Opinion

THE CLAMOR FOR CHARTERS

TODAY, parents of 3,600 children will crowd into the Harlem Armory to find out whether their children will win a lottery for 600 spaces in the Harlem Success Academy Charter Schools. In District 5 in Central Harlem, an astonishing 40 percent of children eligible for kindergarten applied for a spot.

Harlem parents love charter schools – public schools that are run independently of the New York City Department of Education red tape. Harlem now has 20 charter schools, more than any similar area in New York state. The area has become a hotbed of school choice.

Harlem parents believe charter schools are a better option than traditional public schools. Who can blame them, when 75 percent of eighth graders in traditional public schools in Harlem can’t read at grade level?

When schools fail, they always claim that the problem is that the parents aren’t involved, that the society doesn’t value learning, etc., etc. But the success of charter schools in Harlem shows that all of these excuses are just that: excuses.

Why are charter schools succeeding where traditional public schools haven’t? Suppose you ran a school and you had some good ideas you wanted to try. Then imagine that you couldn’t try those ideas because dictating your policies were people hundreds of miles away who’d never visited your school and didn’t have any experience running one.

Believe it or not, that’s exactly what just happened in the public schools. Albany politicians have just outlawed considering whether a teacher’s stu- dents have actually learned anything as measured by objective tests as even a single factor in evaluating teachers for tenure.

The problem here isn’t just that the law makes no sense. The bigger problem is that Albany lawmakers who have no experience running schools are dictating New York City schools’ personnel policies.

How can you possibly manage schools when you don’t even have control over basic policies like whom you hire and whom you fire? Remarkably, Chancellor Joel Klein, despite these handicaps, has made meaningful improvements to the public schools over the last seven years. But he’s being forced to fight with one hand tied behind his back.

Some people say that charter schools are dangerous because parents aren’t capable of choosing a school for their kids. My experience is exactly the opposite. Parents can quickly tell the difference between good and bad schools. I worry more about politicians. With parents, they’re only thinking about one thing: Will their kids get a good education? With politicians, they’re thinking about which special-interest groups they need to please so that they can get reelected.

All charter schools do is give parents choices. Parents with choices can decide for themselves what kind of education their kids should get, rather than having someone else decide what’s “good enough” for them. That’s what the parents of the 3,600 students who’ve applied to the Harlem Success Academies understand.

Eva Moskowitz is founder of the Harlem Success Academies.