Still in pandemic times and difficult “homework” for New York City, charter schools have some “good marks” to show for it.
For the sixth consecutive year, it increased by 9% enrollment in these 272 educational centers in the Big Apple.
In addition, the large “blackboard” that shows the progress of this group of campuses highlights how they quickly navigated to a hybrid model in the face of the challenges imposed by COVID-19 in 2020.
A recent report published by the Center for Research on the Results of Education (CREDO), an organization of Stanford University examining school effectiveness, showed New York charter schools moved more efficiently to online learning than other public schools between March and June 2020, when battling the worst of the health crisis public.
“This is a result of the work of our school leaders to provide a high-quality education to our diverse and vibrant charter school community, and to provide families with an educational choice. make it better for your children”, he highlighted to local media James Merriman, executive director of the NYC Charter School Center.
The challenge is that many families still they are overwhelmed by doubts and wonder what exactly sets a charter school apart from traditional public campuses.
In some cases, there is still the false perception that they are private institutions only for an elite. the other belief is that complicated tests are applied to be enrolled.
Actually, charter schools They are public schools that function independently. like private schools, but they are funded by state income tax and donations. While “normal” public schools are funded by the federal government.
In addition, these centers, precisely because of their autonomous nature, tend to have longer school days and years than traditional public schools.
As pointed out by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Government funds are received, but they operate with different academic programs and calendars, adapted to each community. The key is that they maintain an independent operation and very close communication with parents and guardians.
The New York State Education Department (NYSED) reports that approximately 145,000 New York City students are enrolled in charter schools, which is 14% of all public school students in the city.
Waiting for more classes
With a new municipal administration, which has different positions from the outgoing team of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the path could be clearer to support this model.
Mayor Eric Adams, since his campaign, has made it clear that one way to make his mark on education, will be supporting charter schools.
“Intended to keep the current cap on charter schools, successful models need to be duplicated and those that fail must be closed“, limited the president.
For his part, the current New York City Schools Chancellor, David Banksalthough he has not shown a detailed view of How the City will leverage this autonomous system instruction, has assured local media “that innovation can be created within the public school system, as well as through alternative models, such as charter schools.”
In general, the greatest aspiration of the organizations that promote this autonomous educational system is that more classrooms be opened. and that they can be taken immediate measures that create more quotas.
Currently, there is a list of a few 48,000 childrenin the five counties, that aspire to be part of this educational model, whose income depends only on drawsunder NYSED guidelines.
Derived from data shared by the Manhattan Instituteduring the first five years of the De Blasio administration, andCharter campus growth fell by 59%cooling the expansion promoted on several fronts by the former Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
“Despite the limits on charter school creation in New York City and the historic challenges of the past two years, our campuses continued to continuously growing and responding to educational quality during the pandemic,” Merriman said.
Matters and pending tasks
In the 2023 draft budget, Governor Kathy Hochul proposed increasing funding for charter schools in the Big Apple by 4.7 percent and extend Mayor Adams’ authority, for an additional four years, to manage these New York City centers.
The financial boost proposed by the state president will increase aid to charter schools to $17,633 per student, vs. $16,844 currently arranged.
“This will allow charter schools to continue innovating, recruiting high-quality teachers and staff and providing strong educational options for New York families,” Hochul said in his budget ideas for $216 billion for the next fiscal year.
The defenders of this autonomous instruction system praised the increase in financial aid, but they are not satisfied, since they consider that a new law should be approved to lift the limits that they block the creation of centers of this type in the Big Apple.
“We are pleased to see the need for increased funding being recognized, but at the same time, we will continue our fight to remove the cap on installing new charter schools. We look forward to working with state legislators and the city of New York to promote it”reacted to local media James Merriman, Executive Director of the New York City Center for Charter Schools.
Charter School Composition:
- 50% of the student body of the charter school system identified as African American and the 40% as Latinoin the 2020-2021 school year, according to a balance from NYSED.
- 79% of this educational community have economic problems.
- 8% they are multilingual
- 9.3% They live in temporary housing.
- 272 schools ‘charters’ operate in total in the Big Apple in all five boroughs.
- 145,000 students in NYC charter schools.
Source-eldiariony.com