The Teachers Union Chokepoint Against Charter Schools

The lengths that teachers unions will go to thwart anyone trying to give poor students a decent education continues to astonish. On Friday Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank will deal with the latest effort—the United Federation of Teachers’ lawsuit against New York City’s Department of Education. The UFT and its co-plaintiffs want to stop Success Academy from opening two new charter schools in buildings they would share with traditional public schools.

This arrangement is called co-location. In New York, it takes advantage of unused space and is the fastest way to stand up a charter for children who desperately need it. The UFT regards the co-location approval process as a chokepoint for blocking more charters.

When Success Academy asked to intervene in the lawsuit, Justice Frank sided with the UFT in ruling that the charter-school network’s interests are irrelevant. The union charge is that, in approving these charters, the Education Department did not properly take into account the law mandating that public schools reduce class sizes. The upshot is the court will hear the UFT’s concerns but not Success Academy’s. It’s a perfect metaphor for New York’s twisted politics of education.

Add sheer hypocrisy. The UFT opposes the two Success charters on grounds that they could lead to overcrowding. But where was the UFT’s concern for overcrowding when University Prep Middle School—a charter co-founded by the American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten —was given more space at its own co-location? As Success Academy noted in a Monday letter to Justice Frank, University Prep uses up a larger percentage of its building’s space than the proposed Success charters do.

The greater absurdity is that the alleged concern for overcrowding comes as the total district school enrollment is projected to be under 800,000, reflecting a loss of more than 100,000 over the past 10 years. The other relevant fact is that most co-located public schools are district schools sharing with other district schools, not with charters.

A recent Stanford study confirmed that most charter schools “provide superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population”—and Success Academy’s are among the highest performing. Let’s hope Justice Frank recognizes this suit for what it is: an outrageous effort to prevent mostly poor and minority kids from getting access to two schools that would rescue them from the usual New York failure factories.