ACTION ALERT: Speak Out for Greater School District Transparency
Last week we asked you to take action on House Bill 14-1292 (the Student Success Act), which would provide much-needed facilities funding for charter schools. Thank you for lending your voice in support of charter school equity.
Today this same legislation is facing another hurdle, and we need you to speak up again.
Some legislators want to do away with language in this bill about school district transparency. Here's why we need this language to stay.
Special Education Services
Many school districts charge charter schools a fee for special education services, whether the school uses the services or not. It's similar to insurance where the charter school is forced to pay a fee for every student enrolled to cover the cost of services should they need them. Sounds simple enough but some districts charge charter schools high amounts for special education services, and then do not provide those services when needed.
Sharing of Mill Levy Dollars
In addition, school districts often ask voters to approve mill levy increases to local property taxes. When a mill levy increase is approved by the voters, it's natural to assume that all public schools in the district will benefit. However, this is often not the case. Some districts have refused to share these taxpayer dollars with charter schools in the district.
The transparency language in House Bill 14-1292 would require that districts be much more transparent with the public about their actions in these areas. Districts would need to justify the basis for all special education charges imposed against their charters, and they would need to report on the amount of mill levy dollars they share with their charters.
We believe district transparency is the right first step towards ensuring that all public charter school students are treated fairly and receive the same taxpayer resources as traditional public school students.
Take Action Today!
Please click the link below to urge your legislator to support the "district transparency" language in House Bill 14-1292.
Please note that this message is only being sent to House Republicans. If your state representative is a Democrat, you may not be able to send a message at this time.
Thank you for your continued support of Colorado charter schools.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Action Alert
Action Alert: Ask Your Legislator to Support Additional Funding for Charter Schools
Last week, legislation was introduced that would provide significant new funding for Colorado Charter Schools. HB-1292, or the "Student Success Act" (click here to view the full bill) would increase the annual funding earmarked for charter school facilities from its current $7 million level to $25 million per year. Please click here to learn more and to send a message to your legislator asking him/her to support this piece of legislation. And, please spread the word!
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Legislative Updates - March 4, 2014 from CO League of Charter Schools
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De Blasio to Charters: Drop Dead
De Blasio to Charters: Drop Dead
When does a local education fight become a national bellwether? When it touches a policy lightning rod, scrambles partisan allegiances, and involves political actors who stand in for whole political ideologies.
And, sure, it helps when the locale staging the fight is New York City.
New mayor Bill de Blasio made waves last Thursday when his administration withdrew three agreements that would have allowed public charter schools to share space with district schools in public school buildings. The affected schools are all part of the Success Academy network of schools, which was founded by Eva Moskowitz, a former New York City councilmember. These “co-location” agreements were approved last October, under previous mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.
While some of the city’s public charter schools operate out of privately owned buildings, all Success Academy schools are co-located with district schools. According to Ann Powell, communications director for Success Academy, the network sees this as a “civil rights issue…[our] parents shouldn’t have to pay rent. Our students are public school kids.” Indeed, while public charter schools are free from some of the regulations that district schools must follow they are still publicly funded.
But de Blasio—and others—have argued that this “abhorrent” arrangement amounts to giving public charters a free ride. Leo Casey, Executive Director of the Albert Shanker Institute and a former vice president of New York’s teachers union, suggested that it’s about more than just rent: “Eva Moskowitz’s schools are a particularly egregious case…every school is co-located and as a co-location, what they get for free is not only the building, the facilities itself, not only the space that’s up to code, etc. They get the food [and] janitorial services.”
When asked about these costs, Powell noted that public charter schools receive $13,527 in public funds for each student. Traditional district schools receive just over $19,076 in public funds for each student.
In response, Casey noted that the city’s Independent Budget Office has calculated that the gap in public funding may be somewhat narrower in recent years—and may slightly favor public charters housed in public buildings. They also found that public charters paying for private facilities receive significantly less per student funding than district public schools. Charter advocates have disputed the IBO’s analysis (PDF), arguing that they don’t take district schools’ large pension costs into account.
Unsurprisingly, the fight was big news in the New York metro area.
But since the national media has anointed de Blasio as one of the spokesmen for a resurgent Democratic Party progressivism, his moves attracted much broader attention. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor accused him of waging a “war against kids” and House Republicans promptly announced a committee hearing on “The Role of Charter Schools in K-12 Education.”
