The Real "Success" Of The "Success Academy"

What do you think of charter schools?

When I first heard about them, I thought they were a good idea:  The old libertarian in me thought they would provide public (and some private) schools the competition they needed for students, which would force some of the weaker public schools to improve or close.

They may well be capable of serving such a function.  However, the more I see of them, the more I find myself thinking of a lyric from The Who:  "meet the new boss/ same as the old boss."

As I have mentioned in other posts, some charter schools last about as long as most restaurants (1-2 years).  They meet their demise from mismanagement, corruption or simply not meeting the expectations of parents.

Still, there are some charter schools (about 17 percent nationally) that outperform the nearest public school, while about half perform at about the same level.  If I were a parent of children in a community with low-performing schools, I might be happy to see a charter school opening its doors.

Then again, I don't know how I'd feel if my kid were forced to attend a charter school.

That's not as far-fetched as it sounds.  In fact, it's not far from being the case in at least one New York City school. 

Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing Arts, located in the heart of Harlem, has an eponymous middle school. A few years ago, a charter school began to operate in the middle school.  Last year, the charter expanded to high-school grades and took over the fifth floor of the high school building.

The result, according to parents and students, is overcrowding and chaos.  "My two children in the school complain that it's so overcrowded in the hallways," says Lisa Pressley, a Board of Elections employee.  "I was there and it was frightening to see because if there was a fire, there would be [a] hard time getting out."

The charter school that's essentially causing a fire hazard at Wadleigh is the Harlem Success Academy, one of the chain of Success Academy chain of charter schools founded and headed by former New York City council member Eva Moskowitz.

Her expansion into the Wadleigh schools has resulted in the planned closure of the middle school, with the Success Academy taking over the entire building.  Some members of the community fear that the same fate could befall the high school.

While few would argue that Wadleigh, which was formerly the troubled Wadleigh High School, is one of the city's elite institutions, some parents argue that the school has improved in its iteration as one that emphasizes the perfoming arts.  They feel that the school isn't being given a fair chance to further improve.

What they--and, naturally, Wadleigh teachers and staff members--see is an attempt to break up the teachers' union and tighten the Mayor's control over schools.  Now, some would say that if that's the Mayor's plan, it's a good one, and at one time I would have agreed.  And it might well be the best course for the community that surrounds Wadleigh.

On the other hand, Moskowitz is following the same strategy in another New York City neighborhood with an entirely different demographic.  About twenty-five years ago, the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburgh was, in many ways, like Harlem:  full of poverty and crime, with deteriorating housing and without very many jobs.  About the only real difference was that Williamsburg's residents were mainly Hispanics or Hasidic Jews, with a small community of older Italians in the neighborhood's northern end, while, as almost everybody knows, most of Harlem's residents were African-American.

However, Williamsburg is now referred to as "Hipster Heaven."  The Hispanics and Italians are being priced out of the neighborhood, and the young white people who have moved in are having children.  Meanwhile, the Hasidic Jews who live in the southern half of the neighborhood have one of the highest birthrates in the world (7.9 children per woman, vs. 1.8 for the average American Jewish woman). 

In spite of prolific propogation among Hasidim, Williamsburg's public school population is decreasing, because the ultra-Orthodox Jews don't send their kids to public schools. That has meant unused space in local schools.

To folks like Ms. Moskowitz, those empty spaces also represent opportunity.  There is a catch, though:  No one has made a case that Williamsburg will actually benefit from charter schools.  The performance of local public schools has increased dramatically over the past decade or so, mainly because most of the newer white parents have college degrees and are artists and other kinds of professionals.  They tend to understand the workings of education systems and government a bit more, and many are involved in one way or another with the schools.

Williamsburg parents express the same fears as their counterparts in Harlem:  that the local "Success Academy" is, in essence, a Space Invader that will crowd out the local public schools.  "Give them a floor, and they'll take over the whole building," says one observer.  

That observer, like others, believes that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is allowing Moskowitz (and other charter school operators) to, in essence, infiltrate local schools so that they will be "grandfathered" in before Bloomberg finishes his term.  Because of term limits*, he cannot run for re-election.  It's widely believed that his successor will be a Democrat who may not be as friendly toward charter schools--or hostile to unions--as Mayor Mike has been.

Now, I am not about to suggest that a similar scenario will play out in other school districts.  However, it's not hard to imagine some charter school operator using his or her local political connections to install schools that, not only help to bust unions, but could also be exempt from local regulations about safety and health as well as educational content.

*After he assumed office, Bloomberg abolished the limit of two mayoral terms that was implemented during the reign of his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani.  However, during his third (and current) term, he essentially railroaded the City Council into restoring the two-term limit.