The Crusades

The New York Times reports that about 5,000 people attended the Harlem Education Fair reflecting the fact that organizer and former city council person Eva Moskowitz is going to keep pushing her agenda on the neighborhood whether you like it or not.

The Times says she's a "crusader." Hold that word up for a while and look at it in the cold light of historical context.

The fact that Harlem now has more charter schools than you can shake a stick at is partly because of Ms. Moskowitz' efforts and partly because people of color are not stupid and are increasingly fed up with the traditional, separate and unequal* New York City public school system. At least charter schools provide an alternative and hold out the promise of quality:

Many families at the fair said they had grown tired of cuts to public schools. Sonia Davis... hopped from booth to booth, asking the same set of questions: “What grades do you serve?” “What classes do you offer?” “How strict are you?”

“You’ve got to have baseball, chess, cheerleading, drama, debate, poetry, and music — oh God, music — like cello and violin,” said Ms. Davis, who has two daughters. “I like charter schools because they don’t just have children bubbling in tests; they give them time to unwind.”

Reporter Javier C. Hernandez writes that "charter schools dominated, with representatives stopping parents with sales pitches like, “Do you want your child to succeed?”"

What kind of question is that?

History: The author of the Dawes Act was instrumental in helping to set up a system of schools that were consciously designed to "take the Indian out" of Native American children.

I have noticed that crusading reformers often like to put children of color in nifty school uniforms. The group of Omaha boys pictured below wear cadet uniforms provided by the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania circa 1880.





Also: On Tuesday March 3, 2009 @ 3:00PM EST Educati0n Week hosts The Quality Challenge for Charter Schools a live webchat with experts including Christopher Barbic, founder of YES Prep Public Schools and Nelson Smith president of the National Alliance for Public Charters. Sign up to tune into this chat which is supported by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

* According to Wikipedia: "The racial makeup of public school students is 36.7 percent Hispanic, 34.7 percent black, 14.3 percent Asian, and 14.2 percent white. The specialized high schools tend to be disproportionately white and Asian."