- A few weeks ago, the Gadfly highlighted the work of the New York Times, which ran a long and deeply reported (some would say tendentious) examination of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter network. The piece vividly detailed the disputes circulating around the schools and led Moskowitz to issue an impassioned response to her employees. More recently, the paper has published testimonials from parents of Success Academy pupils, including both those distraught by the organization’s strict behavioral controls and those elated with their children’s improved grades and newfound zest for learning. The experiences they depict should already be familiar to those who have followed the story—Peerless school culture! Crushing academic expectations! Scary-good test scores! Just-plain-scary disciplinary practices!—but it’s worth celebrating the fact that these parents can choose to either stick with the program or look for a better fit for their kids. The first two lines of one account, from a Manhattan father, are particularly cheering: “I grew up poor, and my parents never had a choice in where to send me to school. So my wife, Mariann, and I knew we wanted to find the very best option for our son Luke.”
- Those words should be put on a plaque and mounted in the office of every state legislator in the country. Parental choice in education is a top priority for reformers everywhere, and the statehouse is the best place to protect and expand it. Thankfully, 2015 has been a fantastic year so far for school choice. In Alabama, Governor Robert Bentley signed into law a bill that legalized charter schools for the first time. Republicans in Nevada and Arkansas pushed through legislation that will open up private schools to impoverished and disabled students. And similar promising efforts are proceeding in Texas and Florida. School choice is on the march.
