In several cities, charters get space by moving into a public school building and “co-locating” with the existing public school. The existing public school never likes giving up classrooms, but they are not allowed to say no. The deal is done by the school board or the mayor or some other authority.
The two schools in the same building are typically separate. The students do not have shared activities. The new charter gets spruced-up classrooms and the best of everything. The students in the public school lose space and get no improvements. The two schools are separate and unequal.
Recently, a teacher wrote to describe what happened to her/his school in Harlem after the richly-funded Success Academy co-located into the building:
in 2012 Success Academy was allowed to co-locate in a landmark Harlem building amidst protests from NAACP and several political figures. Over ten years later, the same public school has lost an entire floor of classrooms including a radio broadcasting space, cafeteria space, and auditorium usage. While the traditional public school (that serves every student who enrolls) continues to struggle with attendance, credit matriculation, and graduation rates etc. the charter is allowed to “thrive” by cherry-picking students and choosing to not backfill seats in the younger grades. Charter/public co-locations are separate and unequal treatment of students and are extremely detrimental to our traditional public school community that has originally occupied the building for over 100 years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
TOTALLY AGREE!!!!
This co-location of charter schools is TERRIBLE.
Thank you for posting this, Diane.
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Speaking of charters and how the playing field is made unlevel, see info below. Digressing, a top aide to once-touted, state Education Commissioner, Tony Bennett, opines in support of Emily Hanford’s efforts. The former top aide is a visiting senior fellow at Fordham. Back to unlevel, previously, he resigned from a state position during the media coverage of an Indiana, raised score scheme and a GOP donor’s charter school.
Interesting how a bio can be read and a person wouldn’t learn the full picture.
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Among other things going on, in and to public schools, this one is a total disgrace. In addition to the loss of vital space and facilities, they are nor even compensated for their losses.
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Success has the money for well equipped teacher prep rooms, with copying machines, paper, pencils, marker supplies, healthy snacks, etc. Students may share school cafeteria but get different food- public school lunches vs. salads, fresh fruit. Success classrooms are likely to have Smartboards, students have tablets. and so on.
Unfair unequal and obvious to all the students and teachers in the building.
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The guiding philosophy of Success Academy seems to be that having some – or many – less worthy kids suffer tremendously so that the “worthy” students (the students Success Academy allows to remain in their charter) can benefit is not just acceptable, but necessary.
Of course, the adults running the schools for those “worthy” kids also benefit financially – some of them extremely well – by doing harm to other so-called unworthy students. When I hear them defending hurting so many vulnerable students as ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY in order to help the worthy students, my stomach turns.
That is what our society has turned into, with approval from the so-called liberal media. Lazy education reporters who are complicit with normalizing the evil and implicitly racist view that it is okay to hurt some “bad” kids because those “good” kids cannot be helped without hurting the bad kids. Those education reporters tell themselves the fact that the “bad” kids and the “good” kids all virtually always Black or Latino has nothing to do with their acceptance that hurting some kids is NECESSARY to help the others. But if someone said they had to hurt middle class white kids who aren’t good students in order to teach the ones who are, those reporters would see it as the sickening claim that it is. I doubt they’d buy the lie that so many white middle class 6 year olds turned out to be so violent because of their own violent natures. They embrace that lie when Success Academy leaders use ugly innuendo to smear the Black students they don’t want to teach.
There are charter schools like Brooklyn Prospect, which had a fraction of the lavish funding Success Academy had, which chose to rent their own space instead of hurting the most disadvantaged public school students. But not Eva Moskowitz. For her, education is a zero sum game and she can’t win unless others lose. But since that makes her look bad, she pushes the narrative that worthy students can’t win unless the unworthy students lose. A narrative that should have been discredited as soon as it was offered, but was instead legitimized by complicit education reporters.
Until Eva Moskowitz made it acceptable for education reporters to amplify that abhorrent zero-sum view of education, most Americans understood that helping improve some students’ education NEVER has to come by hurting other students.
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ProPublica wrote last week about the frequency with which Success calls 911 on kids. Their rich donors should pay for the calls.
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Charter school co-location in public schools sends the wrong message to public schools students. Children are a lot more perceptive than we give them credit for. They may not understand the politics of the differences, but they will clearly understand the differences in the available resources and access that the charter school students have. Public school students and teachers can clearly see that they are relegated to second class status in this unfair arrangement. Public school students will be aware of their second class status, and it will have a negative impact their school climate and morale.
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How true
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As long as hedge fund managers are able to corrupt elected officials’ decisions on how to run our cities, the beatings will continue until morale improves.
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