Not long ago, I??praised NYC's charter team for moving to close a Brooklyn school that had violated important parts of its performance contract. Closures in such cases, I argued, are essential for the long-term good of the charter sector, both because they remove troubled schools from the portfolio and because they show that charter accountability is true and meaningful, which will ultimately sustain the charter concept in the eyes of families and policy makers.
Gotham schools, however, reports on the??other side of the coin. According to parents protesting the closure, this school, despite its operational problems, is the best option available in a terribly distressed neighborhood.
By no means do I condone authorizers who fail to shutter bad charters, but instances like these illustrate why authorizers balk in tough cases. They are forced to do something for the long-term good of public education that has very sad short-term implications.
So what's the answer?
It seems to me that in the urban school system of the future, we will couple the announcement of a closure with a comprehensive set of compensating activities, such as announcing that a new school will be opening in the same area or that a great school is expanding. Parents would also be provided a list of other existing schools their kids could transfer into along with full information on those schools' attributes and shortcomings.
And because I take so seriously both sides of this equation (closing failures and making sure kids have better options available), if the public school system were unable to guarantee higher performing public options, I'd make private schools available, too.
--Andy Smarick