QUORA: ‘What can the GOP do to attract more minority voters?’

 QUORA: ‘What can the GOP do to attract more minority voters?’

I posted this answer:

The GOP can start by championing the smallest minority, the individual. 

Orienting their message and policy proposals around the rights of the individual to make their own choices in life doesn’t guarantee electoral success across the board, given that America’s original Spirit of Liberty has so dramatically eroded. But there are signs that it could be a winning strategy on some important issues. I would point to school choice as a way for the GOP to meld individual rights to policy success among ethnic minority groups. And I would point to former two-term Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s electoral success as evidence of that.

Christie, a Republican, was first elected in 2009. In his first term, he revolutionized public education by initiating an aggressive public charter school policy to increase educational opportunities beyond the traditional public school monopolies. This program has been (and still is) wildly popular in the voter-rich big cities like Newark, Camden, and Trenton, where the worst traditional public school districts existed. Tom Moran, editorial page editor of the NJ Star-Ledger and no friend of Christie, nonetheless called Christie’s charter school reforms a “big thing” for which Christie deserves immense credit. Moran observed that there has never been “a Democratic governor who did as much for poor minorities” as Governor Christie. 

In NJ’s cities, Christie’s charter school program met a tidal wave of demand. Big city parents, overwhelmingly minority (i.e., of darker complexion), responded in droves to the superior school choice offered by charters. Consider one city, Newark, NJ’s largest city. By the time Christie left office in 2017 due to term limits, Newark charter schools had enrolled more than of 1/3 inner city students, up from essentially zero in 2009, all based on voluntary parental choice to move their kids from the traditional unionized public schools.* 

So, how did Christie fare in his successful 2013 reelection bid? According to Pew Research, his shares of the minority vote from 2009 to 2013 jumped from 32% to 51% among hispanics, and from 9% to 21% among blacks. Given that Christie’s charter school program was one of his biggest policy initiatives, if not his biggest, it seems certain that it factored into these results. School choice is one major way for Republicans to blend a principled defense of individual rights into a concrete policy, and channel it to make particular headway among ethnic minority voting blocks.

Unfortunately, current Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, who succeeded Christie, slammed the brakes on the Charter School Movement despite the fact that huge unfilled demand for charter seats among big city parents remains unfilled. Tom Moran recently observed,** 

Charter schools educate more than 1 in 3 students in Newark today, and still there aren’t nearly enough seats to meet the demand.

That demand is robust for good reason: The charters are producing much better results, giving their kids a clean shot at college. Black students in the charters, and poor students, are roughly twice as likely to show proficiency in math and English as their counterparts in the district schools.

Newark’s charters, rated as among the best in the nation, have closed the racial performance gap on test scores, with their overwhelmingly Black student bodies matching the statewide average in reading and math. That’s a revolutionary success story.

Thanks to Murphy’s cynical “political games”—he’s a teachers union hack, after all—his refusal to approve most new charter school applications are shredding the aspirations of parents to get their children better educational opportunities and threatening this revolutionary success. Worse, many kids already in charters will be forced back into traditional public schools because their charters can’t get state approval to expand into the higher grade levels, leaving parents and children frightened and outraged. Tom Moran of the NJ Star-Ledger blasted the Democratic Murphy Administration in two high profile columns (here and here). Many other parents’ voices are speaking up (here and here).

Murphy, along with his Democratic Party (though not all Democrats), are clearly on the wrong side of this issue, siding with the reactionary defenders of the traditional public school monopoly—including the teachers union—over the education of children and the interests and free choice of parents and taxpayers. 

Education tax dollars are allotted to schools based on enrollment. But we must remember that education tax dollars, as the great Thomas Sowell has correctly observed, are intended for “the education of children.” They are not intended “to provide iron-clad jobs for teachers, billions of dollars in union dues for teachers unions, monopolies for education bureaucracies, a guaranteed market for teachers college degrees or a captive audience for indoctrinators.” [Page 130, sic] Republicans clearly have an opening among ethnic minority voters by advocating for the individual rights of parents to choose public charter schools, and school choice more broadly, for their kids, via giving parental control over education tax dollars allotted on behalf of each student. 

