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Currently there are 82 charter schools in New YorkCity. Eighteen more have been approved to open their doorsthis fall, and there are many who are pushing for all states tolift their limits on the number of charter schools that can beauthorized and opened. But what do these charter schools reallyrepresent? Are they the innovation and reform we need ineducation as our mayor and president proclaim?As we lay out below, charter schools are NOTimproving education. They are, however, destabilizing,threatening and hindering the public education of our city’schildren. By privatizing and outsourcing public education,charter schools are dividing communities in New York Cityand around the country. Read on to find out the truth. Then,please join our fight to improve and preserve public educationfor all. Access to a high quality public education is notsomething that should be won in a lottery—it is a most basichuman and civil right.
MYTH: Charter schools are public schools.TRUTH:
If something is public, it means it is open to allmembers of a community. Charter schools conduct lotteries toselect their students; they do not aim to serve all. Charterschools educate 2% of our city’s children, yet they receivesuperior attention and power from the mayor and chancellor.Charter school families are given access to transportationopportunities that public schools cannot offer. Additionally,there are estimates that charter schools receive as much astwice the amount per student as public schools. The DOErefuses to release important financial information to the publiceffectively evading the question of funding. True reforms aimto educate and provide for all children.
TRUTH:
According to the NY State Charter School Act of 1998, a charter school is defined, not as a public entity, but asan “education corporation.” Furthermore, the law states, “acharter school shall be exempt from all other state and locallaws, rules, regulations or policies governing public or privateschools, boards of education and school districts…”
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Do wereally want to outsource the education of our children to privatecorporations who are free from regulation and oversight?
TRUTH:
Charter schools are not governed democratically andoften limit the input and voice of parents, students and teachers.If our children are to grow up to be functional members of ourdemocracy, they need to be witnesses to and participants indemocratic process. Private corporations place the survival of the corporation above the needs of their consumers. Publicentities are the opposite—they place the needs of those theyserve as their priority.
 
MYTH: Charter schools serve the same student populations
 
as public schools.TRUTH
: Charter schools serve far fewer English languagelearners, students with special needs, and students who qualifyfor free lunch than their public school counterparts:
Data for 2007-2008 SchoolYear
2
 
Citywide CharterSchool AverageCitywide PublicSchool Average
English Language Learners
4% 14%
Students with Special Needs
5% 15%
Students Receiving Free Lunch
57% 65%
TRUTH
: The Free Lunch “gap becomes even more glaringwhen you realize that charter schools are concentrated in thecity's poorest neighborhoods, Harlem, the South Bronx andcentral Brooklyn, where even higher numbers of studentsqualify for free lunch.”
3
In West Harlem alone, 80% of studentsreceive free lunch.
4
 
TRUTH:
New York City will have 100 charter schools openthis fall, the majority of which are concentrated in black andLatino neighborhoods. This is not coincidence. Our mayor andchancellor are shirking their responsibilities to run a publicallycontrolled educational system. They are instead outsourcing thepublic education of black and Latino students to unregulated,private corporations. In doing so, they have shown us that theydo not want and do not know how to educate our black andLatino children. New York City desperately needs leaders whoare experienced educators—they are the best equipped tounderstand and address the needs of all our city’s children.
 
MYTH: Charter schools produce better outcomes for their
 
students.TRUTH:
“Looking at 2,403 charter schools in 15 states andthe District of Columbia, researchers at Stanford Universityfound that students in more than 80 percent of charterschools either performed the same as or worse than studentsin traditional public schools… ‘If this study shows anything,it shows that we’ve got a two-to-one margin of bad chartersto good charters,’ said Margaret E. Raymond, the director of the center and the study’s lead author. ‘That’s a red flag.’”
1
 