While there’s nothing particularly surprising about Republican opposition to a progressive mayor’s approach to urban education policy, their attention actually has more to do with intra-party Democratic politics. After all, De Blasio and Moskowitz are both Democrats—though their personal and ideological differences are vast. The GOP’s interest in Some Republicans, following Cantor’s lead, have been probing at public charter schools—and school choice programs more broadly—as a wedge issue with potential for causing dissension amongst Democrats. The current battle in New York City provides some evidence supporting their approach.
There is no love lost between Moskowitz and the mayor. De Blasio singled her out for criticism while campaigning, arguing that she had “to stop being tolerated, enabled, [and] supported” by the city’s Department of Education. As Casey sees it, de Blasio revoked the co-location agreements to “lay down a marker” that would send a signal to all New York City public charter operators.
But it’s a mistake to see last week’s public charter school fight as simply the latest twist in a personal grudge match. Nor is the faceoff as simple as a battle between public charters and teachers unions. The union in New York City—the United Federation of Teachers—actually runs its own public charter school in Brooklyn.
The rancor between de Blasio and Moskowitz has at least some roots in substantive education policy disagreements. During his campaign, de Blasio promised to roll back Bloomberg Administration policies on public charter schools. He began fulfilling that pledge one month into his term when his administration reallocated $210 million from a public charter school expansion fund. This—among other moves—has put him at odds with many New York Democrats, most notably Governor Andrew Cuomo (who responded Monday with a promise to provide state funding for the displaced schools).
Indeed, interviews for this story turned up a wide range of responses to the de Blasio administration’s move. Success Academy’s Powell touted its benefits for kids: one of the schools the mayor is evicting had the highest-performing 5th graders in New York’s state math assessment in 2013. There weren’t just the highest performing in the city, she repeated. They were first in the entire state. “It’s just a little odd that we can’t find some space for a few hundred minority kids…80% of them are on free or reduced lunch, and nearly all are high-performing. You’d think that New York could use more schools like that.”
A New York Democratic Party consultant, who asked to remain anonymous because of the intra-party nature of the debate, called de Blasio’s revocation of “both personal and ideological.” The consultant went on: “de Blasio is deeply hostile to the idea of charter schools. He is deeply hostile to the education reform movement as a whole…There’s a spectrum in the Democratic Party, where you have people like Barack Obama and [Colorado Governor] John Hickenlooper and even Cuomo…who believe that education reform and charter schools can be a positive force in public education.”
Asked to elaborate, the consultant added, “[De Blasio] is someone who just subscribes to the traditional teachers union based belief that anything outside the old school public education, any innovation, any reform, is a bad idea.”
Meanwhile, Casey, who serves on the board of a New York public charter school, cheered the mayor’s decision: “What’s happened in NYC now is that [Success Academy] is reaping what they sowed.” He argued that Success Academy and other similar public charters had provided cover for the Bloomberg administration’s efforts to undermine collective bargaining and close struggling district schools. In Casey’s eyes, “no-excuses charters” like Moskowitz’s take an approach “that is indistinguishable from Walmart’s” when it comes to employee bargaining rights.
Sam Chaltain, author of the forthcoming book, Our School: Searching for Community in the Era of Choice, suggested that co-location might sometimes be effective, but noted that it could invite uncomfortable comparisons between schools: “in the worst case, it could make one school feel inferior.”
When I asked him if this sort of division could cause trouble for Democrats on a national level, Bellwether Education co-founder and partner Andrew Rotherham, a prominent education writer and former Clinton Administration official, laughed and channeled Will Rogers: “That’s the 64 thousand dollar question. Look, this is the Democratic Party, so if you’re looking for unity or coherence, you’ve got to look somewhere else.”
Maybe this is just another manifestation of Democratic disorganization. it spread beyond the five boroughs—and into national partisan politics?
I asked Chaltain if he thought public charters could be a productive wedge issue for Republicans. He demurred: “The overall climate of what people think about charters and school choice varies so much from city to city.” This is certainly true. State charter laws vary widely across the country—and eight states have no public charter schools at all.
What’s more, public charter schools are a very small slice of the American education system. Out of the nearly 50 million K-12 students in American public schools, less than 2 million attend public charters. There are more students in Catholic schools. Indeed, there are nearly three times as many K-12 students in private schools than in public charters. The upshot: it’s hard to see how this very small population could drive enough controversy to sustain a national political discussion.
