Last week, Eva Moskowitz’s Harlem Success Academy invited the press and other interested community members to watch the emotional circus of a charter school admission lottery. This prompted a mini-debate on Whitney Tilson’s blog about how much media attention charter school lotteries should receive, and whether such attention is really beneficial to the parents involved.
I understand that it might be better for Moskowitz to publicize sad parents leading children away crying; surely that means that they will be granted some of Spitzer’s new golden charter school tickets. However, my point is not that it shouldn’t happen (although I agree with some of the critics), but that when it does, the charter leaders identify it as a teachable moment. They (Harlem Success Academy) have great resources (including political influence) and the lottery stage provides a unique opportunity to educate the parents about how to take real ownership of their child's education. I will go so far as to suggest that they might have more parents present in that one evening then most of the local schools see at all of their PTA meetings combined. If parents made it to the lottery, then surely they could make it over to their child’s classroom every now and then.
Many charter proponents argue that charter schools provide a means to giving parents the “choices” that are necessary in a democratic system (see Xue's post below). In this case, I would like to suggest that charter schools could actually encourage citizens to become more democratically participative. I wonder what would happen if instead of just turning away parents whose children did not win a spot in the lottery, they turned it into a way to educate concerned parents to have a voice in their current public schools. This would give charters like Harlem Success a unique opportunity to broaden their sphere of influence in a positive way.
Many of the parents attending the lottery may not return next year, maybe they have been lotteried out of the running one too many times, maybe they feel powerless. So in addition to sending that spectacular “we need more Charter schools” message, Harlem Success could send out the even more important “we need more parents” message. Just a thought.
