NYC Public School Parents: Aggressive marketing by charter schools, soliciting applicants

NYC Public School Parents: Aggressive marketing by charter schools, soliciting applicants:

Aggressive marketing by charter schools, soliciting applicants

by Leonie Haimson

The Bloomberg administration and the charter school operators always claim that in the rapid proliferation of charter schools across the city, they are merely responding to parent “demand” but this ignores the aggressive recruiting methods they use to build up their “waiting lists.”  Eva Moskowitz has hired paid recruiters to “poach” students for her Success Academy charters, as in the video below, outside PS 261 in Brooklyn.  Not to mention her extensive and expensive advertising campaigns, in which she spent $1.6 million dollars on marketing efforts alone in 2009-2010, amounting to $1,300 per incoming student.

This year, there is evidence that Harlem in particular has become oversaturated with charters, that have been forced to go far afield to solicit applications.  Parents as far away as lower Manhattan have receiving mailings from Democracy Prep and Harlem Link.     

We have also been forwarded emails  in recent days from two new Harlem charters, both authorized