* [Charters draw students from lotteries of students whose parents chose to apply them. No charter student is assigned by the education authorities.]

** [Murphy’s political games threaten charter success in Newark | Moran, Star-Ledger Editorial Board, Updated: Feb. 06, 2022, 5:30 p.m.|Published: Feb. 06, 2022, 7:15 a.m.]

Related Reading:

While NJ Gov Attacks Charter Schools, Legislators Focus on ‘Segregation’

The Enemies of Charters Versus the Parents and Their Kids

Chris Christie’s School Choice Achievement.

‘Investing’ of ‘Resources’ In Education Is Up to the Taxpayer

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

As NJ State Closes 3 ‘Failing’ Charters, What About the Parents and the Children?

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Inspiring Climb to Supreme Court Nominee

I’m very concerned with President Biden’s court picks, especially for the U.S. Supreme Court. Biden’s constitutional views are contrary and reactionary, as are the views of the Democratic Party more generally. 

But whatever the Constitutional views of Biden's Supreme Court choice to replace Steven Bryer, Ketanji Brown Jackson’s limb to Supreme Court nominee is worth admiring. In PRESIDENT BIDEN’S SUPREME COURT PICK: “HOW KETANJI BROWN FOUND A PATH BETWEEN CONFRONTATION AND COMPROMISE”, Jack Limpert documents her amazing character and courage.

And an inspiring path it was. Her personal philosophy and career journey are quintessentially American Individualist. To sum up her message as I understand it: "Legalized discrimination died in the 1960s. Racism, robbed of its legal backing, has since been rendered culturally impotent. Now, get on with your life. To all dark-complexioned people, understand: Residual racism is 'random ridiculousness!' It can't stop you from succeeding, unless you let it." To give you a sense of what I mean, here are some lenghthy excerpts from Lambert's column:

 

“My parents set out to teach me that, unlike the many impenetrable barriers that they had had to face, my path was clear,” recalled Jackson, now 51 and a federal appellate court judge in Washington. “If I worked hard and believed in myself, I could do anything or be anything I wanted to be.”

 

“She was always the person trying to find the middle ground,” Simmons said. As other Black students at Harvard took to the streets to confront college officials about issues of race and equality, Jackson counseled moderation. “ ‘They’re not going to listen to us if we’re screaming at them,’ she’d say,” Simmons recalled. “She was always asking, ‘What are the facts we can use to persuade?’ ”

In 1988, in her first year at Harvard, Jackson had to choose a path. The college’s freshmen lived together in dorms surrounding Harvard Yard, and one of Jackson’s classmates hung a Confederate flag from his dorm room window.

As a new student who’d signed up with the Black Students Association, Jackson joined in reactions to this “huge affront,” she said in a 2020 speech at the University of Chicago. “We organized rallies; we passed out fliers; we circulated petitions; we planned sit-ins.”

But Jackson wasn’t all in on leaping into protest mode. “While we were busy doing all of those very noble things, we were not in the library studying,” she noted. “I remember thinking how unfair it was to us.” Black students saw the flying of the flag as an attack, and they were angry about what they saw as a lax response from university officials, but now, as a result of their protests, “we were also missing classes and could not just be regular students … like the rest of our peers,” she said.

And that, Jackson decided, was “exactly what the student who had hung the flag really wanted: For us to be so distracted that we failed our classes and thereby reinforced the stereotype that we couldn’t cut it at a place like Harvard.”

 

In that instance and numerous others, Jackson felt pulled in two directions — stand up for what’s right, or buckle down and work. Time after time, in almost every chapter of her life, according to interviews with more than 15 of her friends and colleagues and a review of more than 2,000 pages of her speeches and writings, Jackson refused to be distracted. She would press for her ideals, but she would pick her battles — and choose tactics designed more to persuade others than to announce her opposition.

