Fact-checking Beth Fertig on the charter co-location issue
See Beth Fertig’s story today on WNYC about the UFT/NAACP co-location lawsuit. Here are some problematic assertions in her piece:Success Academy is a chain of charters run by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz. Recently, her organization used city data to conduct its own study of 81 charters that share space with regular schools. It found average class sizes in the district schools only went up by about one student over four years, which was no more than the citywide average.
This is the wrong comparison to use; charter co-locations tend to occur in the least crowded schools and neighborhoods. For example, in Queens, where the overcrowding is intense, and class sizes are increasing fast, there are very few co-locations. The comparison in class size should NOT be to schools citywide, but with a similar set of schools nearby. Class sizes should not be increasing in any school, but particularly not in struggling schools in communities like Harlem which otherwise would have the space to keep class sizes small.
Genevieve Foster, who has a daughter attending Harlem Success Academy 1 in the same building as PS