A new study from Success Academy busts a pernicious myth about charter schools and their effect on district schools, particularly those in communities of color.
The study shows that charters in District 5 (covering most of Harlem) caused no financial or educational harm, only benefit, to the regular public schools.
Charters enroll 59% of all public-school students in the district, and two-thirds of K-8 kids. Their advent has been crucial to boosting district-wide performance on state tests, narrowing the racial “achievement gap.”
And it’s led to higher per-pupil spending in the regular public schools and smaller class sizes. This, while the charters get by on roughly half the per-student funding.
Charters, in short, may save public education in urban communities.
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Nor are the charters “cherry picking” the most promising students, as critics routinely charge.
Harlem charters enroll a greater share of economically disadvantaged students than the district’s “regular” schools, 87% to 82% — and of Black/Latino students, too, 95% to 85%. (Fact is, the charter law mandates that these schools focus on serving the most disadvantaged students.)
As soon as Gov. Kathy Hochul announced her plan to let dozens more charters open in the city, opponents trotted out the usual canards about “cherry picking” and charters “draining” resources from the regular system. It’s all baseless lies.
The only people who don’t gain from charters’ growth are the teachers unions and the politicians they fund.
Lawmakers trying to stop Hochul’s plan are siding with the special interests and against the kids — all of them.
