NYC charters: fearing innovation for the few

Knowing that American Progress’s suggestions for the Obama administration to take a close look at investing in social innovation materialized was an exciting read for those who believe there is room for an SI approach in rethinking many traditional government services. We know that the government contracts out many projects. So why not support those who are addressing human service needs? Sometimes non-profits can move faster and with less political limitations and have the freedom to experiment a bit more, and to prove their worth by showing results and scaling up. I believe that with huge systems like health and education, social innovation can offer new ways.

The problem will be ensuring that these new approaches to public services are truly public and the benefits shared. For those who believe that a government is responsible for delivering economic and health security to its citizens, the idea of essentially contracting out these services is walking a dangerous line. Working an internship in New York city, I was in contact with a group called New York Collective of Radical Educators. I don’t share many of their opinions of the education system but I can understand some of their concerns over the onslaught of “innovative” new schools in New York City. The Obama administration paid a great tribute to the Harlem Children’s Zone and wants to support its growth. HCZ revitalized an entire neighborhood in some ways. The fact that many HCZ students who are on par with state standards considering most NYC public schools’ standardized test scores, HCZ has done an incredible job changing the lives of the children and families within their community.

But turning neighborhood schools into charter schools, or adding charter schools that essentially “compete” with neighborhood schools for students, often means exclusion. In New York City, most students “apply” for acceptance into middle school and high school, both public and private. What schools are looking for varies—some are honors high schools while others have a focus on public service or want students from diverse backgrounds. Most charters choose through lottery. The system of public and private schools in NYC is complex and getting more so as large schools are broken up into multiple schools in the same building with very different approaches to teaching. Charter schools receive public money but have more flexibility in their methods and approaches. Some charters are actually begun by groups of teachers and parents in a community and continue to be neighborhood based.

But for others like the radical educators, seeing a neighborhood school turn charter, and seeing children turned away based on luck of the draw is extremely difficult to stomach. The radical educators believe that children’s educational outcomes have been proven to improve with smaller class room sizes and that a focus on standardized testing is no true measure of education. They feel that charter schools, which are exclusive by necessity, rob the rest of the system of opportunity to change and distract from the problem that there aren’t enough teacher per student in NYC traditional public school classrooms. In the end, many charter leaders like Canada of HCZ focus on classroom size and individual attention as well. Whether problems like this should be dealt with through the government supporting innovative not for profits or whether it’s the governments responsibility to overhaul a system from the top will be fiercely debated as the governments’ investment in socially innovative answers to traditional public services grow. Charters in New York are proving that changing the educational system can transform students lives; unfortunately, because not for profits are not the NYC, NY state or federal government, they can only show this incrementally. This small scale means that people are being left behind. I think, given the problems in NYC’s schools, that trying to create change for some disadvantaged students is better than nothing. But I can imagine being on the wrong side of a lottery or being a teacher in a public school who feels that traditional schools are being abandoned in the wake of charter school creation, you may be left wondering when the sort of change on a scale that only a government can create is coming. What other resistors to government investment in social innovation may exist?