Mayor de Blasio can’t help himself.
As schools opened last week, he took yet another cheap shot at charters. It came in the course of remarks where he talked about the “values” he expects these public schools to uphold.
De Blasio began by implying — falsely — that charters aren’t “inclusive.” “Special-ed kids, English-language learners have to be included,” he insisted. Charters must “retain the kids they start off with” and not “dwell on standardized testing.”
These are all the old chestnuts thrown out by charter foes. Fact is, charter public schools use a lottery system for admission (unlike Brooklyn Tech, which the mayor’s son, Dante, attends and which uses highly selective testing). And the high performance of charter kids comes from far more than a myopic focus on testing.
De Blasio did praise one charter: the Amber Charter School in Manhattan, where he was speaking. This school, he said, “really exemplifies our values” and “is a great example of what a charter can do.”
Huh? Last year at Amber, only 12 percent of fifth-graders (i.e., the kids about to graduate to middle school) passed the reading test and only 37 percent passed math.
They delivered these dismal results even though only 5 percent of its students aren’t primarily English speakers, well below the district average of 12 percent.
So why is de Blasio so enamored? Because Amber is one of the city’s few charters where teachers belong to the union.
So now we know what de Blasio means by the “values” he wants from schools: It’s not whether the students perform but whether their workforce is unionized.