Harlem, a Test Lab, Splits Over Charter Schools

Overall, a reasonably favorable article on the front page of today's NY Times about KIPP and various other charter schools in Harlem, which 8% of the borough's students now attend.  The usual natterings of naysayers are of course included.  These two comments are particularly noteworthy:

Cordell Cleare, an official of the community education council for District 3, said of the new charter schools, "If they're so rich and golden, why aren't they everywhere?"

Answer: Because they NYS Legislature won't lift the charter cap!!!!

And:

Robert A. Reed, the president of a central Harlem council of parent associations, said, "They've picked this population as a guinea pig district."

But he also acknowledged that he entered his young daughter in a charter school lottery and she won a seat for next year that she may take.

Gotta love the hypocrisy here: criticize charter schools while likely enrolling your daughter in one.  And as for being "a guinea pig district," maybe the reason Klein is focusing in Harlem is because IT HAD THE WORST SCHOOLS!  Shouldn't experimentation be embraced most in such a situation?!

And of course there's the tired canard that either charter schools don't work -- or if they do, they draw away the most promising students and leave the great majority of the students worse off:

Others are suspicious of the charter schools and ask whether they are drawing the most promising students and only making the older, struggling schools worse — not improving them through competition.

Ah, but the naysayers are silent when the data shows that the number of students passing reading standards has DOUBLED in the past six years. 

When Mr. Klein became chancellor in 2002, schools in District 5 still lagged in test scores, as they had for decades, and he said he made improving them a priority. Now, scores there have begun to rise.

In Grades 3 through 8 in 1999, 19.3 percent of students in District 5 met city and state reading standards. In 2005, 36 percent did.

Must be a coincidence

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Harlem, a Test Lab, Splits Over Charter Schools

By SUSAN SAULNY

Published: June 2, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/02/nyregion/02harlem.html?hp&ex=1149307200&en=99bc8846669fc34c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

The schools sit side by side in a handsome red brick building in Harlem overlooking Morningside Park. But they could not be more different.

 

The fifth and sixth graders at KIPP Star College Prep Charter School earned some of the highest scores in central Harlem on last year's citywide reading exams. At Public School 125, only 36 percent of the third- through sixth-grade students met city and state reading standards last year.

The contrast in the building on West 123rd Street is emblematic of the inequities, opportunity and experimentation that define education across Harlem after decades of stagnation, and as gentrification is increasing pressures for better schools.

By the end of next year, Harlem will be home to 17 charter schools, publicly financed but privately run — more than in Staten Island, Queens and Lower Manhattan combined. The Bronx has a high concentration, too, but only Brooklyn is expected to have more charter schools by the end of next year...