The school playground is cramped, the day is bleak and chilly, but the kindergarten students are having fun, and one boy in particular resists going back inside. "You haven't made good choices," two teachers tell him. To his more cooperative classmates, the teachers say, "You have made good choices."
The use of the phrase "good choices" is no accident. "We believe in creating a democratic society where our children feel they have a choice," said school leader Rita Danis.
Related Stories in the Community Gazettes: - A New Approach to Teaching Astoria's Kids? - Testing Students For Success in the South Bronx |
But "choice" holds another meaning at UFT Charter Elementary, a new school in the East New York section of Brooklyn run by the teachers union. It is a charter school. As such it is key to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein's campaign to give city parents more choices about where to send their children to school.
While Bloomberg has set more requirements for public schools, he has, in an apparent contradiction, sought to encourage charter schools, which function outside of those rules. He hopes to more than double the number of charter schools in the city, from 47 to 100. "It's time to clear away the barriers to the creation of charter schools," Bloomberg said in a recent speech.
But charter schools, such as One World in Astoria (see related story in the Community Gazettes) and Carl Icahn in the Bronx (see related story in the Community Gazettes), educate only about one percent of city public school students and only four percent in the nation as a whole. So why have they attracted so much attention? And why do some people think they can help solve New York City's education problems?
Charter schools receive public money but are independently and privately run. Though they must comply with certain state regulations and health and safety rules, they do not have to operate under union contracts, and they exist largely outside the Department of Education bureaucracy.
The charter school movement began in the 1970s, the brainchild of Ray Budde, a professor of education at the University of Massachusetts. He suggested that individual teachers could be given contracts, which he dubbed charters, to explore new approaches. United Federation of Teachers president Albert Shanker then expanded the idea to call for granting entire schools charters (with union approval). The first charter school in the U.S. opened in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1992. Today about 580,000 students in the country attend 2,400 charter schools.
But New York was slow to embrace charter schools. The legislature finally approved them in 1998 as part of a political deal. Governor George Pataki agreed to support a legislative pay raise if the lawmakers approved charters. The bill included a rigorous application process for charter schools and a ceiling on the number of new charter schools.
As Pataki hailed the bill's passage, he noted that dozens of state schools were considered to be failing. "We're telling the parents in those neighborhoods, you have no choice but to send your child to a school that we know fails. Well, now they're going to have an option," Pataki said, "and I think all the schools are going to be better because of that."
Seven years later, New York City's 47 charter schools have a total of about 12,000 students - compared with about 1.1 million in conventional public schools. (Charter schools are considered public schools too.) Fifteen of the 47, including the UFT school, opened this fall. The vast majority are elementary schools and many are small, with fewer than 200 pupils.
While much of the adamant opposition to charters has faded, conflicts remain over their performance and how they should be controlled and regulated. In many ways, these disputes come down to a battle over who should control education, what some have likened to a "power struggle."
Charter schools offer parents choice, particularly in poorer neighborhoods. But they also provide a counterweight to the so-called "educrats" and unions, often derided by Bloomberg and others. The lack of the union and of longtime school administrators holds particular appeal for many on the political right. It is no coincidence that one of the leading academic proponents of charters schools is the Goldwater Institute in Arizona -- named for the founder of the modern American conservative moment.
"I see charter schools as, first, a source of needed education options for disadvantaged kids otherwise stuck in failing district schools and unable to afford private schools; second, a source of important external pressure on traditional school systems (and private schools); and, third, a preview of things to come for public education as a whole," as the big bureaucracies lose much of their power said Chester Finn, a charter school advocate.
Charter schools also benefit from being contrasted with vouchers, which give parents money to spend on their children's education as they see fit. "Instead of pushing private school vouchers that funnel scarce dollars away from the public schools, we will support public school choice, including charter schools and magnet schools that meet the same high standards as other schools," said the Democratic Party platform for 2004.
"The educational establishment has been willing to allow charters in some state just to forestall vouchers," Clint Bolick of the Alliance for School Choice told the New York Times.
Those who remain opposed argue that charter schools drain energy and resources from the public schools, while only educating a tiny percentage of kids. As evidence, some point to Albany, where the public school system has lost more than 1,000 students and must spend about $10 million a year on charters.
Instead of moving to create a new parallel school system, "parents are interested in improving the schools that they have," said David Ernst, spokesman for the state Schools Board Association.
Most New York City charter schools have existed for only a few years, if that, and so information about their performance remains sketchy.
