Charter schools and their segregating effect

Last week, the NY Times ran a very eloquent oped by a Brooklyn parent entitled How Charter Schools Can Hurt, pointing out how the aggressive marketing of a Success Academy charter outside her neighborhood public school could very well lead to her school to suffer even more budget cuts, and become less racially and economically diverse, as white middle class parents choose to enroll their children in the charter school instead. 

In response, a parent and an employee of the Success Academy chain wrote a letter, apparently to the applicants to their new Brooklyn charters, that was subsequently posted on our NYC Education List serv.  His letter claimed, among other things, that the charter school his children attend, Upper West Success Academy, “is among the most socio-economic and racially diverse schools in the entire city.”  His letter evokes several concerns.  First of all, If Upper West Success charter is so diverse, why didn’t he include any data about its racial/ethnic breakdown in his letter?

At the forum last fall called Miseducation Nation, sponsored by FAIR, I noted how in Brooklyn public schools in particular there has been a tremendously valuable trend towards integration, as neighborhoods are slowly being gentrified, and white parents are choosing to send their children to predominantly minority schools.  This growing trend should be encouraged and nurtured by DOE; instead, they continually undermine it by forcibly co-locating new schools in their buildings, many of them charters, causing these public schools to lose their most attractive qualities, including valuable programs and small class sizes, due to loss of space.

Also, the DOE’s expansion of charters and other schools of “choice” too often have led white parents to opt out of their neighborhood school for these new schools that tend to be less diverse.  Cindy Black, a Brooklyn parent, wrote about how a new district school of “choice” led to her child’s public school to become more segregated on our blog here.

In any case, there is little doubt that charter schools have had a segregating impact nationally.  The UCLA civil rights project revealed this trend in a comprehensive report in 2010.  John Hechinger at Bloomberg News, who just won a prize for his education reporting, has written about this cogently as well.   The NAACP has issued a resolution against the expansion of charters, in part because of their segregating effect.

See also the support of the KKK for charter schools, in a response to Hechinger’s article:

Parents have been given a choice as to where to send their children and without government interference, many have selected schools with a student population that reflects the race of those children.  In addition, many of these schools satisfy the children’s longing to identify with their racial history by incorporating cultural studies relating to their ethnicity.  There is nothing wrong with this, yet some think it is terrible. In fact, the majority of people prefer to be around others who are like them.  Even those who enjoy international travel and experiencing other cultures still, for the most part, live the rest of their life among those of similar racial background.  Why does this make some social engineers so angry? It is only natural. Each race should have the right to determine their [sic own affairs without interference.  This is why homogeneous nations are good for world peace. Everyone needs their own space.  And parents who choose charter schools for their children based upon this fact are doing so instinctually [sic] and its [sic] healthy for their families.

Finally, in his letter, the Success Academy parent and employee made the following statement, oft repeated by conservative free marketers:

 “….all parents should have access to and benefit from the resources and facilities that are paid for by our tax dollars.  All of our children should have the same rights to access these resources, facilities, and yes, lunchrooms, regardless of whether they attend charter schools or traditional public schools.”

Does that argument also apply to private or parochial schools?  Should the operators of Spence or the Catholic diocese be able to lay claim to public school space because the parents of the students who attend their schools also pay taxes?  This is a very radical and dangerous notion indeed.

Cindy Black on how "choice" leads to more segregated schools

Much controversy has been aroused and much ink has been expended about the way in which Eva Moskowitz is now defying the original stated purpose of charter schools, and marketing her chain of Success Academies to white middle class families in Brooklyn and on the Upper West Side.  Her glossy flyers, sent to households by the truckload, with many families having already received five or six, increasingly feature the faces of little white children. There has also been much debate about the problems of NYC's demanding school "choice" process -- but not much said about how school choice may further segregate  our public schools, especially in many areas of Brownstone Brooklyn, where the last ten years or more of gradual gentrification have led to more diversity in neighborhood schools.  While the UCLA Civil Rights project has shown how charter schools contributes to more segregation nationwide, here are the observations of one Brooklyn parent who is also a high school teacher, Cindy Black, about what happened when a new elementary school of "choice" -- though not a charter -- opened up  in her community:

From what I've seen, "choice" segregates schools. People are just attracted to communities that feel familiar. It is frustrating.

This is at the elementary level, but when a "school of choice" opened in our district this year, virtually every white student in my daughter's grade left to go to that school, which billed itself as a progressive alternative to zoned schools. Now Brooklyn New School might open a new school in district 13, which will definitely impede the integration of local zoned schools which have already lost many white, biracial, and affluent families to BNS.

I'm fond of progressive pedagogy, but I'm not comfortable with a scenario where one demographic consistently chooses one extreme while another demographic chooses the other extreme. "Teaching to the middle" is now synonymous with bad teaching, but I actually think that if we are to have truly integrated schools, parents are going to have to compromise. I might like to see my child in the least constrictive environment, but another parent sees that as chaotic and distracting and wants their child to learn discipline. "Choice" allows each parent to write the other off, and ensures that their children won't meet. There is this attitude that every child is different and you have to find the right "fit" for your child, but part of being a citizen is putting aside what is easiest for you in order to think about what will be best for the community as a whole.

I think schools should be integrated. Really integrated. I was reviewing capitalization rules with my high school students recently and discovered that they didn't know that England is a country. I came home and asked my five-year-old and she did know, but only because two kids in her Kindergarten class had traveled to England over winter break. Both of those kids transferred to the new, progressive, "school of choice." Most of my students never went to school with kids who travel overseas for winter break. And obviously it isn't just my students who suffer. The kids who travel overseas, they're missing out too. Everybody loses, I think, when our search for the "right fit" allows us to opt out of sending our children to school with children whose experiences have been very different from their own.

  -- Cindy Black

Upper West side community opposes co-location of Upper West Success charter

The Community Board, the Community Education Council, the elected officials and parents all stand united against the co-location of Upper West Success charter in the Brandeis HS building.

Teachers and parents from other public schools that share space with Harlem Success Academies, the other charter schools in this chain run by Eva Moskowitz, explain how their kids have lost preK, art and music, as well as space for special services, with their children pushed into rooms in the basement.

Upper West side community blasts charter co-location

But is anyone listening?

Apparently, the DOE plans to spend $500,000 at this time of fiscal distress to reconfigure Brandeis HS to make space for the elementary charter school, Upper West Success, including building a new, separate cafeteria.

Unmentioned by the NY1 reporter below is that Zoe Stein, the one parent speaking up for the charter school placement in the video, who says her local public schools "isn't good enough" for her child, is the wife of Gideon Stein, a board member of the Harlem Success Network. Stein is also a partner in Argyle Holdings LLC, which, according to Wikipedia, is a real estate development company of luxury residential properties in Northern Manhattan.

Click here, to add your signature to protest the co-location, which the local Community Board, Community Education Council and all the local elected officials oppose.

And come to the protest rally tomorrow, Thurs. Jan. 27 at City Hall Park, against the mass school closings, charter co-locations and privatization, more info here.