schools either performed the same as or worse than students
Currently there are 82 charter schools in New York If our children are to grow up to be functional members of our
City. Eighteen more have been approved to open their doors
this fall, and there are many who are pushing for all states to
lift their limits on the number of charter schools that can be
authorized and opened. But what do these charter schools really
represent? Are they the innovation and reform we need in
education as our mayor and president proclaim?
As we lay out below, charter schools are NOT
improving education. They are, however, destabilizing,
threatening and hindering the public education of our city’s
children. By privatizing and outsourcing public education,
charter schools are dividing communities in New York City
and around the country. Read on to find out the truth. Then,
please join our fight to improve and preserve public education
for all. Access to a high quality public education is not
something that should be won in a lottery—it is a most basic
human and civil right.
MYTH: Charter schools are public schools.
TRUTH: If something is public, it means it is open to all
members of a community. Charter schools conduct lotteries to
select their students; they do not aim to serve all. Charter
schools educate 2% of our city’s children, yet they receive
superior attention and power from the mayor and chancellor.
Charter school families are given access to transportation
opportunities that public schools cannot offer. Additionally,
there are estimates that charter schools receive as much as
twice the amount per student as public schools. The DOE
refuses to release important financial information to the public
effectively evading the question of funding. True reforms aim
to educate and provide for all children.
TRUTH: According to the NY State Charter School Act of
1998, a charter school is defined, not as a public entity, but as
an “education corporation.” Furthermore, the law states, “a
charter school shall be exempt from all other state and local
laws, rules, regulations or policies governing public or private
schools, boards of education and school districts…”1 Do we
really want to outsource the education of our children to private
corporations who are free from regulation and oversight?
TRUTH: Charter schools are not governed democratically and
often limit the input and voice of parents, students and teachers.
democracy, they need to be witnesses to and participants in
democratic process. Private corporations place the survival of
the corporation above the needs of their consumers. Public
entities are the opposite—they place the needs of those they
serve as their priority.
MYTH: Charter schools serve the same student populations
as public schools.
TRUTH: Charter schools serve far fewer English language
learners, students with special needs, and students who qualify
for free lunch than their public school counterparts:
Data for 2007-2008 School Citywide Charter Citywide Public
Year2 School Average School Average
English Language Learners 4% 14%
Students with Special Needs 5% 15%
Students Receiving Free Lunch
57% 65%
TRUTH: The Free Lunch “gap becomes even more glaring
when you realize that charter schools are concentrated in the
city's poorest neighborhoods, Harlem, the South Bronx and
central Brooklyn, where even higher numbers of students
qualify for free lunch.”3 In West Harlem alone, 80% of students
receive free lunch.4
TRUTH: New York City will have 100 charter schools open
this fall, the majority of which are concentrated in black and
Latino neighborhoods. This is not coincidence. Our mayor and
chancellor are shirking their responsibilities to run a publically
controlled educational system. They are instead outsourcing the
public education of black and Latino students to unregulated,
private corporations. In doing so, they have shown us that they
do not want and do not know how to educate our black and
Latino children. New York City desperately needs leaders who
are experienced educators—they are the best equipped to
understand and address the needs of all our city’s children.
MYTH: Charter schools produce better outcomes for their
students.
TRUTH: “Looking at 2,403 charter schools in 15 states and
the District of Columbia, researchers at Stanford University
found that students in more than 80 percent of charter
in traditional public schools… ‘If this study shows anything,
it shows that we’ve got a two-to-one margin of bad charters
to good charters,’ said Margaret E. Raymond, the director of
the center and the study’s lead author. ‘That’s a red flag.’”1
TRUTH: We need to consider how we measure the quality
of education in our country. President Obama and his
education secretary, Arne Duncan, are pushing an agenda
that equates student performance with a test score. Our
children are more than just numbers—they are individuals
with varied learning styles, strengths and needs. Focusing
ourselves, and our children, on these tests dangerously
oversimplifies the process of learning and does not allow us
to foster the true and unique potential of our youth.
MYTH: Charter schools hire better teachers and
administrators.
TRUTH: Examining 2003-04 federal data, researchers from
Vanderbilt University found surprising turnover rates for
teachers in charter schools. They left at a rate of 25%;
public schools had a turnover rate of 14%.6 Higher turnover
rates create destabilized and chaotic school environments.
TRUTH: Many charter school employees are overworked,
underpaid, and denied the right to be part of a union. In a
recent New York Times article, a few charter school
employees spoke about these issues:
“We were really proud of the scores, and still are…but the
workload…it wasn’t sustainable. You can’t put out the kind
of energy we were putting out for our kids year after year.”7
TRUTH: Many charter school administrators and principals
are new and inexperienced. Take for example Harlem
Success Academy, a network of 4 charter schools in Harlem
that serves about 800 students. This chain is run by former
city-council member Eva Moskowitz, a woman with no
background in teaching who pays herself $370,000 a year.
Overpaid CEO’s have contributed to the recent downfall of
our economy—do we really expect a different result if we
take this approach with education?
MYTH: Charter schools act as lab sites for innovative
educational ideas and practices.
TRUTH: While the charter school movement was initially