In general, the results appear promising. For example, on eighth grade tests, where the city's regular public school students tend to stumble, charter school students did better, according to figures compiled by the Center for Charter School Excellence.
But nationally the statistics are murkier. The first study comparing students in regular schools with those in charters, released in August 2004, found that charter school students often did not perform as well as students in regular public schools. Finn called the results "dismayingly low" and called for those overseeing charters to be more demanding.
On the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress test, charter school students did not do as well as public school students. They did, however, narrow the gap between the two types of schools. This prompted a pro charter group, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, to say the scores showed "real progress for charter schools," while the American Federation of Teachers declared that charters "continue to lag behind regular public schools."
To many New York City parents, such arguments are academic. They are dissatisfied with their local public school and want something better for their child but cannot afford private school.
The city's charter schools are concentrated in poorer neighborhoods. Ninety percent of their students are black or Latino, and almost three quarters come from families poor enough that they qualify for a free school lunch. But the students are less likely than their regular school counterparts to need special education services, according to a state report.
Parents of students at the UFT school only have to look to I.S. 292, the public junior high school that resides in the same building as the charter school, to see what they are up against. Although a new principal has reportedly tried to turn the school around, in 2004, 28 percent of its eighth graders failed to meet even minimum state standards in reading.
And some charters offer services that go far beyond what public schools provide. At Harlem Day Charter, for example, students can stay at school until 5:30 p.m. at no charge. Some of that time is devoted to a program where artists supervise students in projects such as a felt mural showing how to count in Swahili. A fourth grade classroom boasts a bank of new computers, and a room set aside for parents offers computers as well as books that might be of interest. And the school takes advantage of a foundation program where students go to a local Barnes and Noble and get to spend $50 each on books of their own choosing.
Charter schools can adjust their programs to meet the wishes of parents in the community. And so many of the city charter schools stress academic basics, feature strict disciplinary codes and require uniforms. Some are single sex schools. Seth Andrew, who has applied to launch a charter school called Democracy Prep first looked at lots of other charter schools. He was particularly impressed by those that set "incredibly high expectations with plans for college for all kids" -- expectations that extend to behavior as well as academics.
To parents such an approach seems to have appeal. The charters select students by lottery and most, if not all, have more applicants than they can accept.
Harlem Day receives slightly over $9,000 per student from the Department of Education, less than the public schools receive for each child. But, many say, money goes further in charter schools.
For one, new charter schools do not have to be unionized. "The big Kahuna is the union contract," said Peter Murphy, director of policy for the New York State Charter School Association. "The contract dictates things beyond wages and salaries" and takes away the school leader's ability to manage.
And charter school teachers may make less than their public school counterparts or work longer hours.
It seems clear that the UFT launched its charter school partly to rebut the contention that a UFT contract hampers education. Instead, union officials blame the school bureaucracy for excess costs. They say that administrative expenses take up 11 percent of most schools' budgets; at the UFT school, that figure is four percent.
But cost savings are only part of the story. Most charter schools raise money to supplement what they get from the city. Educating a student at the Harlem Day costs $3,400 to $4,000 more than the school receives from the city, said its director, Keith Meacham. But real estate developer Benjamin Lambert founded the school, and he and his brother Henry Lambert have helped it find space and money. And the Carl Icahn School in the South Bronx got a $3 million facility from the businessman for whom it is named.
Flexibility contributes to the success of charter schools, according to Paula Gavin, executive director of the city Center for Charter School Excellence. But, in addition, she said, the schools benefit from having a clear mission and a drive to fulfill that mission. They are small, Gavin said -- "not just class size, but the overall school is smaller. The size of the school allows individual attention." And, she said, charters must be accountable for what they do and do not do.
New York City and state do more than many other cities and states to promote charter schools. The city provides some schools with space in Department of Education buildings and recently launched a $250 million program to help other charters build their own homes. It has also established the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence in partnership with several foundations to help charter applicants and to assist existing schools.
Charter school advocates praise many things about New York state's charter law. But they do not like the cap, which limits the number of new charter schools in the entire state to 100, with 50 for the city. As of last month, some 42 schools were competing for the remaining 16 spots left for charters statewide.
The original rationale for the cap was that the state should be sure charter schools would work before launching too many of them. But now that charters have a track record, charter proponents say, the cap has outlived any use it might have onces had.
Bloomberg wants the state to eliminate the cap entirely and give him the authority to create charter schools without going to the state. Others call for doubling the cap to 200.
Supporters of charter schools would also like to see the government boost its allocation for each child in a charter school. "At the end of the day, they're all our children," said Mimi Corcoran, executive director of Beginning with Children Foundation, an early sponsor of charters.
