They believe that charter schools will make a difference for their youngsters. Supporters of charter schools, here and elsewhere, cite recent studies concluding that competition in public education does not create a system of haves and have-nots but rather improves performance for students in both the alternative and traditional public school settings. To date, more than half the states have enacted legislation permitting the creation of charter schools. But in New York, the closest thing to charter schools is a New York City program of alternative schools that report directly to the Board of Education instead of being independent, as charter schools are in other states. That approach has frustrated charter school advocates like Roger Green, a black Democratic Assemblyman from Brooklyn, who contends that charter schools are most effective and creative when they are permitted to work outside the bureaucracy of the public education system, not within it.
Charter schools can serve as a healthy intervention.
But it is by no means assured that the advocates of charter schools will prevail in this legislative session, since they still face opposition from a range of powerful interest groups representing the public education system, the most formidable being school boards and administrators, as well as the teachers' union. The standoff potentially reopens a fragile fault-line among New York City Democrats dating to racially charged battles that led to the 1968 decentralization of the city school system. The fight pitted the largely white teachers'union and administrators against minority communities in the Ocean Hill, Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant sections of Brooklyn. These communities, frustrated by their exclusion from any role in running their local schools as well as a lack of jobs for members of minority groups, demanded more local control of hiring and management of their neighborhood schools. By far the most outspoken opponents of charter schools have been school administrators who argue that they divert attention and resources from existing schools.