New York legislature votes for more schooling

New York legislature votes for more schooling

By Kevin Bratcher

NEW YORK- Upwards of 80,000 New York students and parents will now have the power of choice given to them over the next few years thanks to recently passed legislation in the State’s House and Senate.

After a long and difficult battle, the State Senate and House passed the proposal on May 28 to raise the cap on charter schools in New York State from 200 to 460. The legislation marks a victory for the Bloomberg administration as well as for supporters of charter schools such as Andrew Cuomo and Bill Gates.

There are some public school advocates who are in favor of charter schools as well. Edward Tom, principal of the Bronx Center for Science and Math, spoke about charter schools and the raised cap.

“I believe charter schools should be an option for taxpayers.” said Principal Tom. “I don’t think it will be THE solution for the issues we have in urban educations, but I do feel it is a viable option for parents and students to choose.”

Charter schools were approved in New York State in 1998, and there has been a high concentration of the schools within New York City. Charter schools operate with an average of 300 students according to numbers from the Center for Education Reform, which shows the scope of the possibilities offered by the raised cap.

The raising of the cap was controversial not least because there has for some time been confusion as to whether charter schools are private schools. A charter school is in fact a publicly funded school which is operated by a private organization, meaning it is not under the direct control of teachers unions or the government- although what is taught still follows governmental guidelines.

Among the new rules applied to charter schools is a mandate for the state comptroller’s office to audit the schools, as well as a ban on operation of new charter schools by any for-profit organization.

One of the benefits Principal Tom noted about the charter schools is “the non-unionization…and also not being confined by the union contract so that their day can begin earlier and end later.” Mr. Tom also noted that the ability of charter schools to pay their teachers “based on a meritocracy…”

Principal Tom went on: “I think it’s ironic that education is one of the few industries where you can’t hold the stakeholders accountable for actual achievement when our clients are children.” He noted, however, that charter schools seem to be in danger of losing their fiscal viability soon if they aren’t careful, as they must provide benefits and pension funds out of their own budgets.

Charter school critics have claimed in the past that the much-touted better results among students of charter schools are due more to a selective enrollment process than better teaching methods.

The newly passed legislation stipulates that charter schools must accept the same percentage of special needs and English-as-second-language students as their public school counterparts, in an attempt to remove such a possibility. However, Principal Tom offered up a different explanation for the positive results attained by charter schools:

“I think there’s a natural filter,” Principal Tom said, “when you have parents who are more involved in their children’s education, that are more informed…those are probably the parents and kids that are more on top of their game in terms of their academics to begin with.”

As Principal Tom noted, it is unlikely that charter schools will be the perfect solution to the education issues being dealt with both in New York and across the country. New York legislators are hoping that providing more options to parents and students will lead to better results for New York’s educational system, and produce a smarter generation.