TRUTH
: We need to consider how we measure the qualityof education in our country. President Obama and hiseducation secretary, Arne Duncan, are pushing an agendathat equates student performance with a test score. Ourchildren are more than just numbers—they are individualswith varied learning styles, strengths and needs. Focusingourselves, and our children, on these tests dangerouslyoversimplifies the process of learning and does not allow usto foster the true and unique potential of our youth.
MYTH: Charter schools hire better teachers andadministrators.TRUTH
: Examining 2003-04 federal data, researchers fromVanderbilt University found surprising turnover rates forteachers in charter schools. They left at a rate of 25%;public schools had a turnover rate of 14%.
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Higher turnoverrates create destabilized and chaotic school environments.
TRUTH:
Many charter school employees are overworked,underpaid, and denied the right to be part of a union. In arecent New York Times article, a few charter schoolemployees spoke about these issues:
“We were really proud of the scores, and still are…but theworkload…
it wasn’t sustainable.
You can’t put out the kindof energy we were putting out for our kids year after year.”
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TRUTH:
Many charter school administrators and principalsare new and inexperienced. Take for example HarlemSuccess Academy, a network of 4 charter schools in Harlemthat serves about 800 students. This chain is run by formercity-council member Eva Moskowitz, a woman with nobackground in teaching who pays herself $370,000 a year.Overpaid CEO’s have contributed to the recent downfall of our economy—do we really expect a different result if wetake this approach with education?
MYTH: Charter schools act as lab sites for innovativeeducational ideas and practices.
 
TRUTH:
While the charter school movement was initially
 
intended to be innovative, the schools sprouting up in NewYork City are anything but. Many are run by the same fewcharter corporations (Green Dot and Uncommon Schools) andpush students through a scripted and test-driven curriculum.
TRUTH
: Few charter schools aim to share information or bestpractices with their public school counterparts. The notion thatthese schools will pave the way to school reform is ill founded.We must empower public schools to experiment and innovate.
TRUTH:
Charter schools are in the process of invading andprivatizing public space. Around the city charter schools aretaking over public school buildings and pushing public schoolchildren out. In many cases the charter schools remain in publicspaces long after they have agreed to vacate. Why are weallowing our public schools to be replaced and privatized?
MYTH: Competition between schools will improve the
 
educational system.TRUTH:
Any system based on competition will have winnersand losers. In the case of our educational system, the winnersand losers are our children. We need to create a system inwhich everyone, especially our most needy, can excel. In acompetitive system, one school’s success is only possible whenanother fails. Education is not a game—it is a right.
OUR VISION 
Our vision for public school reform does not includeprivatization. We support quality public neighborhoodschools with smaller class sizes, equitable funding, unionprotections, local school councils, and neighborhoodenrollment that protects and includes all children. Wesupport a moratorium on charters, turnarounds, consolidations, phase-outs, school closings and any otherform of school privatization.Educators should be empowered to work with communitiesto develop curriculum that is grounded in the lives of theyoung people they teach. Each school’s curriculum shouldreflect the culture, needs and lived experience of itsstudents, critically support student identities, embrace andrecognize the value of students’ home languages, and invitestudents to engage in solving societal problems.The Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) believes in abottom-up, participatory and highly democratic process toengage schools and communities in school improvement.
Who we are:
 
The Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) to Defend PublicEducation is a coalition of educators, community members andparents. We seek to educate, mobilize and organize educators,parents, students and our communities against corporate andgovernment policies that serve to underfund, undermine and privatizeour public school system. GEM advocates for the equality & qualityof public educational services as well as the rights of school workers.
Contact GEM: gemnyc@gmail.com
http://grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com/
Learn more:
•Knopp, Sarah. “Charter schools and the attack on public education.”
 http://www.isreview.org/issues/62/feat-charterschools.shtml
• "New York Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein." Free downloadat http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/nyc-schools-under-bloombergklein-what-parents-teachers-and-policymakers-need-to-know/7214189
THE TRUTHaboutCharter SchoolsinNew York City
Charter Schools in New York City*
 
Sources:
*
http://www.nycchartercenter.org/locations.asp
1
See http://www.newyorkcharters.org/documents/NYSCharterSchools Actof1998.doc
2
Data from New York State Testing and Accountability Reporting Tool’s“Accountability and Overview Reports.”https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/Home.do?year=2008
3
Gonzalez, Juan. “Test numbers too good to be true, hide achievement gap of poor students, some veteran educators say.”http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/05/08/2009-05-08_city_test_numbers_too_good_to_be_true_hide_achievement_gap_of_poor_students_some.html
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See also, http://coveringeducation.org/schoolstories09/?p=1951
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http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/06/15/36charters.h28.html?tkn=NLTCJMEq7k%2Fnnff4EGJ7J5JLtfbPxFoncQFV For the full study, go to:http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf 
6
See http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2009/04/are_teachers_jumping_the_chart.html
7
Dillon, Sam. “As charter schools unionize, many debate effect.”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/education/27charter.html?_ 
GEM:
Grassroots Education Movementto Defend Public Educationgemnyc@gmail.com
http://grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com/August, 2009
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