“I just want to be clear about how I envision thick skin,” Jackson told a Black student group at the University of Chicago in 2020. “I am not asking you to put on blinders. … As a professional of color, there will inevitably be times when you will feel singled out, challenged, questioned, undervalued, and misinterpreted, and you will very much want to call out or cancel people who say and do discriminatory things. … But doing so takes time and effort, and if we are going to get to where we belong … we can’t keep stopping and fretting over random ridiculousness!”

“Random ridiculousness!” This says something profound about today’s American reality. Condoleezza Rice calls it "Somebody else's problem." John McWhorter calls it "Occasional inconvenience" [p. 218]. Racism is dead as a cultural and political force in America. Sure it exists, here and there. And when it is encountered, it can be insulting, offensive, and infuriating. But is it a roadblock to personal progress? Jackson’s attitude reminds me of the attitude expressed by a character in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Howard Roark, “The question isn’t who will let me; it’s who is going to stop me?”

Jackson understood the power of activism. She’d heard about it from her parents back in Miami. “For Black Americans in particular, 1970 was a time of hope,” she said in 2020. “The hard work of the previous decade — the marches, the boycotts, the sit-ins, the arrests — had finally borne fruit. … Young Black professionals like my parents were finally on the verge of getting to enjoy the full freedom and equality that is promised to citizens of the United States. Change does happen, and that even the most dire circumstances can be overcome.”

When she ran for class president in high school (she won three times), when she traveled the high school debate circuit and won a rack of prizes, or when she applied to Harvard despite her high school guidance counselor’s suggestion that she set her sights a bit lower, she felt “slings and arrows” of bias, yet decided not to care about “slights and misperceptions and underestimations that came my way. What I do remember is often thinking, ‘Hmm, well, I’ll show them.’ ”

“I’ll show them!” I love that. She has no sympathy for self-imposed victimism.

 

“There were always more-radical people who wanted to push her off the middle,” arguing for more-in-your-face confrontation, Simmons said. But Jackson argued against protests that might alienate the very people she wanted to persuade. And she would not let anyone steer her away from her studies, the roommate said.

“As a dark-skinned black girl who was often the only person of color in my class, club, or social environment, my parents knew that it was essential that I develop a sense of my own self worth that was in no way dependent on what others thought about my abilities,” Jackson said.

 

Another profound truth: ". . . my own self worth that was in no way dependent on what others thought about my abilities.” Her parents were wise people, indeed.

I probably will have deep disagreements with many of Jackson's judicial decisions, given she was chosen by Biden. But if her SCOTUS impact is anywhere close to consistent with her personal philosophy--and that of her parents--she would be a surprisingly powerful voice against Woke Nihilism. As a radical for American Ideals, I'm not expecting miracles. But the Left may be gravely disappointed. The last thing they need is a voice for self-responsibility. Based on her personal philosophy and trust that, in America, positive change can happen through rational argument and persuasion rather than activist disruption or "canceling", she has the makings of a great Supreme Court justice.

We’ll see -- and I’ll keep my fingers crossed. But one thing is for sure. Jackson is a great role model, not just for dark-complexioned young people, but for anyone who imagines "the system" is rigged against them.

Related Reading:

Joe Biden—the Real Protégé of Jefferson Davis

Identity Politics: America’s ‘Pre-Existing Condition’, and the Cure

AMERICA: A RACIST NATION? BY ANDREW BERNSTEIN

Leftist Supremacy, Not White Supremacy, is the Gravest Threat to Black Lives by Andrew Berstein

We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People by Jason D. Hill

The Founding Fathers, Not ‘Diversity,’ is the Solution to ‘Our Racialized Society’

Related Viewing:

John McWhorter: America Has Never Been Less Racist -- Reason interview

Star-Ledger's Double Standard on Student Loan ‘Forgiveness’ and For-Profit Colleges

In Wiping out student loans isn’t progressive, it’s a gift to the affluent, the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial board (SLEB) made some surprisingly good arguments against federal government student loan “forgiveness”, given its Leftist orientation.