But, while every child's future is important, won't spending money for charters still leave behind the vast majority of student who remain in regular public schools?
Supporters say no, contending that competition from charter schools may spur public schools to do better. Charters can, the argument goes, function as laboratories, developing techniques public schools can adopt. For example, said Corcoran, charters developed the idea of lead teachers, paying senior teachers extra money to remain in the classrooms rather than go into administration. Now that concept has been incorporated into the new union contract.
But many of the approaches used in charter schools, such as smaller class size, have already proved successful. Public schools simply don't have the money or the freedom to implement them.
"Our members envy the autonomy charter schools have," said Ernst of the school boards association. While the state frees charter school from many regulations, he said, it subjects public schools to requirements that are "costly, onerous, time consuming and not always in line with good educational process."
Similarly, while Bloomberg and Klein encourage charters to be independent, they have imposed a uniform curriculum on most regular public schools, increased standardized testing and, critics charged, micromanaged teachers and principals.'
Brian Ferguson, the principal of One World, is reluctant to set up a conflict between charters and more conventional public schools. "I'm sort of always leery to say that we're doing it and the public schools aren't doing it, because that's not the case," he said. "I think that we're both trying to get from each other what the best practices are for educating our children."
Organizations
New York City Center for Charter School Excellence
The city's public private partnership to promote charter schools
New York State Charter School Association
New York Charter School Resource Center
Charter School Institute, State University of New York
National Association of Charter School Authorizers
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
Articles
Apples to Apples: An Evaluation of Charter Schools Serving General Student Populations (Manhattan Institute)
The Charter School Dust-Up Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement (Economic Policy Institute)
Charter Schools in New York: A New Era (Manhattan Institute)
Charter schools build on a decade of experimentation (Christian Science Monitor)
Charter school group takes New York deal (New Haven register)
Charter Schools Saturate City of Albany (New York Teacher)
Cloning a Charter School from Connecticut (Gotham Gazette)
A Guide To Enrollment And Success In Charter Schools (Kidsource Online)
Loophole 101: How Charter Schools Weaken the Teachers' Union (Village Voice)
Nation's Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal (New York Times)
Snapshot of New York City Charter Schools 2005 (in pdf format) (women's City Club of New York)
Teachers Union Gets Its Charter (New York Sun)
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With nearly a quarter of a million students of diverse backgrounds, the City University of New York is one of the larger -- and certainly one of the broadest-based -- of the city's institutions. It carries with its educational mission the affection of its many alumni, some of whom have attained great prestige.
But, while there has been much public attention on the (apparently completed) negotiations between the Bloomberg administration and the United Federation of Teachers, a union that represents 60,000 teachers of public elementary, middle and high schools in the city, there has been much less about the stalled negotiations between the administration and the Professional Staff Congress, the 20,000-member union that represents the faculty and staff of the City University of New York.
As the New York Times reported last week, buried in a larger story about the mayor’s insistence on “productivity increases” in exchange for salary raises: “Some unions are angry because they remain without contracts. Most notable are the Uniformed Firefighters Association and the Professional Staff Congress, representing City University teachers.”
The negotiations have been stalled largely over economic issues, as the union has been offered a salary increase of only 6.5 percent over three years, a figure below the rise in the cost of living. The union and the university are discussing salary scales and other such details, but they are also, in a real sense, working out a larger struggle about the values and funding of public universities.
The social and political struggles in higher education take many forms, but they might be summarized as the battle over the move towards a corporate model. A corporate model calls for “productivity increases,” and for “accountability” to be measured by the administration’s assuming greater centralized decision-making power that once was considered a faculty prerogative. The university’s trustees, for example, (negotiating on behalf of the mayor and the governor) have demanded that any new contract strip department chairs of their union membership.
The impasse is just the latest example of a lack of commitment to higher education by City Hall (and New York State) that goes back three decades, a shortsighted under-funding that could cause lasting damage to the city.
Severe de-funding added immeasurably to the problems at CUNY, with both Governors George Pataki and Mario Cuomo slashing the university’s budget year in and year out. These budget cuts could not have come at a worse time, with various politicians and commentators engaged in a campaign to reshape the image of CUNY by denigrating it, even while supporters produced figures and anecdotes to show how it plays a crucial role in the culture and polity of New York City.
