Charter Upstarts

“You give me competition, I’ll show you progress.”

So said Mayor Michael Bloomberg as he announced that 18 new charter schools are opening in the city this school year. That’s good news for New Yorkers who share the mayor’s understanding that our schoolkids deserve to benefit from a robust, private-sector approach to untangling the decades of bureaucratic lassitude, cronyism and teachers’ union shenanigans that tragically paralyzed public education in New York.

Starting this month, 24,000 students will be attending 78 charter schools, up from 17 such schools when the mayor took office. One of the new schools is girls-only; another addresses students whose families are on welfare; one will have two teachers in every classroom.

Not surprisingly, the teacher’s union is in a lather over the success of charter schools, which operate with public money but are not subject to union control. The argument goes that somehow charter schools are unfair competition, that they increase the gap between educational haves and have-nots. That’s silly, outdated nonsense. Charter schools simply provide parents who cannot afford the high tuition cost of private schools with choices. The establishment should be studying why charter school students tend to do better on reading and math tests, and why parents are practically breaking down doors to get their kids enrolled in one, rather than griping about fairness. And as the mayor pointed out, public schools have had to get their acts together to keep pace with the charter schools. Everyone benefits.

The blossoming of charter schools in the five boroughs is a direct result of the 2002 law that gave Mayor Bloomberg control over the city schools. He and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have worked overtime to make the most of that worthy law. For example, parents are grateful for the mayor’s common-sense decision to link pay raises and promotions for teachers and principals to how well students do academically—something that never would have happened if the mayor had not been handed control.

The 2002 law is set to expire next June; wise voices are speaking out, asking Albany to renew the law, including a new nonprofit, Mayoral Accountability for School Success. We encourage Governor David Paterson, the State Senate majority leader, Dean Skelow, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to get behind the renewal, and thereby show they have the best interests of the city’s 1.1 million public schoolchildren at heart.