"Charter Schools ARE Public Schools." Numerous people who marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in support of charter schools on Tuesday were wearing shirts adorned with the catchphrase. Charter schools both education reformers and gives headaches to unions:
To [the teachers union], the success of charters is a threat to the vast ocean of mediocrity and failure that marks most of the public system. If charters can educate the same kinds of students who fail down the block, or down the stairs, the excuses for failure peddled by the unions and educrats in regular schools are exposed as a giant fraud. So the opponents hunt for ways to deny and diminish charter success.
Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, has promised to charge rent and stop co-location for charter schools. As the New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin notes, de Blasio is scared of ending educational inequality for fear of upsetting the United Federation of Teachers.
