The Daily News is trying to make hay out of the fact that the Harlem Success Network of public charter schools sometimes share space with traditional zoned district schools. Although Juan Gonzalez has made this a pet issue, I fail to see the point of his criticism.
Consider this - one of the buildings in question was only being used at 28 percent capacity, yet your tax dollars pay for the entire building to stay open and be maintained. Why shouldn't the other 70 percent of that building be used for a charter school?
We have a large pool of real estate - school buildings - used to educate children. It's time to stop worrying about whose ego gets bruised by space sharing and instead focus on how to utilize the limited space available to provide the best possible education to every child. Charter schools have proven to be one advancement, though they are certainly not the only one.
I haven't drunk the charter school Kool-Aid, but this much is true - when schools fail our children, they become adults who are less likely to succeed in the real world. And when we shortchange our children, especially those who grow up with other disadvantages, we are robbing them of their future and jeopardizing the future of our city.
No particular school or city has cracked the code of raising educational achievement, and in a city with well over one million public school kids, there will never be a single "right way" to educate children. But it's far past time to acknowledge that charter schools need to coexist with traditional district schools in an ecosystem of educational opportunity.
Traditionally-run schools will continue to play a key role in that ecosystem, but it's increasingly clear that to achieve the promise we've made to children and parents throughout the city, charter schools and zoned district schools need to learn from each other.
Eva Moskowitz is rightly proud of her charter network, but she needs to not only focus on building her network, but sharing her "secret sauce" with both charter and district schools throughout the city. Chancellor Klein and the Department of Education's relationship with her should reflect this larger goal.
Greg Palmer is the editor-in-chief of CitizeNYC and the former Director of Online Communications for the NYC Department of Education, which had no advance knowledge of this editorial.
Consider this - one of the buildings in question was only being used at 28 percent capacity, yet your tax dollars pay for the entire building to stay open and be maintained. Why shouldn't the other 70 percent of that building be used for a charter school?
We have a large pool of real estate - school buildings - used to educate children. It's time to stop worrying about whose ego gets bruised by space sharing and instead focus on how to utilize the limited space available to provide the best possible education to every child. Charter schools have proven to be one advancement, though they are certainly not the only one.
I haven't drunk the charter school Kool-Aid, but this much is true - when schools fail our children, they become adults who are less likely to succeed in the real world. And when we shortchange our children, especially those who grow up with other disadvantages, we are robbing them of their future and jeopardizing the future of our city.
No particular school or city has cracked the code of raising educational achievement, and in a city with well over one million public school kids, there will never be a single "right way" to educate children. But it's far past time to acknowledge that charter schools need to coexist with traditional district schools in an ecosystem of educational opportunity.
Traditionally-run schools will continue to play a key role in that ecosystem, but it's increasingly clear that to achieve the promise we've made to children and parents throughout the city, charter schools and zoned district schools need to learn from each other.
Eva Moskowitz is rightly proud of her charter network, but she needs to not only focus on building her network, but sharing her "secret sauce" with both charter and district schools throughout the city. Chancellor Klein and the Department of Education's relationship with her should reflect this larger goal.
Greg Palmer is the editor-in-chief of CitizeNYC and the former Director of Online Communications for the NYC Department of Education, which had no advance knowledge of this editorial.
The problem with charter schools is that information and learning never makes it to the regular schools. There needs to be a better system in place for information sharing. They should and could be places to try new ideas that wouldn't necessarily work with a general audience, but right now as they are currently set up they are a shadow school system -- of dubious value. (The evidence that they are better for students is almost nil.) I'm all for experimentation in education, but Charter schools don't benefit anyone but their operators from the evidence I've seen.