The conflict reached its nadir in 1999 when then Mayor Rudolph Guilani suggested that it should be burnt down. Others, like the would-be mayor Herman Badillo decried its low standards. Benno Schmidt, now the Chair of CUNY’s Board of Trustees, and at the time the CEO of a charter school company, referred to CUNY as an "institution adrift." (See Educating All New Yorkers At CUNY.)
The university struggled along, occasionally invoking its storied past (the Nobel Laureates from City College, for example), while trying to acknowledge in some useful ways the changed student body (many immigrants and public school graduates with less than sterling academic preparation.) Hovering over the struggle was the persistent image of "open enrollment" -- a noble social experiment that guaranteed admission to CUNY for all the city’s high school graduates - that imploded in the wake of the deep budget cuts and dragged the university's reputation down with it.
Despite verbal assurances that the university would be turned around, no fundamental budgetary improvement or long term commitment materialized. Increasingly the job description for a CUNY president included skill at fund-raising. This was a result of the logic of many in city and state government, who feel that private philanthropy should replace public funding. Thus, “privatization” has joined the agenda of those who would remodel CUNY.
But who would readily contribute to an "institution adrift", especially when it was a decades-long tradition that private philanthropy went to private colleges, and public institutions were funded by tax levy revenues? This two-part invention was in some ways directly responsible for the high standing of education in America. Ruling elites used private college successfully to recreate the managerial class that insured their wealth, while public universities generated openings in the professions and other fields that would be available to the poor and middle class families.
Publicly funded higher education, however, received less and less public support throughout the nation in the 1980's and 1990's. Public universities nationwide used to have 74 percent of their budgets funded through taxes; this has fallen in the last fourteen years to 64 percent. The difference must be made up by tuition hikes and private donations. (See "At Public Universities, Warnings of Privatization" and “The Money Crunch in Higher Education”)
The public has apparently been slow to awaken to this state of affairs. When CUNY's chief negotiator could introduce a pay offer several points below inflation and describe it with a straight face as "reasonable," it is clear that what was once a full-hearted civic commitment to the education of all the city’s citizens appears more and more to be changing to a quite different vision.
Charles Molesworth, who has taught for 36 years in the English Department at Queens College, serves as a union official in the Queens College chapter of the Professional Staff Congress.
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Unlike eighth graders in most parts of the country, New York City students must apply to go to high school – and not just Stuyvesant or LaGuardia Arts or the other well-known specialized schools. In many neighborhoods, including all of Manhattan, there is no neighborhood school to which students are assigned. So every fall, parents and students, with the help of teachers and counselors, try to navigate a system in which they must list up to 12 schools in order of preference in the hopes of getting into one high on their list -- or, indeed, on their list at all.
Even younger students are not immune to the city’s selection processes. Although most elementary school students attend a neighborhood school, some parents look for other public alternatives, particularly gifted and talented programs. At the middle school level, some local school districts have eliminated neighborhood schools, requiring students to apply to specific programs. And with many middle schools seen as academically questionable, many parents seek out programs for their children far from home.
While the specifics vary from grade to grade and from borough to borough, one principle drives the whole system. As school officials admit, there are simply not enough good, or even acceptable, schools in the city for all 1.1 million public school students. And so competition can be stiff for the good programs.
The scramble creates a high level of anxiety among parents and students -- after all, many of us did not have to confront rejection from a school until we were 18, not five. But it has implications beyond that, exacerbating the split between good schools and bad ones and inevitably favoring English-speaking affluent students, whose parents can unravel the intricacies of the system, take time off to attend meetings and information sessions, and know how to make their displeasure known if they fear that their child has been left behind.
But whatever their level of sophistication, many parents are often overwhelmed by the Byzantine system that they will confront in the weeks ahead.
Most five years olds still enter kindergarten at their local school. “If you have a good neighborhood school, chances are your child will do just fine there, even if he or she is very bright,” Inside Schools advises. “However, if your neighborhood school is disappointing, your child may be happier at a gifted program that attracts children from across the district or the city."
For now, getting into a gifted and talented program varies from program to program. The Daily News reported that some programs require children to take tests administered by private companies that may charge a lot for the service. The city plans by February 2007 to institute a uniform test for four and five year olds seeking admission to gifted and talented programs.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has repeatedly said he wants good schools in all neighborhoods. The city has begun adding gifted and talented programs in areas -- notably poor and minority sections -- that have traditionally not had many. And it has tried to strengthen instruction in traditionally weak schools. While experts disagree over how successful this has been, the administration points to recent test scores as an indication that they are on the right track.
Klein and others believe that allowing parents to bail out of their neighborhood schools weakens those schools, since families who leave are likely to be among the more committed and involved.
