Today, GothamSchools reported on new poll results released by Quinnipiac: “Nearly three-quarters of parent voters want more charter schools”. These results are not surprising given the parental demand for charter schools in the annual lotteries. No one seems to track lottery statistics in a detailed manner, but, in my experience, the better charter schools are usually oversubscribed by between two and ten times.
I’ve seen parents literally praying at charter school lotteries. What do these parents think about debates on “creaming”? I think they would be perturbed by arguments that they are leaving behind the children with the least active parents, especially when those arguments come from people that would never let their own kids set foot in the schools in which some inner-city children are expected to remain.
The simplest and perhaps best argument for increasing the number of charter schools in New York City is that the parents, the ones whose voices we should be most concerned about, want more of them.
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