True, the SLEB isn’t fully consistent. It makes an exception to its “no loan forgiveness” premise for “people in need”. The lowest earning quarter of Americans, the SLEB observes, holds only 12% of all student debt, so across the board forgiveness would bail out mostly upper middle class borrowers, which it says is unprogressive and unfair. Pushing back against “Progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” who are “are urging President Biden to wipe away all student loan debt,” the SLEB makes a pretty good statement against the Progressive demand, citing the moral hazard involved in such a scheme: 

First, how can we give a broad handout and exclude people who didn’t go to college, those in the most difficult financial circumstances?

Look at it from the perspective of someone who took out loans and just finished paying them off, too. Now the government announces it’s going to pay off all remaining student debt? You’d be livid [That’s for sure!].

And it dishonors the sacrifices of people who worked hard and organized their lives around not taking out huge loans. They may have wanted to go to college but decided against it, precisely because they didn’t want to take on the debt; or worked multiple jobs, lived at home and gone to great lengths not to borrow while in college.

“You’d say, why didn’t I borrow that money? I turned down a gift – but I didn’t know it was going to be a gift,” says Sandy Baum, an expert on higher education at the Urban Institute. Those people would understandably feel ripped off, and Republicans would have a field day with that.

Consider, too, that if we broadly wiped away student debt, the people who would get the biggest subsidy are those who took out the largest loans to pay for costly graduate degrees. This, in turn, helps them earn higher salaries so they don’t struggle as much to pay off their debt.

If loan forgiveness is so unfair, how is it any less unfair if only “people in need” are bailed out? Such is the contradiction inherent in need-based welfare schemes. Still, it’s nice to read a Leftist voice expound this argument. It’s also nice that the SLEB acknowledges the individual responsibility of those who take out these loans to begin with, rather than simple-mindedly blame “predatory lenders”. That’s progress. 

True, the SLEB doesn’t address the unfairness and violation of individual rights of using taxpayer money to fund (or guarantee) these loans. The SLEB also channels the Egalitarian red herring, saying undiscriminating loan forgiveness is not only “costly” to the taxpayers but an “ineffective way to reduce economic gaps”—as if wealth gaps are actually a problem (government coercion to reduce economic inequality is actually very unfair).  

Then the SLEB pivots to a favorite whipping boy:

A blanket loan forgiveness program is not sensible, but targeted action would be. He could start with victims of sleazy for-profit schools that exploit the poor and deliver useless degrees after taking out federal loans – they shouldn’t have to spend their whole lives in debt. Neither should low-income parents who borrowed beyond their means to give their kids a better head start.

What about the vastly greatest number of victims of sleazy non-profit or public schools and colleges? The so-called student loan crisis is across the board. Why pick on a tiny subset of higher education, the for-profit or career college sector? If some are guilty of misleading students and their families, they’re not alone. Why single them out? Because the Left hates private education.

The SLEB dilutes its own point by swinging to anti-for-profit propaganda. Nonetheless, it’s right in principle, if not consistency, to note the basic unfairness of federal student loan forgiveness. 

Related Reading:

Is 'I didn't get it, so others shouldn't either" a Valid Argument Against 'Free' College]

Student Loans Should Be Repaid

On "Nightmare" College Debt

Hillary Picks Up Obama’s Attack on For-Profit Colleges

Congress Should Abolish Obama’s Discriminatory “Gainful Employment” Regulations Against For-Profit Colleges

Stamato's For-Profit College Hatchet Job

Some Relief, and Fairness, to For-Profit Colleges, Thanks to DeVos

Equality and the American Dream by C. Bradley Thompson

The Enemies of Charters Versus the Parents and Their Kids

My last post focussed on New Jersey Governor Murphy’s war against charter schools, the devastation it’s doing to families, and the push back from charters’ defenders, led by New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial page editor Tom Moran. Today, I’ll focus on some of the arguments against charters.

 

I’ll start with Moran. An unabashed defender of the charters, Moran addresses some of the objections. 

 

But there are legitimate and substantive concerns as well. The charters in Newark have smaller numbers of special education students, and English language learners, key factors cited by Newark Superintendent Roger Leòn.

