Demonizing Charter Schools

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

There is no guarantee that the success of charter schools will lead to the widespread acceptance of some form of relief, perhaps in the form of vouchers or tax credits, for parents who send their children to Catholic schools. But it might. Successful charter schools could prove to be the camel’s nose under the tent that leads to greater public acceptance of alternatives to the public school monopoly over education in the United States.
In recent years, the supporters of the current public school system, especially the teachers unions, have campaigned against charter schools by arguing that they have not achieved academic results superior to local public schools; also that their main purpose is to cater to parents looking for a way to segregate their children from the racially diverse public school system.
On October 16, The Beat, the online publication of the Manhattan Institute, gave us some examples of how the enemies of charter schools make their case. Beat reporter Seth Barron described a recent New York City Council hearing at which the council’s education committee chairman Daniel Dromm denounced the city’s charter schools, calling them a “separate and unequal” system of education that borders on “apartheid.”
Barron adds, “Public Advocate Letitia James agreed, suggesting that New York City has betrayed the legacy of the civil rights movement by instituting ‘privatization’ and ‘segregation’ in public education. Dromm, James, and others implied that the charter movement’s goals are to separate kids on the basis of skin color and give advantages to white children.”
Barron makes short work of Dromm’s and James’ proposition. He writes, “60 percent of charter school students are African-American. Another third of charter school kids are Latino, which means that New York City’s charters overwhelmingly and disproportionately serve minority communities”
But Dromm and his colleagues on the City Council did not stop there, according to Barron. Letitia James called the discipline in some charter schools a form of “child abuse.” Did she give an example? She did. She noted that in some of the schools, students are required to walk in single file “with their hands clasped behind their backs as they go to lunch or gym. It looks like they are being restrained.”
Speakers at the hearing went on to specifically compare charter schools to jails and prisons. One speaker pointed to a “calm-down” room at the KIPP School in Washington Heights, “where unruly kids are sent for a 15-minute timeout.” (A practice approved by the NYC Board of Education, by the way.) Dromm compared it with “solitary confinement” of prisoners and said that his recent tour of Rikers Island convinced him that “the city jail and the KIPP School are virtually identical institutions.”
If conditions in the charter schools are so nightmarish, one wonders why the council members fear that parents in New York City will be drawn to them. The Beat pointed out in this same edition that there are 70,000 applicants for the 20,000 openings in the city’s charter schools.
What about the academic standards at New York City’s charter schools? The Beat featured an article by Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Jared Meyer. They offered some facts and figures: “In June, 3.3 million American teenagers will graduate from high school. Just 80 percent of them graduate in four years, a share that declines to 65 percent among African-Americans.” This poor performance comes in spite of the fact that “America spends more per student than any other country in the world. The annual per-student cost of primary and secondary education in America now tops $13,000.”
Furchtgott-Roth and Meyer pull no punches in attributing blame for this sad state of affairs:
“One reason all this spending has not brought better outcomes is that teachers unions are more concerned with protecting their members than with helping students. Pay and staffing decisions based on seniority, not skill, don’t serve students’ needs and also leave some American public school teachers disillusioned. Today, many promising young teachers are choosing to apply their talents at charter schools, which don’t offer tenure — but also don’t require their teachers to join unions as a condition of employment.”
The public has noticed. Furchtgott-Roth and Meyer continue: “While teachers unions detest charter schools, the public favors charters by a two-to-one margin. Among African-Americans — arguably the biggest beneficiaries of alternative schooling options — support runs greater than three-to-one. Even 38 percent of public school teachers favor charters, while 35 percent are opposed.”
Furchtgott-Roth and Meyer point to the Kimberly Tett school in Chicago, where “a stunning 94 percent of high school seniors are accepted into four-year colleges — compared with about 50 percent at traditional Chicago public schools. Math-proficiency gains are three times higher for students at Kimberly’s school than for those in Chicago district schools, and ACT scores are also higher. Since charter school admittance is determined by lotteries, not by academic record, most of these student improvements are likely a direct result of more effective approaches to teaching.”
The success of Kimberly’s charter school is not an outlier. Furchtgott-Roth and Meyer point to the work of Stanford University economics professor Caroline Hoxby, which leads her to believe that a student who attended a charter school would close 86 percent of the “Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap in math and 66 percent in reading.”
What is the “Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap”? Professor Hoxby tells us it “represents the difference in student achievement, measured by test scores, between one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the New York metro area (Scarsdale) and one of the poorest (Harlem).” Hoxby is confident that “by the end of eighth grade, students who attended a charter could expect to score 30 points higher on a standardized math test than their peers who missed out on the lottery.”
Hoxby’s confidence is underscored by the results she cites at Success Academy Harlem I, a charter school that shares a building with P.S. 149, a traditional New York City public school.
Remember now, Success Academy Harlem I and P.S. 149 share the same location and student bodies with similar socioeconomic composition. Yet at Harlem I, writes Hoxby, “86 percent of students are proficient in reading and 94 percent are proficient in math. At P.S. 149, only 29 percent of students are proficient in reading and only 34 percent are proficient in math.”
It is little wonder that over 70,000 students in New York City applied for the 20,000 openings at the city’s charter schools. The parents of these students may not have college degrees, but they know what is happening in their neighborhoods.
Furchtgott-Roth and Meyer quote Harvard University professor and education-policy expert Paul E. Peterson, who believes that U.S. students would be “competitive with the highest-scoring countries in the world” if the successes of the Kimberly Tett School and Success Academy were replicated in the nation’s public schools.

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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.