Michael Bloomberg for Charter Schools

Nothing that Michael Bloomberg says about public education in America should come as a surprise. We have been hammering these points for years now. And we are certainly not alone.

Public education is a massive failure. It is destroying children’s minds and their future prospects. It will certainly diminish our ability to onshore manufacturing and to compete with other nations in world markets.

Perhaps wisely, Bloomberg does not confront the teachers’ unions directly, but clearly they bear a major part of the responsibility for the fiasco.

As part of his philanthropic efforts, Bloomberg has chosen to dedicate three quarters of a billion dollars to the revival of public education. And he has chosen to do so by putting his money to work creating more charter schools.

So, he begins with an indictment. Readers of this blog will find this all rather familiar, but that does not make it less valid:

American public education is broken. Since the pandemic began, students have experienced severe learning loss because schools remained closed in 2020—and even in 2021 when vaccinations were available to teachers and it was clear schools could reopen safely. Many schools also failed to administer remote learning adequately.

Before the pandemic, about two-thirds of U.S. students weren’t reading at grade level, and the trend has been getting worse. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the nation’s report card, show that in 2019, eighth-grade math scores had already fallen significantly.

More than two-thirds of pupils are not reading at grade level. If you want to know what spells failure, look at that number.

Of course, the educational establishment does not care about teaching anyone anything. They want to produce social justice warriors and anti-racism crusaders. And they hand out diplomas indiscriminately in order not to hurt anyone’s feelings. Nothing like puffed-up self-esteem to diminish children’s minds:

Instead of giving students the skills they need to succeed in college or in a trade, the public education system is handing them diplomas that say more about their attendance record than their academic achievement. 

This harms students, especially those from low-income families. When and if they graduate, they will try to find work in an economy that values knowledge and skills above all else, and their old schools will say to them: “Good luck!”

As we have often noted, the victims of the teachers’ unions are underprivileged children. To imagine that this is being underwritten by Democratic politicians boggles the mind.

And Bloomberg is quite correct to say that the current conditions are creating a crisis:

Other nations are rising to this challenge and racing ahead, but we are moving backward, creating an economic and national-security crisis that will worsen over time. Unless we have the courage to rebuild public education from the bottom up, we will continue to doom our most vulnerable to a life of poverty and, in too many cases, incarceration.

The solution is not more critical race theory. It is not more social justice warfare. The solution lies in charter schools. Of course, we all know that. We will see whether Bloomberg can move the educational establishment:

We know what works, because we can see it in real time. Success Academy’s network of 47 public charter schools is serving New York children whose families predominantly live below the poverty line. Their students are outperforming public-school students in Scarsdale, N.Y.—the wealthiest town on the East Coast and the second-wealthiest town in America—by significant margins. Yet a statewide cap on charter schools is blocking Success Academy from expanding.

For “statewide cap” read Democratic politicians and teachers’ unions. The politicians are elected by the parents whose children are suffering. Go figure. 

Of course, charter schools are not unionized. 

In New York and many other places, enrollment in traditional schools has fallen dramatically since the start of the pandemic as parents search for better alternatives. Meanwhile, across the country, charters saw their largest enrollment increase ever last year—240,000 more children.

Charters, which generally don’t operate under union contracts, also have more flexibility to manage staffing, curriculum, testing and compensation. This allows them to create a culture of accountability for student progress week to week that many traditional public schools are missing. 

The charter school movement needs political support. 

Today there are long waiting lists for charter schools across the country, but mayors and governors aren’t getting the support they need from Congress and the White House to open new charter schools. To begin meeting the demand for charters, Bloomberg Philanthropies is launching a five-year, $750 million effort to create seats for 150,000 more children in 20 metro areas across the country.

We will provide seed capital to open new, high-quality charter schools with leadership and staff members that reflect students’ diversity. This investment will also help existing charter schools grow. We will also fund work to strengthen schools’ data systems, train and develop principals and teachers, and study what is working well to develop best practices for the nation.

This debacle derives from the Democratic Party and from teachers’ unions. We can only wish that Michael Bloomberg’s generosity and public statements will move things forward.