Charter schools began in New York 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 can’t afford to live in communities with good schools or obtain private education.
New York was the 34th state to adopt a charter-school law, following states like Minnesota, Massachusetts, California and Florida. In more than a decade, the Empire State’s charters have built an impressive record of increasing student academic achievement, careful authorizing of new schools and serving students from low-income households and high-needs communities — making the state a national leader in providing public-educational choice and opportunity.
Established interests, including many school-district and union leaders and the politicians they support, know this positive record of charter schools — and they’re fighting back to protect their turf.
The debate about charter schools in New York is not much different than the arguments heard nationally.
First, it was said there wasn’t enough evidence that charters were succeeding for students. But new charters opened and the test scores piled up — and it was shown they’re doing better, by getting proportionately more students to attain state performance standards than district schools.
Robbed of one argument, opponents next jumped on the issue of students with disabilities and English-language learners. But it turns out that, in grade-by-grade comparisons, charters are holding their own on serving students with disabilities, including with higher percentages of students in high-school grades in New York City.
In any case, this conversation about special-needs students can’t proceed simply based on statistics — given the long-held concern that too many students, especially young African-American males, are wrongly consigned as “special education,” when instead they too often had been robbed of quality teaching and structure.
As each new argument against charters and educational opportunity gets debunked, along comes another. Now, bizarrely, the new anti-charter school arguments — heard from Harlem state Sen. Bill Perkins, the United Federation of Teachers and others — is that on the one hand, charter schools don’t serve enough poor students of color, while on the other hand, charter schools serve too many students of color, leading to a new racial “segregation.”
“Separate but equal” describes a long, horrific chapter in American history of government-sanctioned discrimination. We know what segregation is, senator, as we’re sure you do. And we all know what is happening in charter schools today is nothing of the sort. It’s a new low for you and charter opponents to go down this road.
Charters in New York and across America are public schools of choice — the choice overwhelmingly of African-American and Latino families who seek upward mobility for their children. Seek, that is, the opportunities their parents were robbed of in previous generations by, in many cases, inadequate and inferior school systems.
As long as charters are improving student achievement and narrowing the racial-achievement gap, we should encourage more of them — starting by embracing President Obama’s call for lifting caps on charter schools. Those charter schools and regular public schools that are failing to improve student achievement should be closed.
The president has taken his embrace of charters a step further — by providing extra funding to states that follow through on his call to provide more high-quality charter schools and reform their public-education systems. For New York, this means up to $700 million for school districts for doing the right thing for our children.
New York must continue the progress of education reform, including more charter schools, rather than turn back the clock. We must continue the progress in closing the racial-achievement gap through charter schools and greater accountability for all public schools. Only then will we increase racial equality and have a more integrated, healthy society for future generations.
Kevin P. Chavous, a former DC city council man, is chairman of the Black Alliance for Ed ucational Options. Howard Fuller, a former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, is founder of the alliance.