But focusing on the size of the American public charter sector might be missing the point. Problematic ideological splits are usually rooted in principle—not pragmatism. Chaltain cautioned, “I do think it’s a big intra-Democratic Party battle, and I think it’s a split in the value proposition about public education.”
This gets at why education inhabits a unique space in American politics. Because it is deeply implicated in American democratic and meritocratic ideals, it is permanently controversial (consider, for instance, the persistent, rumbling fights over implementation of the Common Core State Standards).
Nonetheless, education rarely grabs headlines or news cycles the way that other, more dramatic topics regularly command. Check cable news: for every one segment covering ongoing education fights, you’ll see dozens covering the situation in Ukraine. In part, this is because the education system is just too large for a targeted national discussion. Attempts at comprehensive education reform usually span federal, state, and local governing institutions, as well as myriad union contracts and funding sources. Which makes them complicated. And nothing kills political controversy like complexity, so most education politics flareups happen at the state or local level—where the arguments don’t need to be as broad.
In other words, education politics has a unique dynamic; it has permanent political potency, but can’t usually hold national attention for long. Public charter schools may be locally controversial, but it’s hard to imagine them driving a national campaign to Democrats’ detriment.
What’s more, education politics can be a double-edged sword. Educational ideology cuts across party lines—a rarity in twenty-first century American politics. For instance, the fight over the Common Core has made allies out of Jeb Bush and Barack Obama. And while public charter schools challenge Democrats’ unity, Republicans education factions may be more consequential.
Consider the other plank in de Blasio’s mayoral campaign: universal pre-K. De Blasio promised to fund universal pre-K in New York City with a tax hike of about 0.5 percentage points on incomes of over half a million dollars each year, but hasn’t been able to push that through the legislature in Albany (which must sign off on all NYC tax increases). The program remains in a holding pattern as the mayor fences with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose counterproposal offers a slower path to universal access and relies on existing state revenues.
Republicans are in a tough position on pre-K. While the American public, nearly all elected Democrats, and a majority of Republican voters (PDF) support expanded access to high-quality early education, Republican officials are split. Last summer, the reliably conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce co-hosted an event with the Center for American Progress to call for increased American pre-K investment. A few months ago, the House and Senate introduced bills aiming to make pre-K universally available for families living at or below 200 percent of the poverty line. The House bill has two Republican co-sponsors and widespread Democratic support. And while Republican governors like Michigan’s Rick Snyder have fought hard for larger investments in early education, many in the party remain opposed.
In other words, high-quality pre-K is a much more powerful political issue than public charter schools. While American early education policy is heavily shaped by a number of federal laws, charter policy is almost entirely determined at the state level. This, by the way, is why public charter schools’ quality varies widely from state to state. A recent Stanford study (PDF) found that public charters in Washington, D.C. and New York substantially outperformed similar district schools, while public charters in Nevada and Texas lagged far behind their district peers.
So while it’s tempting to frame the fight in New York as a perilous fight between Democratic education reformers and “the de Blasio wing” of the party, public charter schools are just too local to drive a national political conversation—let alone a serious civil war within the Democratic party.
Of course, even though public charter schools aren’t a promising plank for national political leverage, they’re still plenty controversial. The lightning rod isn’t going away, cautioned Chaltain. “The school choice genie is out of the bottle…To me, the only question is how can school choice unleash a virtuous cycle that raises the tide of educational opportunity?” And while that’s a conversation that’s both less exciting and more uncomfortable than the current debate in New York, it’s almost assuredly a more productive one.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Does Outdoor Play Make Kids Smarter?
We know that outdoor play improves kids' physical health. All that fresh air and exercise -- what's not to like? The truth is, there may actually be more to like. Outdoor play is increasingly linked scientifically to stronger mental muscle.
Parents have long thought of outdoor play as the icing on the cognitive cake: Finish your homework, attend to all of the after-school lessons and clubs intended to gain you admission to Stanford or Cal, and then, and only then, can you go out and play. A growing body of research, however, suggests outdoor play offers such a positive bump in brain power, it should perhaps be a priority.
It's not just a tug-of-war over time or the oft-blamed lure of technology. School recess and P.E. have been co-opted for more class time. At home, children are sidelined by everything from unsafe neighborhoods to home owner association and city ordinances banning skateboards and basketball nets. It's an uphill battle. But experts say it's one worth waging.
