Despite their enormous successes, charter schools in New York and across the country are in a precarious spot heading into the new school year. In New York, state test results last week showed that charter schools in every region outperformed traditional public schools in English and math proficiency — by double digits.
Yet leading Democrats, in the Empire State and nationally, are increasingly hostile to charters. This, even though polling suggests the schools are broadly popular with the disadvantaged minorities they claim to speak for.
New polling, also out last week, shows that nationally, 58% of Hispanic Democratic voters and 53% of black Democrats support charters, while only 30% of white Democrats do. The same poll found that overall support for charter schools has climbed to 48%, from a low of 39% in 2017.
Yet 2020 Dem presidential hopefuls sound like they’d sooner yank out their own eyes with rusty spoons than back charter growth. Even one-time charter hero Cory Booker has jelly legs. Mayor Bill de Blasio vents “hatred” for the charter world, even though in his city, the charter school student body is 91% black or Hispanic and 80% low-income.
The candidates’ desire to win over the notoriously anti-charter and overwhelmingly white teachers’ unions is a driver. And there’s the political imperative to oppose anything supported by the Trump administration.
But if Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders & Co. took a peek into the classrooms of America’s charter schools, maybe they would reassess. In New York City alone, visiting just three schools would burst their ideological bubble.
The candidates could start in America’s poorest congressional district, in the South Bronx, home to the highest concentration of New York City’s 235 charters. They might visit Bronx Global Learning Institute for Girls, a K-8 school focused on technology, music and social-emotional learning for young women and girls. With a student body that often comes to school exhausted from having to parent younger siblings (Mom was working a double shift), BGLIG outperformed its local district on the state test.
Afterward, the candidates could cross the Macombs Dam Bridge and head south 10 blocks to visit New York’s first charter school, the result of an odd-bedfellows partnership between a one-time Freedom Rider who became Martin Luther King’s chief of staff and a Wall Street financier, and named after Nelson Mandela’s partner in overthrowing apartheid in South Africa.
In today’s hyper-divided world, the collaboration between the Rev. Wyatt T. Walker and Steve Klinsky might never be allowed to happen. But on Harlem’s 145th Street, the Sisulu-Walker Charter School outscored its local city school district in five of six testing grades this past year.
Next, the candidates could head to Brooklyn, to MESA Charter HS on Palmetto Street. Now in its seventh year, MESA might be the best charter high school in the state.
MESA is exactly the kind of school even charter opponents have difficulty hating. It’s not part of a charter network. Classrooms and hallways are orderly, yet decidedly not of the “no-excuses” model that has caused handwringing among many.
Almost all the students who enter in the ninth grade graduate on time. Dropouts are rare.
Its most recent seniors were accepted into some of America’s most selective schools, including Wesleyan, Boston College, Boston University, Howard and Brandeis in addition to the top state schools and the best CUNY schools. Others have decided to serve in the military.
MESA is diverse in the way New York politicians like. Graduation emcee Bryan Cuzco-Sinchi introduced himself in June as “a proud gay, Ecuadorian, soon-to-be-first-generation college student.” He has received a full scholarship to Skidmore, which has a lower acceptance rate than New York University.
Almost all of MESA’s students live in Bushwick, where housing costs are up, but the public high school graduation rate isn’t. That rate languishes at 60%, under the statewide rate of 80% and far below MESA’s 95%. For students with disabilities, MESA’s graduation rate is 85%, compared to 47% for the local district and 29% for the state.
MESA has been OK’d to open another high school just like this one, but can’t, because the Legislature won’t lift an arbitrary cap on the number of charters in New York City.
Charters in New York have strong support from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who last year easily won a third term in one of the nation’s most progressive states. Perhaps America’s other Democrats will see they’re not all that bad.
Robert Bellafiore, a public strategy consultant, has been involved with charter schools for more than 20 years.