Stealing Possible
The New York charter school group Families of Excellent Schools announced recently that rallying under the banner “Don’t Steal Possible,”on September 30, 2015 “over 10,000 parents, students, and educators are expected to demand an end to education inequality in Brooklyn's Cadman Plaza, followed by hundreds marching across the Brooklyn Bridge and holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall in the afternoon.”
Sounds good, right? To the contrary, people of color in this country, specifically black people, have rarely had agency in the pedagogy and policy that affects their children. NYC charter schools playing the role of white saviors does little to change this.
The criticisms are simple here. As recently as 2013, 16 New York City charter executives made more income than the sitting Dept. of Education Chancellor at the time, even while serving significantly fewer students. And charter schools don’t perform better than public schools. In NYC this past year, charters may have outperformed in math but performed on par with public schools in other areas. A recent study showed that the Knowledge Is Power Program or KIPP — a NYC non-profit network of public schools serving low-income students — can produce gains in elementary and middle school students, but that those advances don’t last through high school, an indication that perhaps the hype around KIPP is, at best, inflated.
Indeed, most of the arguments around “choice” evoke more boogiemen than Halloween, yet, when the facts are laid bare, we see little evidence for the hype.
POLITICO’s Eliza Shapiro reported that Success Academy Charter Schools employees have received a messaging memo preparing them to talk to parents and other attendees about the upcoming rally. Success staff (who were discouraged from sharing the memo with families), were told to “strongly encourage” parents to attend the rally and march even if it presents hardships for them in terms of arranging for child care or taking time off from their jobs. All of the 34 Success Academy charter schools in the city will be closed the morning of the rally, and parents not attending will have to find alternate care for their kids. (At a
- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/09/188336/stealing-possible#sthash.vrcK2sOt.dpuf