A 2012 study of 8,950 children, led by Pooja Tandon at the Seattle Children's Research Institute, showed nearly half of all preschoolers weren't taken outside to play every day. This finding is particularly troubling to Tandon, acting assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington, because, she points out, "outdoor play is beneficial for motor development, vision, cognition, vitamin D levels and mental health."
That's backed by results of a test called "digit span," a standard measure of intelligence and attention span, says Lara Honos-Webb, a Walnut Creek psychologist in private practice and the best-selling author of "The Gift of ADHD." "I read a series of numbers to you, and you repeat them back," says Honos-Webb. "Studies using that test have shown that as little as a 20-minute walk in nature will boost your attention span."
Honos-Webb, who speaks widely on "nature as medicine," marvels at the bang for your cognitive buck the outdoors provides.
"I love that it only requires such small doses -- it's so doable," she says. Honos-Webb cites studies that show just having a room overlooking nature "can have an impact on impulse control and gratification delay."
One school of thought about why nature has such an impact is the attention restoration theory: If you want to gain strength by lifting weights, you need to take a break between sessions for your muscles to recover; nature provides a similar break in attention for your brain.
The other theory, notes Honos-Webb, "is biophilia: This is what my brain was built for. Our brains evolved in nature. Now that we have light bulbs and iPads, nature has a calming effect. MRI tests confirm that nature produces chemical shifts in the brain."
Amelia Rosenman experiences these shifts every week in her work as a naturalist, taking San Mateo County, Calif. schoolchildren exploring at five-day outdoor research science camps in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The kids enjoy a week of "detoxing" from videogames and other electronics, she explains. "They experience real life in real time. They open their eyes to the new world. And we see an incredible transformation in them from Monday to Friday."
Rosenman sees perhaps the "greatest transformation in children on the autism spectrum." During an assembly for one group, she recalls a boy who couldn't sit still, so Rosenman told him he could wander in a specified area. "And he found a rare, extremely well-camouflaged salamander, and he was the hero for the day."
Indeed, self-direction may be key to the power of outdoor play for all children , says Joanne Finn, school psychologist for the Mt. Diablo Unified School District in Contra Costa County. "Outdoor spaces give kids more choices for creative play. Indoors, there are only a finite number of things a kid can do," says Finn, who has a daughter, 11. But outdoors, she says, when kids are self-directed "they're not going to do something rote -- they're going to want to problem-solve: gather materials for a fort, play hide-and-seek, explore new spaces. There's an enthusiasm there. And when they're excited," Finn points out, "learning is heightened."
Kids can get bored outdoors without the "instant gratification of the screen, particularly in circumstances they haven't yet explored," Finn notes. Parents can give them ideas, but boredom allows the child "time to organize themselves and figure out what interests them," says Finn. This kind of problem-solving hones executive thinking, she adds. "If a parent circumvents that process, they'll never figure that out."
Finland's now-legendary rankings in the international Program for International Student Assessment survey of student reading, math and science scores started the global buzz linking outdoor play to cognitive improvement. The tiny Nordic nation's superior rankings in 2008 were credited to its schools' leisurely recesses -- 15 minutes of outdoor play for every 45 minutes of instruction.
The newest PISA survey, released in December, shows America's schools have fallen even further behind at a time when they have also continued to reduce recess time in favor of more class time, in addition to other factors. U.S. students now rank 26th out of 34 countries in math, 21st in science and 17th in reading. Finland, which minimizes homework and continues to strengthen its outdoor-play policies, with every schoolchild now getting at least 75 minutes per school day, is now ranked No. 1 in the world in science and No. 2 in math and reading.
"Americans think that we'd be damaging students by taking away all that classroom instruction," says Honos-Webb. "But even when you compare (U.S.) middle schools within the same district, you see 95 percent of students excelling at math and science at schools where students go outside compared to 65 percent at schools where students stay inside."
She notes that one district in Minnesota even showed a 54 percent reduction in suspensions in schools with outdoor environmental education programs.
As a result of such compelling science, Honos-Webb's mantra to family clients has become "time in nature before homework. It's the simplest intervention I do." She has found that when parents take their kids to the park to do homework, the kids spend more time doing it. "It also reduces conflict between mother and child," she adds.
Barry Savin, a teacher with Ruby Bridge Elementary School in Alameda, Calif., where most of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, is also a crusader for outdoor play after 20 years working in special education.
"We know kids behave and perform better after exercise," says Savin.
