the exact opposite view, and is more honest and direct: “We need more of them, we can’t burden them with paying rent, we can’t burden them with saying they can’t locate or co-locate in a public school.”
One candidate would kill charters, while the other would increase them. Choices do not get more clear than this.