Last month, Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York City’s public schools, which serve about one million schoolchildren, wrote an article celebrating recent test results from New York City’s charter schools.  These test results show charter schools in New York City are outperforming traditional schools, by 12 points in math and five points in reading.  Traditional public schools in New York City have about the same ratio of poor children as its charter schools, and a significantly smaller ratio of African-Amercian and Latino children. 

In New York City, parents are flocking to its 158 charter schools.  This spring 67,000 children applied for fewer than 15,000 openings in charters.  These students are almost entirely from low-income African-American and Latino families.  As the test results show, these parents know what they are doing in seeking a charter school education for their children.  Mayor Bloomberg has opened 100 new charters during his tenure, responding to parent demand. 

Success Academies in New York City, a group of four charter schools, show that, offered the right public school environment, poor children can perform at the highest levels, just as well, and better, than other children.  Students at Success Academies, who are almost 100% minority and about 75% poor, had 97% of students at its four schools proficient in math and 88% in English.  That is more than 30% higher in both math and reading than the New York state as a whole. 

As Joel Klein points out:

The Success schools are performing at the same level as NYC’s best schools---gifted and talented schools that select kids based solely on rigorous tests---even though gifted schools have far fewer low-income and minority students.  In short, with a population that is considered much harder to educate, Success is getting champion-league results. 

What are they doing at Success Academies that we don’t allow here in Washington state?  

First, Success Academies and other charters have independent boards that select their school principals.  In Seattle, for example, the superintendent of the district bureaucracy selects and oversees the performance of 92 school principals.  It doesn’t help that, once in a position, school principals in Washington are protected by RCW 28A.405.230, granting them lifetime job security. 

If a school in Washington state has a good principal, it is because the stars were briefly aligned to allow a good superintendent to make a good choice that one time.  If a school has a poor principal, they are often stuck with her.   

Second, Success Academies allows the principal to hire every member of her team of teachers.  While principals in some Washington districts can choose some of their teachers, seniority rules often “force-place” teachers in schools, over the objection of the principal.  How can a school principal establish a  culture of high expectations for the learning of every child when she cannot choose each teacher for each class? 

As Mr. Klein describes it:

Teachers at Success work hard, are better compensated than other public school teachers, and move on if they don’t cut the mustard.  Unlike most teachers in public schools, they believe they can constantly improve by having others observe them, by learning from each other, and by trying new things.  They thrive in a culture of excellence, rather than wallow in a culture of excuse.

Third, teachers at Success Academies do not have job protection for life, as they do in Washington state.  At Success Academies, the learning of the students, not the job protection of the teacher, is the highest value.

The children attending New York City Success Academies have shown they have become champion learners at these charter schools.  These children are great teachers as well.  They are teaching us that high drop-out rates and low academic performance in traditional public schools are the fault of the adults, not the poverty status of the schoolchildren. 

Defenders of the existing public school system, who do not want to allow children the opportunity to attend a charter school in Washington, repeatedly blame poverty, not school structure, as the reason for failing schools.  They are using this excuse to deny poor children in Washington the chance to escape poverty by attending a charter school.  This is wrong, mean, and profoundly antithetical to the central mission of the public school system, which is to allow all children, not just the well-off, the blessings of learning and knowledge.