After outdoor play, Savin also notices a boost in self-confidence among his students, 25 to 40 percent of whom have hyperactivity issues. When kids with ADHD have trouble paying attention, Savin sends them outdoors for a run around the play structure. "It's not always instant, but afterward they're usually more focused," notes Savin.
"Kids today don't have the balance," Savin says. "They're being rushed, so they're anxious. And how do you relieve anxiety? Let them have fun and play."
Rosenman also works with low-income children. "We have kids regularly who are seeing the stars for the first time ... kids who live 45 minutes from the ocean and have never seen it. We hope we are planting the seed for the future."
Most hopeful are signs of kids taking the reins of their own outdoor play.
"I always say to them on Friday 'you have the choice to take something from here and bring it into your life at home. What will it be?' " says Rosenman. "And sometimes, not always, but sometimes they say 'playing outside!' "
Parents have long thought of outdoor play as the icing on the cognitive cake: Finish your homework, attend to all of the after-school lessons and clubs intended to gain you admission to Stanford or Cal, and then, and only then, can you go out and play. A growing body of research, however, suggests outdoor play offers such a positive bump in brain power, it should perhaps be a priority.
It's not just a tug-of-war over time or the oft-blamed lure of technology. School recess and P.E. have been co-opted for more class time. At home, children are sidelined by everything from unsafe neighborhoods to home owner association and city ordinances banning skateboards and basketball nets. It's an uphill battle. But experts say it's one worth waging.
A 2012 study of 8,950 children, led by Pooja Tandon at the Seattle Children's Research Institute, showed nearly half of all preschoolers weren't taken outside to play every day. This finding is particularly troubling to Tandon, acting assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington, because, she points out, "outdoor play is beneficial for motor development, vision, cognition, vitamin D levels and mental health."
That's backed by results of a test called "digit span," a standard measure of intelligence and attention span, says Lara Honos-Webb, a Walnut Creek psychologist in private practice and the best-selling author of "The Gift of ADHD." "I read a series of numbers to you, and you repeat them back," says Honos-Webb. "Studies using that test have shown that as little as a 20-minute walk in nature will boost your attention span."
Honos-Webb, who speaks widely on "nature as medicine," marvels at the bang for your cognitive buck the outdoors provides.
"I love that it only requires such small doses -- it's so doable," she says. Honos-Webb cites studies that show just having a room overlooking nature "can have an impact on impulse control and gratification delay."
One school of thought about why nature has such an impact is the attention restoration theory: If you want to gain strength by lifting weights, you need to take a break between sessions for your muscles to recover; nature provides a similar break in attention for your brain.
The other theory, notes Honos-Webb, "is biophilia: This is what my brain was built for. Our brains evolved in nature. Now that we have light bulbs and iPads, nature has a calming effect. MRI tests confirm that nature produces chemical shifts in the brain."
Amelia Rosenman experiences these shifts every week in her work as a naturalist, taking San Mateo County, Calif. schoolchildren exploring at five-day outdoor research science camps in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The kids enjoy a week of "detoxing" from videogames and other electronics, she explains. "They experience real life in real time. They open their eyes to the new world. And we see an incredible transformation in them from Monday to Friday."
Rosenman sees perhaps the "greatest transformation in children on the autism spectrum." During an assembly for one group, she recalls a boy who couldn't sit still, so Rosenman told him he could wander in a specified area. "And he found a rare, extremely well-camouflaged salamander, and he was the hero for the day."
Indeed, self-direction may be key to the power of outdoor play for all children , says Joanne Finn, school psychologist for the Mt. Diablo Unified School District in Contra Costa County. "Outdoor spaces give kids more choices for creative play. Indoors, there are only a finite number of things a kid can do," says Finn, who has a daughter, 11. But outdoors, she says, when kids are self-directed "they're not going to do something rote -- they're going to want to problem-solve: gather materials for a fort, play hide-and-seek, explore new spaces. There's an enthusiasm there. And when they're excited," Finn points out, "learning is heightened."
Kids can get bored outdoors without the "instant gratification of the screen, particularly in circumstances they haven't yet explored," Finn notes. Parents can give them ideas, but boredom allows the child "time to organize themselves and figure out what interests them," says Finn. This kind of problem-solving hones executive thinking, she adds. "If a parent circumvents that process, they'll never figure that out."
