Mayor de Blasio, teachers’ unions, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and other foes of charter schools claim they haven’t lived up to their promise to innovate. Yet four new charters that just got the all-clear from the state show just how false that is.
De Blasio and Weingarten tout city-run PROSE schools, claiming they’ll succeed at innovating where charters have failed. When asked about charters and their ability to innovate, de Blasio called charters a “mixed bag.”
Weingarten was even more blunt, claiming “charter proponents have shifted the intent of charters from incubating ideas and sharing successes to competing for market share and taxpayer dollars.”
How wrong they are. Fact is, critics like de Blasio and Weingarten are ignoring the innovation right under their noses and trying to deflect attention away from New York’s many charter successes.
Let’s be clear: The charter movement thinks introducing innovation in the regular public schools is great. But de Blasio should credit charters for what they’re already doing in that respect.
Just look at the four schools the Board of Regents recently approved.
In Brooklyn, Hebrew Language Academy 2 will follow on the success of two Hebrew-themed public schools where language development looks different than you’d expect. Native English-speaking students and those whose first language is something other than English learn Hebrew through immersive instruction. The schools are socioeconomically, racially and linguistically diverse. And they defy a common charter myth, serving high-need students, and higher percentages of special-ed kids than their districts.
A few hundred miles away, there’s another fantastic charter-school success story. Syracuse Academy of Science and Citizenship Charter School will carry on the great work being done by charters already open in Syracuse and Utica. The school will focus on STEM and citizenship, with intensive programming for English Language Learners.
The region is desperate for this option, with its growing refugee population. Through the focus on citizenship, kids get a chance to learn and grow into involved citizens with a keen sense of social awareness and responsibility.
It will also create opportunities in the sciences that don’t normally exist for refugees. They’ll do it by hiring staff who speak a wide variety of languages to ensure students and parents can fully participate in the school community.
In a city as starved for good schools as Syracuse, another approved charter will serve an extremely vulnerable population of older kids. OnTech Charter High School will also focus on the large refugee population in the city. Many of these students have had either minimal exposure to schooling or interrupted formal education, and the school will indeed be a lifeline.
Finally, Classical Charter Schools was granted approval to open a fourth school in the South Bronx. Classical education is a historic approach to learning, and this school will take what is old and make it new and relevant.
The combination of teaching core skills with character education and Latin is not offered in the nearby district schools, making this model tremendously unique.
Unique programming in charters is not new. Look at Harriet Tubman Charter, one of the state’s oldest charters, which teaches children about the diversity of heritage and cultures in its Southeast Bronx community.
Or Brilla College Prep, a school where more than 20 percent of the students receive special-education supports or are English Language Learners. To help their kids, Brilla offers two teachers and cutting-edge technology for its classes.
We’re thrilled to welcome the new schools into the already rich offerings of the charter community and applaud the state and Board of Regents for giving them green lights. We need more high-quality public schools, period. But when charters act as laboratories of innovation, we ought to acknowledge it and learn from it — rather than pretend it isn’t happening.
Andrea Rogers is the New York state director for the Northeast Charter School Network.