Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery and the crime of charter caps and the failure of our educational system

At the Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery last Thursday, Joel Klein said "this night will go down in the history of New York City as a truly transformative night. I've been waiting for this since I became Chancellor six years ago." He's exactly right.

Nearly 5,000 (!) people showed up, including parents of 3,600 children who wanted a better educational opportunity for their children. It was a magnificent sight -- see the pictures posted at: http://picasaweb.google.com/WTilson/HarlemSuccessLottery -- and a compelling rebuttal to those dimwits who claim that inner-city parents don't care about their childrens' educations and/or aren't aware of better educational options in their communities. 50% of the eligible parents in the area were there.

Gov. Paterson spoke first, admitting that he at one time was against charter schools, but that he was wrong and now strongly supports them. Then, the Executive Director of Harlem Success, Eva Moskowitz, spoke about the school and its rigorous curriculum, high expectations, etc. (see www.harlemsuccess.org). Eva was followed by two parents (you can hear what they had to say here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EuGJfbz160).

The next speaker was jazz and R&B legend James Mtume, who rocked! You can hear what he said here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpLdJlCAenA. His best line was when he called out the NY legislature for passing the world's most idiotic bill, preventing the DOE from using student test scores when making teacher tenure decisions. Mtume said, "that would be like picking someone for my basketball team without checking to see if they'd ever scored a point, or giving someone a permanent job at a law firm without knowing if they'd ever won a case." Well put!

Joel Klein was the last speaker before the results of the lottery were announced -- unfortunately my video camera battery died at the end of Mtume's remarks so I didn't videotape Klein, but he was great.

All of the speakers made it very clear to the parents that many of the politicians who are supposed to represent them are screwing them when it comes to giving them better educational options like Harlem Success and other charter schools. The parents were very fired up to let their politicians know their feelings about this! The last photo below is of a card from Harlem Parents United that was passed out to the parents, calling on City Council member Inez Dickens of Harlem, a foe of charter schools, to reconsider her views. It looked to me like the bag of filled out cards was stuffed with a few thousand of them...

It was a tragic night as well, however. Even with Harlem Success expanding from one school currently to four schools this fall, there were only spaces for 600 of the 3,600 children who desperately need them. In other words, 84% of the parents went home losers of the lottery. I wonder how many of them know the life-altering consequences of the lottery -- many, I suspect. Most have no other choice but to send their child to a local public school, which means that odds that their child will ever get a four-year college degree -- the bare minimum these days for having a fair shot at the American Dream -- are at best 10% (in Harlem, 60% of children in public schools can't read at grade level). In contrast, I'd guess, based on results from other top charter school operators like KIPP and Uncommon Schools, that 60-70% of the children who win the lottery and stay at Harlem Success will graduate from four-year colleges (we'll know for sure in about 15 years, but I'd bet a lot of money that my guess will be right).

For a far more eloquent statement of the tragedy of charter caps and the resulting need for lotteries, see what I posted on my blog about an email I received a year ago, written by someone at the MATCH charter school in Boston (pretty much the same thing happened at the Harlem Success lottery):

A story from the MATCH charter school lottery and the crime of charter caps and the failure of our educational system

Last October, I visited the MATCH charter school in Boston (see http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/03/visits-to-two-charter-schools-in-boston.html), which is achiving miracles with high school students that enter MATCH in 9th grade doing math at the 5th grade level and reading at the 6th grade level.

So it was with particular interest that I read this email from Danny Clark, a friend of a friend who works at MATCH, describing in heart-breaking detail the lottery to determine which children get what I call "exit visas from hell" (65 lucky ones) and the remaining 500+, nearly all of whom will go back to schools that EVERYONE KNOWS are utterly failing.

I get choked up reading this -- that this exists in our country is so deeply, profoundly wrong:

At the same time, this was an unbelievably heartbreaking moment. I stood there and watched parents overjoyed at the news, while other parents sat tensely waiting, hoping that their child's name would be called. Long after the first 135 names were called, basically after any hope of admission was gone, a couple of parents stayed on, listening to each name being read out.

Continue reading at: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/03/story-from-match-charter-school-lottery.html