OPINION: #PathtoPossible
Last Wednesday in Albany, I proudly stood with hundreds of New York City families — many hailing from my home borough of Brooklyn — to urge fellow lawmakers to support charter schools in achieving their #PathtoPossible vision, which calls for doubling the size of the public charter sector to 200,000 students by 2020.
The parents who came to Albany and their elected allies — including a number of my colleagues in the state Legislature — were inspired to join this movement because of the impact that public charter schools have had in their communities.
Let’s take as an example Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, which is located in the 21st Senate District, which I represent. At this public charter school, 46 percent of students are scoring at grade level in math and reading — eight points above the citywide average. This kind of impressive performance by public charter school students can be seen all over the city, most notably in underserved neighborhoods where families had previously been limited to low-performing district schools.