Trapping kids in schools where almost no learning occurs is an atrocious moral failing — one that last week President Trump took a step toward correcting: He declared that every child deserves a good education, regardless of their zip code.
That’s a sign of hope for thousands of kids all across New York state who are forced to attend neighborhood public schools that are failure factories.
State lawmakers and Gov. Hochul callously ignore the plight of these kids stuck in poor-performing schools. Parroting the teachers’ union, the pols perpetuate the lie that more tax dollars will turn bad schools around.
New York already spends a whopping $36,293 per public-school student — the most in the nation.
Yet for all that money, its students score in the “middle of the pack” on national tests, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress results released Wednesday.
The scores make it look like New York taxpayers are getting ripped off, paying top dollar for mediocrity.
But it’s worse than that: New Yorkers are actually paying top dollar for abject failure.
The NAEP averages paint an overly rosy picture, combining scores from kids in top districts like Scarsdale or Bronxville with abysmal results from students trapped in failure factories in Poughkeepsie, Gloversville and New York City’s worst public schools.
New York isn’t just squandering money, it’s squandering lives.
The odds of lifetime success are stacked against kids in Poughkeepsie, for example, where only 5% of fourth-graders score the highest of four levels of proficiency in English,?according to state data.
Persistently failing schools could, and should, be slammed shut by the State Education Department.
Instead, under a department procedure called receivership, New York keeps failing schools open and “under review” for three or even six years — a charade that saves union jobs, not young lives.
Failing schools can be found across the state.
In the Mohawk Valley town of Gloversville, three-quarters of the mostly white student body is considered economically disadvantaged.
But the real disadvantage is that only?8% of Gloversville eighth-graders are “minimally” proficient in math — the lowest of three proficiency levels — and none score higher. Yet Gloversville kids have no other educational option.
By comparison, economically disadvantaged students in Florida have alternatives — they can enroll in another district’s public school, or choose one of the state’s 700 charter schools.
The result is stunning: Poor kids in Florida score higher in math and reading than poor kids anywhere else in the United States, even though Florida ranks 43rd in per-pupil spending.
Choice and competition pay off.
But outrageously, New York lawmakers maximize spending and minimize choice.
Most state legislators get endorsements and funding from the New York State United Teachers — and that means NYSUT calls the shots.
No surprise that New York pays the second-highest teacher salaries of any state.
At the union’s behest, the state Legislature caps the number of charter schools, despite evidence charters educate kids at half the cost of district schools and usually with far better results.
Worst of all, educational policy outside New York City is made by a totally insulated gang of bureaucrats most New Yorkers have never heard of — the Board of Regents and the state education commissioner.
They produce failure year after year but keep their positions — and this year even awarded Commissioner Betty Rosa an outrageous $155,000 raise, bringing her pay to a whopping $489,000 a year.
In 2000, a largely Republican state government ceded control of New York City’s public-education system to then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who closed failing schools and opened more charters.
Student performance improved — until Bloomberg’s successor Bill de Blasio ended the reforms.
But Bloomberg showed it can be done.
Ideally, New Yorkers across the state would vote out union-toady legislators, demand an end to the cap on charter schools and give kids caged in failing schools an exit ramp.
Don’t hold your breath. Political courage is in short supply in our state.
The good news is that Trump’s Thursday executive order backed education freedom nationwide.
It mandates federal departments to use their discretionary funds and authority to expand charters and school choice, and calls on Congress to enact tax credits and other funding mechanisms that would help parents in every state pay for private and parochial school options.
Trump has promised to sign the Educational Choice for Children Act, which was introduced in Congress last week and is likely to pass both houses.
The bill offers $10 billion in federal tax incentives for donors to support existing and new K-12 scholarship programs, and is supported by the Black Mothers Forum, the Coalition for Jewish Values, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and others.
By funding school choice at the federal level, Trump’s initiatives aim to do an end-run around blue-state obstruction — finally offering hope for kids imprisoned in New York state’s worst public schools.
Free at last.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.