Here in California K-12 public education has gone from being rated among the top two or three systems in the United States to being rated in the bottom five. That has happened in the space of about four decades. During that same period the state, via our taxpayers, has devoted consistently larger amounts of money per pupil in this losing cause.
The following article addresses one such success story in, of all places, the Big Apple in general and Harlem in particular. What happens when the choke hold fingers of the unions are pried from the neck of public education is both exciting and inspirational. In experiments like this one, it is about educating kids as the priority and not endlessly increasing the pay for administrators and teachers as the failed answer to the question of how to improve schools.
Pay particular attention to the time tested concept, long since rejected by the educrat experts here in the not so Golden State, of grouping students by ability rather than by age. Gee, how practical and how smart is that! Isn't that how things are done in the workplace, the military, business, the arena of competitive sports and almost everywhere else (government excepted) where you find people seeking positive and rewarding outcomes?
K-12 public education in America is a by and large a failed system. It is efforts like this one that have a chance to turn that reality around. Keep all fingers crossed, for the sake of the children and the future of our society.
Six books a week
From The Economist print edition
Harlem parents are voting for charter schools with their feet
THOSE who had won whooped with joy and punched their fists. The disappointed shed tears. Some 5,000 people attended April 17th's Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery, the largest ever held for charter schools in the history of New York state. About 3,600 applied for 600 available places, and 900 applied for the 11 open slots in the second grade.
The desperation of these parents is hardly surprising. In one Harlem school district, not one public elementary school has more than 55% of its pupils reading at the level expected for their grade. And 75% of 14-year-olds are unable to read at their grade level. So Harlem parents are beginning to leave the public school system in crowds.
If a charter school gets more applications than it has space for, a lottery must be held. Hence April's event. Joel Klein, the chancellor of New York City's schools, attended, describing it as a “transformative night” that would “go down in the history of school reform”. Mr Klein said he thought Harlem's public schools were getting better, but noted that a little competition helps everyone run faster. Last November he announced a plan which, in effect, would “charterise” the entire New York City school system, which has 1.1m children.
Harlem now has the most charter schools per square mile in the United States, yet demand still exceeds supply. Harlem Success is opening three new schools this summer. About 40% of all eligible children in central Harlem applied for kindergarten at Harlem Success schools. The reason is obvious. Tests taken at the beginning of the 2006-07 school year at Harlem Success showed only 11% of six-year-olds were at their grade level in mathematics. By the end of the year, 86% were. This may have something to do with grouping children by ability rather than by age, and with involving parents, who have to read six books a week to their children.
Unfortunately, many local politicians oppose charter schools. They have tried to cap their numbers, or refused to let them share buildings with public schools. The legislature in Albany has mandated that if a charter school has more than 250 students before its third year of existence, the teachers must unionise. That spoils everything.
David Paterson, New York's new governor, once opposed charter schools. But he spoke enthusiastically about them at the lottery. A good education for all children, he said, was the most important thing. If charters can provide it even in Harlem, so much the better.
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
