We like to tell ourselves failure isn’t an option, but for decades, failure has been the status quo for the education of children of the working class and poor.
Failure was always on the table when it was those “other kids” who would suffer the consequences of mismanaged and corrupt local-government-run schools, and many fought to ensure that bureaucracy would keep their destiny one of destitution.
But when we give those castaway children a chance to excel in alternative institutions like private and charter schools, they quickly prove to us the only ones who failed were the adults who forced them to remain in educational squalor for so many years.
The New York Charter School Center just examined the latest assessments of third- to eighth-grade students and found charter schools outperformed their traditional public-school counterparts — especially in educating minority kids.
Students who attended city charter schools scored 7 percentage points higher on the English language arts exam, with 59% passing versus 52% in city Department of Education-run schools, and 13 percentage points higher on the math exam, with 63% passing versus 50%.
Black charter-school students outperformed their district counterparts by 19 percentage points in English and 27 percentage points in math.
Similarly, Hispanic charter-school kids beat their public-school peers by 16 percentage points in English and 25 percentage points in math.
With 90% of enrolled charter-school students being black and Hispanic and 80% of them coming from low-income families, New York charter schools have provided the children who were once forgotten in underachieving public schools an opportunity to experience economic mobility despite the efforts of pro-teachers-union Democrats.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such results.
Last year, a State University of New York Charter Schools Institute analysis found the largest disparity of educational excellence in The Bronx, which has dozens of alternative schools.
The number of students at SUNY-approved charters there who reached proficiency in English was 28 percentage points higher and in math 35 points higher than in neighboring public schools.
At the Academic Leadership Charter School, 84% of students were proficient in English, compared with just 31% in surrounding schools in District 7. The school is in Mott Haven, a neighborhood with a median income of $25,325 a year that’s 72% Hispanic and 24% black.
The elitists who plague the Democratic Party can only see as far as the landscaped shrubs at the entrance of their cul-de-sacs and refuse to acknowledge that the excellence in their local public school is not a reflection of what’s happening on the other side of the tracks.
They cannot comprehend the far-too-frequent situation of a child graduating from a public high school illiterate — because minimum standards of being capable of reading and writing are nearly guaranteed where they’re from.
We live in the land of the free but tell certain children that they shouldn’t be free to choose anything other than what isn’t working in education.
The Democrats in power claim to care about the lives of all children, but most do everything possible to uphold a system that puts union interests before a child’s hope.
They have no idea what it’s like to be a child who attends a school that ultimately doesn’t care if you pass legitimately or not and is too inept to rescue a child who is struggling to stay afloat.
I do, because I was this child.
I was never diagnosed in school, because no one cared enough to pay attention to what was obvious, but I displayed signs of dyslexia, which made my high-school learning experience horrendous and demoralizing.
In the last three years of high school, I failed and had to take summer classes to pass through the next grade and graduate.
I remember returning to school after my summer classes and finding nothing had changed.
And no one cared about why I kept ending up in this circumstance.
As an adult, I now know why: These educators’ objective is to project an illusion of success, even if it means pushing stragglers like me across the finish line, to uphold the institutional status quo.
I wonder how many other children are like me, left behind because their struggles are an inconvenience for the people who place platitudes over results.
How many of us see these children who are raised in undesirable environments and view their existence as such as well?
If it’s American to strive for freedom of choice, then it’s anti-American to prevent our children from having a choice.
Adam B. Coleman is the author of “Black Victim to Black Victor” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. Follow him on Substack: adambcoleman.substack.com.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
