For special ed, One Newark is two Newarks
Newark’s charter schools–especially those with money and national backing like KIPP (TEAM Academy) and Uncommon Schools (North Star)–will be the big winners in Cami Anderson’s “One Newark” plan. If Anderson pulls it off, even she may be a big winner, leaving Newark with the reputation as the biggest privatization advocate since Michele Rhee and all that will mean for book contracts and speaking fees. But let’s think a moment about the biggest losers–they are almost certain to be the most vulnerable children in the city, the disabled, and their parents. They are on track to be warehoused in the least funded, most neglected public neighborhood schools.
Charter schools, after all, have evolved from laboratory schools offering alternatives to conventional practices to havens from children with problems–whether those problems are disabilities, behavioral issues, language difficulties, parental indifference, or anything else that many parents who believe they have choices want to avoid. Charters are the instrument of the new segregation–based, not simply on race, but on more nuanced distinctions: Ethnicity, language, wealth, parental engagement, political connections, and other attributes of the better off.