Sentiment is growing here in New York City that public education is finally working.
Some of the essential components for the shift in opinion are Mayor Michael Bloomberg?s emphasis on small schools, a substantial increase in public funding, an intensive effort to make dangerous schools safer and, most of all, an actual plan.
Ideological discord over how to restore the city?s ailing public education system still exists.
But Bloomberg has managed to refocus the attention away from the political infighting to the discussion of solutions.
For example, he invested substantially in a new small schools program that many have hailed as a model for successful public education in major urban areas (New York spent $12,459 per pupil on public schools for the 2003-04 school year, compared with roughly $11,462 in Baltimore).
Early results show that the smaller school format works.
In June, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said the smaller schools achieved a 73 percent graduation rate, compared to a citywide graduation rate that barely cracks 50 percent perennially.
But just as a major breakthrough seems to linger on the fingertips of every school administrator in the city, the state government issued a sharp rebuke in June of one of the mayor?s most ambitious ? and divisive ? public education initiatives: charter schools.
Despite a vigorous lobbying effort by Bloomberg and New York Gov. George Pataki, and even successful legislation in the state senate, the state assembly rejected a proposal to lift the state?s cap of 100 on charter schools.
As a result, New York has become a flashpoint for the nationwide charter school debate. For example, a report released last month points to declines in the average test scores of students at three Baltimore charter schools run by Edison Schools Inc.
Reports elsewhere have suggested mixed results as well.
Politically, the question of whether cities should embrace the publicly funded, privately run schools is a touchy one. At a meeting of the New York City Council recently, almost every council member seemed reluctant to agree with the statement that the city?s public school system was headed in the right direction. One even outright rejected it.
The mood here seems to be one of begrudging acceptance, especially when it comes to the role charter schools might play in the city?s public education system.
For the most part, the members of the council remain skeptical of the prominent position expanding charter schools occupies in the mayor?s education policy.
While one admitted that New York?s public schools had indeed “come a long way” under Bloomberg?s tenure, another said he had seen “no evidence” that charter schools work at all.
A third told me that it was “OK to experiment,” but that charter schools could never be a solution in and of themselves.
He listed several higher priorities, including “building more schools, more teacher training and smaller class sizes,” and said all charter schools really do is “skim off the top ? and take away the best students.”
That, if anything, seemed to be the predominant opinion ? and one from which officials in Baltimore might be able to learn. Charter schools can indeed sustain lower class sizes, retain higher quality faculty and ensure the safety and security of their students.
But almost everyone here in the largest city in the United States ? including the mayor ? seems to look at them not as some sort of panacea, but as a temporary fix for a frail and debilitated system that is in desperate need of long-term rehabilitation.
Here in Baltimore, we too need the funding, the security, the teachers and the schools. But first we need an actual plan.
Sal Gentile will be a junior at JohnsHopkins University next year. He is managing editor of the student newspaper, The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, and can be reached at [email protected].
