New York City's United Federation of Teachers (UFT) recently published a report in which it said the area's charter schools don't serve at least the district-wide average of neediest students, despite serving an overwhelmingly poor population. So James Merriman of the NYC Charter Schools Blog wonders why the UFT isn't fussing over significant demographic differences within the public school system, as laid out in our "America's Private Public Schools" report. Merriman writes:
Given the UFT's present obsession with precise demographic balancing between charter schools and district schools, one might suppose that the union would have spoken out about this phenomenon. After all, UFT President Michael Mulgrew and his loyal coterie of advocacy organizations enthusiastically trumpeted a report that (1) acknowledged that charter school students were overwhelming poor but (2) based on their data, slightly less poor on average than students in nearby district managed schools. ??????Even these minor differences merited a press conference, numerous TV appearances, and a report whose title is meant to invoke the educational apartheid sanctioned by Plessy v. Ferguson.
Merriman then points out demographic and socioeconomic statistics for specific schools and goes on to ask:
So when is the press conference in TriBeCa? When is the protest rally in Douglaston? When will we see a UFT report on the ???????separate and unequal??????? conditions between the Upper East Side and East New York? Equally, when will the UFT call for a moratorium on building new schools in wealthy areas until every child in the South Bronx is in a new school building? When will it call for demographic balancing as it did for charter schools? When will it demand that these reforms be part of a Race to the Top application?
Read more on the NYC Charter Schools Blog.
--Laura Pohl