AQENY is the Alliance for Quality Education New York. 3 days ago we met with their campaign coordinator, Maria Bautista. The organization that Maria works for is actually mainly focused on the legal and financial sides of public education. They sue the government for under funding their public schools, which happens more often then you’d think. The meeting was to work on scheduling fieldworks and learning more about the organization. She told us a lot about charter schools and the less positive side of their approach to education. Some charter schools have a “got to go” list. By third grade (the year before standardized testing starts,) the school decided by grades who they want to leave. Of course they can’t just expel people with no reason, so they will constantly suspend them for little things and make their life so hard that they’ll leave the school before testing. In one case a woman became aware that at her child’s charter school, the infamous Success Academy, there was a list made by school leaders of 16 students that they wanted to leave the school, the aforementioned “got to go” list. 9 students on the list later withdrew from the school, after their parents complained of constant suspensions and being called into the school often to pick up their child early or talk to school officials. She also mentioned how these schools will severely punish their kids for even the slightest fracture of the silliest rules. Like making sure their uniform is tidy, standing in the correct formation, writing on desks, keeping their hand in their laps. In one case the head of a charter school called 911 on a first grader because he was being “unruly.” It’s truly disgraceful that while these schools are praised for their high “success” rates on standardized tests, they are putting a death sentence on half of their students educational careers. People who are just looking at one way opinions from people who are involved in charter schools may be thinking that these schools would be a great solution to our countries needs for a higher quality of learning, but in fact only 17% of charter schools perform significantly better than public schools. That slim 17% comes at the cost of marginalized students who obviously need a support system from their school to thrive, when all they’re getting is a toxic cycle of viciousness forcing them to give up on their education at an early age.