Finland's now-legendary rankings in the international Program for International Student Assessment survey of student reading, math and science scores started the global buzz linking outdoor play to cognitive improvement. The tiny Nordic nation's superior rankings in 2008 were credited to its schools' leisurely recesses -- 15 minutes of outdoor play for every 45 minutes of instruction.
The newest PISA survey, released in December, shows America's schools have fallen even further behind at a time when they have also continued to reduce recess time in favor of more class time, in addition to other factors. U.S. students now rank 26th out of 34 countries in math, 21st in science and 17th in reading. Finland, which minimizes homework and continues to strengthen its outdoor-play policies, with every schoolchild now getting at least 75 minutes per school day, is now ranked No. 1 in the world in science and No. 2 in math and reading.
"Americans think that we'd be damaging students by taking away all that classroom instruction," says Honos-Webb. "But even when you compare (U.S.) middle schools within the same district, you see 95 percent of students excelling at math and science at schools where students go outside compared to 65 percent at schools where students stay inside."
She notes that one district in Minnesota even showed a 54 percent reduction in suspensions in schools with outdoor environmental education programs.
As a result of such compelling science, Honos-Webb's mantra to family clients has become "time in nature before homework. It's the simplest intervention I do." She has found that when parents take their kids to the park to do homework, the kids spend more time doing it. "It also reduces conflict between mother and child," she adds.
Barry Savin, a teacher with Ruby Bridge Elementary School in Alameda, Calif., where most of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, is also a crusader for outdoor play after 20 years working in special education.
"We know kids behave and perform better after exercise," says Savin.
After outdoor play, Savin also notices a boost in self-confidence among his students, 25 to 40 percent of whom have hyperactivity issues. When kids with ADHD have trouble paying attention, Savin sends them outdoors for a run around the play structure. "It's not always instant, but afterward they're usually more focused," notes Savin.
"Kids today don't have the balance," Savin says. "They're being rushed, so they're anxious. And how do you relieve anxiety? Let them have fun and play."
Rosenman also works with low-income children. "We have kids regularly who are seeing the stars for the first time ... kids who live 45 minutes from the ocean and have never seen it. We hope we are planting the seed for the future."
Most hopeful are signs of kids taking the reins of their own outdoor play.
"I always say to them on Friday 'you have the choice to take something from here and bring it into your life at home. What will it be?' " says Rosenman. "And sometimes, not always, but sometimes they say 'playing outside!' "
National Charter Schools Group Outraged over Mayor de Blasio’s Decision to Kick Children Out of their School
National Charter Schools Group Outraged over Mayor de Blasio’s Decision to Kick Children Out of their School
Four charter schools kicked out of school buildings, hundreds of children affected
WASHINGTON, D.C. — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has told four charter schools they would lose their school buildings, leaving at least 700 children without a school this coming school year. One of the schools is already open and serving children, three were scheduled to open this fall. Among these schools is one of the top performing schools in the city, and more notably, the state. National Alliance for Public Charter Schools President and CEO Nina Rees issued the following statement in response:
“Kicking one of the state’s top-performing schools out of its building and leaving three other schools without a building is nothing short of outrageous. At the school already serving children, Success Academy’s Harlem 4, 83 percent of the students passed the state math exam last year, putting it in the top one percent of all schools in the state. Why would anyone want to stop that kind of student achievement?
“This is an unjustified attack on the city’s most vulnerable youth—93 percent of students in charter schools in NYC are minorities and 73 percent are low-income. Among the country’s 10 largest cities, all other mayors (8 of whom are Democrats) have embraced charter schools as a solution to urban education challenges. It is incomprehensible that Mayor de Blasio would intentionally force hundreds of children out of their schools. He is threatening to take away the most valuable thing we can give to our kids – a quality education.
“These children and parents don’t deserve to have the rug pulled out from under their feet. De Blasio should immediately reconsider this decision and put the interests of the city’s children first.”
A recent report by the Center for Research on Educational Outcomes at Stanford University showed that students who attend charter schools in New York City are doing better in school than their peers who attend traditional district schools. There are 70,000 students enrolled in charter schools in New York, and 50,000 more students on charter school waiting lists.
About the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is the leading national nonprofit organization committed to advancing the public charter school movement. Our mission is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic achievement by fostering a strong charter sector. For more information, please visit our website at www.publiccharters.org.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is the leading national nonprofit organization committed to advancing the public charter school movement. Our mission is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic achievement by fostering a strong charter sector. For more information, please visit our website at www.publiccharters.org.
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