intended to be innovative, the schools sprouting up in New
York City are anything but. Many are run by the same few
charter corporations (Green Dot and Uncommon Schools) and
push students through a scripted and test-driven curriculum.
TRUTH: Few charter schools aim to share information or best
practices with their public school counterparts. The notion that
these schools will pave the way to school reform is ill founded.
We must empower public schools to experiment and innovate.
TRUTH: Charter schools are in the process of invading and
privatizing public space. Around the city charter schools are
taking over public school buildings and pushing public school
children out. In many cases the charter schools remain in public
spaces long after they have agreed to vacate. Why are we
allowing our public schools to be replaced and privatized?
MYTH: Competition between schools will improve the
educational system.
TRUTH: Any system based on competition will have winners
and losers. In the case of our educational system, the winners
and losers are our children. We need to create a system in
which everyone, especially our most needy, can excel. In a
competitive system, one school’s success is only possible when
another fails. Education is not a game—it is a right.
Sources:
* http://www.nycchartercenter.org/locations.asp
1 See http://www.newyorkcharters.org/documents/NYSCharterSchools
Actof1998.doc
2 Data from New York State Testing and Accountability Reporting Tool’s
“Accountability and Overview Reports.”
https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/Home.do?year=2008
3 Gonzalez, Juan. “Test numbers too good to be true, hide achievement gap of
poor students, some veteran educators say.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/05/08/2009-05-
08_city_test_numbers_too_good_to_be_true_hide_achievement_gap_of_poo
r_students_some.html
4 See also, http://coveringeducation.org/schoolstories09/?p=1951
5http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/06/15/36charters.h28.html?tkn=
NLTCJMEq7k%2Fnnff4EGJ7J5JLtfbPxFoncQFV
For the full study, go to:
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf
6 See http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-
research/2009/04/are_teachers_jumping_the_chart.html
7 Dillon, Sam. “As charter schools unionize, many debate effect.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/education/27charter.html?_
THE TRUTH
OUR VISION
Our vision for public school reform does not include
privatization. We support quality public neighborhood
schools with smaller class sizes, equitable funding, union
protections, local school councils, and neighborhood
about
enrollment that protects and includes all children. We
support a moratorium on charters, turnarounds, Charter Schools
in
consolidations, phase-outs, school closings and any other
form of school privatization.
Educators should be empowered to work with communities
to develop curriculum that is grounded in the lives of the New York City
young people they teach. Each school’s curriculum should
reflect the culture, needs and lived experience of its
students, critically support student identities, embrace and
recognize the value of students’ home languages, and invite
students to engage in solving societal problems.
The Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) believes in a
bottom-up, participatory and highly democratic process to
engage schools and communities in school improvement.
Who we are:
The Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) to Defend Public
Education is a coalition of educators, community members and
parents. We seek to educate, mobilize and organize educators,
parents, students and our communities against corporate and
government policies that serve to underfund, undermine and privatize
our public school system. GEM advocates for the equality & quality
of public educational services as well as the rights of school workers.
Charter Schools in New York City*
Contact GEM: gemnyc@gmail.com
http://grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com/
Learn more: GEM:
•Knopp, Sarah. “Charter schools and the attack on public education.”  Grassroots Education Movement
http://www.isreview.org/issues/62/feat-charterschools.shtml to Defend Public Education
• "New York Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein." Free download
at http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/nyc-schools-under- gemnyc@gmail.com
bloombergklein-what-parents-teachers-and-policymakers-need-to- http://grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com/
know/7214189 August, 2009
 4
See Also,
http://coveringeducation.org/schoolstories09/?p=1951

Ignore this page.

Sources:
*
http://www.nycchartercenter.org/locations.asp 1 New York State Charter
Schools Act of 1998. http://www.newyorkcharters.org/documents/
NYSCharterSchoolsActof1998.doc 2 Data from New York State Testing
and Accountability Reporting Tool’s “Accountability and Overview
Reports.” https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/Home.do?year=2008
3
Gonzalez, Juan. “Test numbers too good to be true, hide achievement gap
of poor students, some veteran educators say.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/05/08/2009-05-
08_city_test_numbers_too_good_to_be_true_hide_achievement_gap_of_po
or_students_some.html
4
See also, http://coveringeducation.org/schoolstories09/?p=1951
5
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/06/15/36charters.h28.html?tkn=N
LTCJMEq7k%2Fnnff4EGJ7J5JLtfbPxFoncQFV
For the full study, go to:
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf
6
See http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-
research/2009/04/are_teachers_jumping_the_chart.html 7 Dillon, Sam. “As
charter schools unionize, many debate effect.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/education/27charter.html?_

1
http://www.newyorkcharters.org/documents/
NYSCharterSchoolsActof1998.doc.
2
Data from New York State Testing and Accountability
Reporting Tool’s “Accountability and Overview Reports.
https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/Home.do?year=2008
3
Gonzalez, Juan. “Test numbers too good to be true, hide
achievement gap of poor students, some veteran educators
say.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/05/08/2
009-05-
08_city_test_numbers_too_good_to_be_true_hide_achievemen
t_gap_of_poor_students_some.html