Charter schools deliver success

Kudos to Sam Hoyt and Karim Camara, two Democrats from the NY State Assembly, for so publicly supporting lifting the cap!  (This Op Ed appeared in last week's Albany Times Union.)

We don't have the luxury of turning our backs on models of public education we know are working. This is why we support proposals to substantially lift the cap on the number of charter schools and hope that an ambitious plan to do so will be included in the state budget.

 

Such have proven to be exciting incubators of innovation in public education. A majority of charter schools in New York have a higher percentage of students meeting or exceeding state performance standards on statewide English and math exams than their host distr

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Charter schools deliver success 

 

By KARIM CAMARA and SAM HOYT

Albany Times Union, Thursday, March 29, 2007

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=576204

 

Every child in New York deserves to have a quality education. You would be pressed to find any policymaker in the state who disagrees. The important question for all of us, then, becomes this: How do we deliver on this basic promise?

  

We are struggling as New Yorkers to give keys to hundreds of thousands of our students that would unlock the "sound basic education" this social compact should provide. Only 58 percent of New York ninth-graders emerge with a high school diploma four years later. That's the third-lowest graduation rate in the nation. For minority students, the numbers are particularly troublesome. Only a third earn a diploma.

 

The inability of today's students to effectively compete in tomorrow's knowledge- and skills-based economy could prove to be devastating. We are essentially blocking these students' entry to the kind of middle-class life they and their families deserve.