I just read a piece in the New York Times by someone who actually writes for a living, and who lives in DC, say that she’d rather have bad neighborhood schools remain open, than have a choice to send her child to a public school that might actually be working. She is angry with people who have run her city and her school system, who had the nerve to “shutter” their failing, poorly enrolled, neighborhood school. And these same leaders even had the audacity to suggest students be provided the options of a new community school to attend (which she didn’t like), while at the same time this same journalist says she only considers high quality private or charter schools, but apparently believes the charters perform poorly and rarely close, while the data shows the complete opposite. In fact, DC’s charter schools make more and faster gains for all children, retain their students longer, and are boasting higher graduation rates. Those that don’t work do close — at a rate of 15% percent, a practice that still rarely happens in traditional public schools, even in this city where she believes officials are school closure crazy.
Why does Natalie Hopkinson want parents consigned to substandard schools, while she herself admittedly enjoys a choice of public OR private education? She has anxiety over making choices, she says. In her own world, white parents have public schools in their neighborhood that work and black parents of whatever means have to exercise choice of schools outside their neighborhoods to find the best fit for their child, as if that’s a bad thing. The person who wrote this drivel has most assuredly never stepped foot in the schools outside of her middle class
