Hope grows in Harlem
School choice can’t expand fast enough
Last Updated: 12:29 AM, September 10, 2012
Last week, Success Academy Harlem 1 won the nation’s top education prize, a Blue Ribbon Award for academic excellence as one of the state’s top-performing schools. It’s just thesecondtime since the award’s inception in 1982 that a Harlem elementaryschool has achieved this distinction.
It’s an incredible honor for our flagship school and our staff, but also further evidence of an educational renaissance in Harlem that has opened up dozens of new educational opportunities to families that for decades lacked good options.
When it comes to educating their children, families in low-income New York neighborhoods like Harlem have two things today that they didn’t have just 10 years ago — a choice and a chance.
J.C. Rice
The demand is huge: The annual Harlem educational fair draws thousands of parents seeking the best schools for their children — but many kids are still stuck in failing district schools.
No longer are most children simply relegated to the school down the street; instead, parents can choose among a variety of schools in their neighborhoods, including 600 new district and charter-school options citywide.
The idea behind the strategy is simple: Every child should have the chance to attend a great public school, and when you empower parents with options, they’ll seek out the best fit for their children.
Those same parents will flee schools that aren’t cutting it — if they have the opportunity. For far too many decades, we not only let bad schools continue along their path of mediocrity, we also gave them a monopoly on educating their neighborhood’s children.
Nowhere is the success of the new strategy more apparent than in Harlem.
In 1999, just 19 percent of Harlem students in grades K-8 were meeting basic standards in math and reading. Parents who’d dropped out of high school were having children who dropped out of high school — fueling the vicious cycle of underemployment and poverty.
But since Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, Harlem has undergone an educational transformation. Dozens of new public charter schools have opened there, and parents have responded with overwhelming enthusiasm.
Each year, the neighborhood hosts a school-choice fair that draws thousands of families seeking information about their district-, charter- and parochial-school options. This fair isn’t just inspiring, it fully debunks the myth that low-income parents aren’t as involved in their children’s education as those in more affluent neighborhoods.
This year, nearly 10,000 Harlem families applied to a public charter school, including the neighborhood’s fiveSuccess schools. It’s not surprising why — in many cases, these schools are vastly outperforming their district-school peers. Last year, 88 percent of Success students met reading standards and 97 percent were proficient in math. These scores are on par with the city’s selective schools (charters are open to all students) and suburbs like Scarsdale.
In other words, our schools are proving that families can overcome the barriers to learning that poverty creates.
Yet change hasn’t come fast enough. There aren’t nearly enough seats available to meet this demand; this year, nearly 8,000 students are on charter-school wait lists in Harlem alone.
Not surprisingly, the parents of these children are incredibly frustrated and feel that “choice” hasn’t worked for them.
Their anger is further fanned by charter opponents, who like to blame charters for all of the failures of district schools. Check the facts, and it’s clear the damage was done long before charters arrived on the scene.
The difference is that parents now see there’s something better and are choosing to leave schools that are failing.And most of the parents who remain aren’t there by choice.
As an educator, there is no worse feeling than having to turn away a child. That’s why we’ve opened 14 schools to date, with another six on tap for next year — to try to meet at least some of this growing demand.
Opponents again say we’re moving too fast, but I don’t think we’re moving fast enough. The fact is, families are awakened, but they’re not yet all empowered.
In America, education is supposed to be the great equalizer. But until all children have the opportunity to attend a high-quality public school, a child’s neighborhood will continue to determine his or her destiny.
Injecting choice into a once-monopolistic system has been a huge step forward; we need to keep on this path until all children are in schools that are best for them and for their futures.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/hope_grows_in_harlem_rG8jbJCLYluCZyWiOeEVeM#ixzz264BMaBpU |
