Clarifications on Charter Rent & Equitable Portfolio Management
Posted on March 1, 2014
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Dianne Ravitch today titled her post on my recent Think Tank Review to suggest that I agree with Mayor Bill De Blasio that some charter schools can afford to pay rent.
This statement while true as worded, misses the bigger point – how to create a system of equitable opportunities for New York City school children, regardless of whether that system includes or does not include charter schools. [bearing in mind important legal inequities that result from including charters in this mix]
While it is true that some charters can certainly afford to pay rent, this is all part of the bigger problem of the uneven sorting of children and resources that has occurred with charter expansion in NYC. It’s all part of a bigger systemwide equity issue which I write about in a forthcoming article in Ed Finance and Policy. I will post the conclusions of that article on my blog.
My think tank review piece specifically challenges the flimsy claims by Manhattan Institute that the only way to provide good schools in NY is to provide unfairly disproportionate subsidies to charter operators. The MI brief falsely and disturbingly assumes that deprivation of the public system to the benefit of the charter system can only yield good results. Charters good. District Schools Bad. Ugh…
Where I believe De Blasio has it correct is in his assertion that it is more important to consider the fiscal health of the broader system – that which serves the majority of the kids… and does so under a governance umbrella that affords those children the full array of statutory and constitutional rights of children in truly public schools.
As I explain in the Think Tank Review:
the central problem with the report is that the author assumes that there exists no possible downside when resources are transferred from city schools to charter
