Today I will march along with thousands of other New York City public-school parents.
We do so because we love the ideal of public education but are painfully aware of how many students our public schools are failing in practice.
It’s easy to harbor romantic ideas about public education if you happened to attend a good school. In my case, that was Stuyvesant.
But when I became chair of New York City Council’s Education Committee, I learned that wasn’t typical.
Here are some facts about our city’s public schools:
- At 257 of them, fewer than 1 in 10 students are on grade level.
- At 501 schools, more than 80 percent of students are below grade level. Only 25 city schools have more than 80 percent of students on or above grade level.
- Not only haven’t we closed the achievement gap between white and minority students, last year it actually grew.
- Another telling way to look at it is to divide a school’s spending by the number of students it actually succeeds with. Nearly half of our city’s schools spend more than $100,000 per student who tests proficient on state exams; 40 spend more than $500,000 per proficient student; 12 spend more than $1 million per proficient student.
Many people love the idea that we have a unitary public school system that serves all students.
But that ideal has nothing to do with reality. In fact, we have a system of haves and have-nots.
Yet there is another even more pernicious myth: that poor and minority students can’t learn or could only do so with some massive and fiscally impossible infusion of resources. In fact, there are schools with similar demographics that get markedly different results:
- In Brooklyn’s District 15, PS 172 and PS 124 both have many poor students (95 percent vs. 100 percent) and ELL students (26 percent vs. 23 percent). But at PS 172, 99 percent of students are proficient in English and 79 percent in math, compared to 23 percent and 33 percent at PS 124.
- In Brooklyn’s District 17, PS 249 and PS 92 have similar percentages of poor student (100 percent vs. 89 percent) and minorities (92 percent vs. 94 percent). But at PS 249, 46 percent of students are proficient in English and 65 percent in math, compared to 9 percent and 14 percent at PS 92.
- Bronx Success Academy Charter School 2 and the UFT Charter School have about the same shares of poor students (85 percent vs. 87 percent) and minority students (97 percent vs. 98 percent). But at Success, 74 percent of students are proficient in English and 100 percent in math, vs. 11 percent and 18 percent at the UFT Charter School.
- Central Harlem has 15 district schools and two Success Academy Charter Schools. These 15 district schools combined have fewer third graders on grade level in math than the two Success Academies (148 vs. 193).
What these examples show is that poor and minority students can learn at a very high level — when they attend good schools.
Anything is possible for these children, but those possibilities are being stolen because of our failure to reform our educational system.
That needs to change. We need to stop stealing the possible.
We need to improve education for all students, not just the lucky few whose parents can afford apartments in wealthy neighborhoods or who can test into specialized schools. That’s why thousands of public-school parents are marching today.
Eva Moskowitz is the founder & CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools.