Friday, January 22, 2010

 
Schoolchildren get "Marie Antoinette" Treatment from Democratic Legislators


"Let [charter kids] eat cake!"

The New York Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability today released a survey of all 212 state legislators showing that most Senate Democrats and nearly half of Assembly Democrats "benefited from school choice options" (here). In this case, private school options.

The Democratic majorities in the state legislature (with a couple of heroic exceptions) this week refused to approve more charter school opportunities for students, necessitated by the number of existing charter schools bumping up against the cap of 200. Governor Paterson proposed a cap lift to 460 to compete for federal Race to the Top education funds with the support of the Republicans in both houses.

The survey listed the K-12 school backgrounds for most legislators since many of them did not respond to the survey. Interestingly, the survey tabulated that three-quarters of the Democratic members of the Senate education committee grew up in private schools for at least some of their K-12 education, while each chamber's labor committee membership had similarly high percentages of Democratic legislators as private-school beneficiaries. Exactly half the membership of the Assembly's Puerto Rican & Hispanic Task Force attended private schools.

For those legislators that benefited from school choice, it's not too much to expect their support for public school choice for thousands of students throughout the state by expanding charter school opportunities. Yet, such support was nowhere to be found this week from nearly all the legislature's Democrats, about half of whom benefited from private schools.

Call it the "Marie Antoinette" treatment.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard
posted by Peter Murphy at PermaLink 12:01 PM
 

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