As New York parents increasingly demand better — or at least, different — schools for their kids, the city’s “progressive” mayor is digging in his heels in favor of the same old failing model of the past.
On Thursday, families again rallied outside City Hall against a lawsuit meant to throttle the public-school model that’s shown the most promise: charters. Parents get this: The Post reports that charter-seat applications are up 56 percent, on pace to break last year’s record of 70,000.
The applications have come in at a rate of as many as 10 per minute, according to the New York City Charter School Center. The 27,680 applications already filed exceeds the 22,000 seats available. Which means the number of kids put on waiting lists is likely to grow from the 50,400 of last year.
New York City moms and dads, it seems, are desperate to get their kids out of failing traditional schools and give charters a shot.
So how has Mayor de Blasio responded?
“I’ll say it very simply,” he explained Wednesday. “I am not trying to bring an outside model [like charters], a corporate model, a private-sector model to a public-sector” endeavor like the public schools.
Which leads us to ask, what’s wrong with a corporate model? In sharp contrast to the public sector, the private sector holds enterprises and their employees accountable for their performance. Workers who don’t do their jobs can be fired, and businesses themselves go under if they don’t satisfy their customers.
The same goes for charters. No one forces a child to attend a charter; the school has to compete for them. And the children are not learning, parents can yank their kids out and let the school go under. What seems to bother de Blasio most is that the success of these charters is highlighting the failures of traditional schools, which threatens the public monopoly on which the teachers union depends.
Sad as it is, we understand the political dynamic that is leading our mayor to side with the unions over the kids. What we’ll never understand is how anyone could call this “progressive.”