Clara Hempill on Charter Schools

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Senior Editor at the Center for NYC Affairs at the New School Do Charter Schools Help or Hurt? When officials at P.S. 123, an ordinary neighborhood school in Harlem, were forced to call the police this month to keep a charter school from taking over its classrooms, I was reminded how charter schools make it harder for neighborhood schools to succeed. In poor neighborhoods with terrible local schools, charters may serve as an escape for some children whose parents can navigate the admissions process, much as "gifted and talented" programs serve middle class parents who want to escape what they consider inadequate local schools. But what we need is a strategy to improve schools for all children - not an escape for a few. a charter school that shares the P.S. 123 building, hired movers to remove furniture from several P.S. 123 classrooms so the charter school could expand, teachers occupied the classrooms and halted the takeover,