Flip That School: In Newark, Reform and Real Estate Go Hand in Hand
A conversation with investigative journalist Owen Davis
EduShyster: You have a fascinatingnew story out about how real estate concerns are increasingly driving school closures and charter school expansion in Newark, NJ. Can you give us the 15 second version?Owen Davis: Basically incentives created by the federal government to help all schools have been earmarked for charters in a convoluted way that ends up hobbling district schools.
EduShyster: Your story chronicles the fate of Newark’s Hawthorne Avenue School, which had been slated for closure by the Newark Public Schools, not because it was failing but because it was falling apart physically.
Davis: Hawthorne is a school that probably made the best effort of any of the schools in Newark to play by the rules and make the expected gains and its reward is to be turned into a charter school. The reasons behind that don’t have much to do with education, but with financial and real estate concerns. The crazy thing about this is that the money is there to fix the school, but the district has decided that the more viable option is to convert Hawthorne to a charter school which can get the needed repairs done with its access to more creative and flexible bond financing. The district, by the way, has since backed off from this plan.
EduShyster: One of the parents you feature in the story happens to be named Choice. Of course the irony is that as a public school parent she gets to choose between a choice that no longer exists or the choice that’s already been made for her.Davis: When reform advocates talk about Flip That School: In Newark, Reform and Real Estate Go Hand in Hand | EduShyster: