Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña is reportedly planning to retire by year’s end. How about right now?
After all, her proudest achievement, boosting city high-school graduation rates to 72 percent, turns out to be hollow. As Melissa Klein and Susan Edelman revealed in Sunday’s Post, only 37 percent of those “graduates” are ready for college.
They flagged multiple schools that graduate 80 percent or more of their kids — with college-readiness rates from just 1.9 percent to 14.1 percent. We don’t blame Fariña personally for all these diploma mills — but it’s yet another sign that her “reform” efforts amount to shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
And if she’s headed out soon, then the voters deserve to know who Mayor de Blasio would pick next. After all, this is his re-election year — the public’s chief chance to protest if he puts yet another don’t-worry-be-happy hack in charge of the schools.
More and more parents are looking elsewhere for hope. Some 1,500 charter-school parents, students and teachers from across the state will rally Tuesday in Albany. The main point of this Charter School Advocacy Day: backing Gov. Cuomo’s push to lift the cap on new charters in the city, and to give charters funding equal to that of regular public schools.
Right now, the law allows only 30 more charters to be granted in the five boroughs, and 156 statewide. Cuomo would end the regional restriction — though removing all caps on new charters makes the most sense.
By and large, charters do better than traditional public schools at graduating college-ready high schoolers.
And the best charters are working miracles: It’s insane not to let them expand as quickly as they can manage.
Of course, the de Blasio-Fariña regime has done all it can to limit charter growth. That’s one more reason the chancellor should exit now.
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