In 2004, the Center for Immigrant Families released a report finding that, while only 19 percent of student in District 3 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side are white, kindergartens in the sought-after schools had a majority of white students. "Admission can depend on parents’ connections, letter writing, phone calls, ability to fundraise or take time off work to attend meetings,” City Limits reported. “According to [the center], parents living outside a school’s zone or even the district use these skills to take spots what would otherwise go to children of immigrant families.”
In response, the city considered instituting a lottery for the popular programs but backed away from the plan under pressure from some parents. ''We cannot accept this notion that we are somehow out of bounds for trying to find the best schools for our children,'' Mark Diller, co-president of the parents association at Public School 87 told the New York Times.
Upon graduating from fifth grade (the end of elementary school in New York), many students stay in their neighborhoods, attending a school that accepts students from several surrounding elementary schools. But, over the years, some parts of the city have done away with neighborhood middle schools, requiring students to apply to middle schools in their area. The schools provide different approaches and programs -- one might emphasize arts, while another science -- and vary widely in quality. Some of the schools allow applicants from outside the district and or even the borough.
In some cases, students must simply submit a list of schools they would like to attend, but some schools require an interview, audition or special essay. The fourth-grade standardized test scores loom large in deciding who gets in where.
With so many bad middle schools in the city, the competition for spaces in what are seen as good schools can be fierce. “Look beyond the super-selective schools,” Inside Schools advised parents last year. “There are more options than you might imagine.”
But many parents jamming the fairs and information sessions might not agree, leading the Web site to concede, “The fairs to introduce parents and children to programs can be nerve wracking. These tend to be jam-packed events, seemingly designed to raise your blood pressure."
Some students do not get into the school they want. Last year in District 15, which includes the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Park Slope and Sunset Park, many students who had test scores high enough to get into one of the area’s top schools were rejected anyway. The reason? The district had about half as many slots for the schools as they had students qualified to attend. One school, MS 51, had 1,700 applicants who exceeded standards on the fourth grade test, but could offer only 300 seats. The district added places, while some parents gave up in disgust. “Each year more high performing students stay in the district through middle school,” Councilmember David Yassky, who represents part of the area, told the Daily News. “This year the dam finally broke.”
With the new small high schools, academically selective schools, schools that require a talent and others that few students want to go to, the high school selection system resembles not so much a patchwork as a crazy quilt.
Take three examples:
--Many schools that are even remotely desirable tell prospective students, that, if they want to get in, they should list the school as their first choice. But the Department of Education advises listing as many as 12 schools in order of preference.
--Applications are due in December, but new small schools are routinely hatched a couple of months later. Even though students are allowed to amend their applications to include these new schools, it is often too soon to know anything about the school other than its name and its good intentions.
--A number of the high schools are so-called Educational Option schools. Under a city formula, 16 percent of students admitted must score above average on a seventh grade test, 68 percent average and 16 percent below average. This, counselors readily admit, creates a paradox where a low-scoring student may have a better chance of getting into one of these schools than a top scorer. (The program was instituted as an integration measure in the 1980s but some critics say that in a system that is more than 70 percent black and Hispanic, it has outlived its usefulness.)
To apply to high school, some 90,000 eighth graders are now preparing a list of up to 12 schools, ranked in order of preference. Some schools also require students to take tests, have interviews, submit portfolios or audition.
The process is so complicated that the city issued its directory of high schools several months earlier than usual, offered summer workshops and fall fairs, open houses and tours. A huge citywide fair at Brooklyn Tech last month featured dozens of schools boasting of their programs.
In April, most students will be admitted to one, and only one, of the schools. This eliminates the situation several years ago in which some students got admitted to several schools, while others did not get in anywhere.
For many students, the system worked last year, with almost two-thirds being admitted to one of their top three choices. But another 10,200 (out of about 90,000) did not get into any of their choices. Those students then have to apply all over again, choosing among a limited number of schools that still have spaces.
Whatever the strengths or weaknesses of the system,some kinks have been smoothed out. Students get material earlier now, there is less confusion and by all accounts, there were fewer students without high schools this September than there had been a year earlier.
But the problem remains of too many students chasing too few places. “We’ve got a crisis in supply and demand in our city. And we should not kid ourselves about it,” Klein told the City Council last year. The chancellor admitted that, based on the number of applicants, 86 percent of the high schools are “not highly desirable.”
As Clara Hemphill of Inside Schools put it: "Any method of allocating kindergarten seats will be unfair as long as what should be a right -- a decent elementary education -- is treated as a rare privilege.”
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