[I]n his recommended rejection of North Star’s expansion. He and other charter opponents also say that diverting money to the charter schools deprives the district schools of needed funds.

Being publicly funded schools, charters’ academic diversity are naturally going to come under scrutiny. But since charter seats are filled by lottery, and applications are submitted voluntarily by parents, the academic mix is dependent on the voluntary choices of parents and the “luck of the draw.” If parents of special ed and English language learners (kids with limited English-speaking skills) are less likely to apply their kids to charters, or given that lotteries are games of chance, so be it. What’s the problem? *

The second “problem,” that charters divert money from district schools, is a red herring. If a parent pulls her kid from the district school, every dime of that child’s allotted education tax dollars should go to the charter school that is educating the child. The public school monopoly is arrogant and unjust in effectively asserting first claim on those dollars. The traditional public school monopoly has no more claim on the charter child’s education tax dollars than Stop-&-Shop has on my grocery dollars if I choose ShopRite. Let the traditional system do what every other business does when it loses business to a competitor—learn to deal with it. **

Now, let’s move to two New Jersey Star-Ledger letters, Charter schools remove the best from public schools by Carl Della Peruti and Make charter schools prove they’re better by Stan Gurski. Both provide samplings of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the anti-charter school forces. 

Della Peruti asserts:

[W]hat makes a good school? Good students. Charter schools take the best students and the best peers out of the public schools.

Likewise, “Charter schools,” Gurski asserts, do 

a better job [by] skimming the students who already achieve in the public schools and have supportive parents. [They] just take successful students from public schools and give them the chance to perform just as well in a new location.

[emphasis added]

First, charters don’t “take” anyone. The schools are chosen by the parents. And why do parents choose charters? Because they believe their children cannot do well, or aren’t doing well, in their district schools (and I believe the parents, who actually know their children).

The second point is the most telling. Good students don’t make good schools. Good schools are necessary to allow students to become good and to succeed. The parents know that charters provide that better learning environment. That’s why they flock to them. Charter schools aren’t good because they “take” or “skim” the best students. Students do good, or better than before, because the charters are good, or at least better, schools. 

But note the implicit assumption both make. Note that both Gurski and Peruti acknowledge that the charters are not only good, but better than the traditional district schools. Well, isn’t that the point of charters (and school choice more broadly)—to open up more and/or better opportunities and options for kids who want to learn and parents who are “supportive”—who care? If kids are performing better in charters than in the traditional public schools, isn’t that a reason to laud, not condemn, charters? Isn’t that a reason to accelerate the expansion of existing charters, and the openings of new ones, to meet parental demand? Why would anyone want to restrict charter schools because they’re good? And even assuming the argument that charters “skim off the best students,” so what? By the charters’ enemies own admission, these schools are getting good results. On what basis can anyone justify the premise that the traditional public schools have an automatic first claim on these kids and the related tax dollars? That’s the raving of a monopolist.  

Yet, they oppose, rather than support, charter schools! 

Why? 

The only answer is ugly. What we are seeing is a moral inversion of the worst kind. The enemies of charters oppose good performing charters, for being good; they want to penalize the good students, for being good; they want to deny supportive parents, because they care. This is the depth to which charter opponents will sink to protect the traditional public school monopoly. They sink to hatred of the good, for being the good.

Peruti concludes

For decades now, charter schools have been bleeding the American public school system, once the envy of the world.

Note the hatred directed at the parents who choose charters. Do they get credit for seeking the best education they can find and afford for their children? No. They are blood-sucking destroyers of America’s great public schools. Note the utter, cold disdain for the parents, who have to deal first hand, through their children, with the failures of the public schools. 

Charters are the reason the public school system is failing, they claim! It couldn’t be the failing Progressive Education philosophy. It couldn’t be the mediocrity that lack of competition inevitably fosters. It couldn’t be that charters’ success is a direct result of public school failures, rather than the other way around. No. Charters are destroyers—for offering better educational opportunities to desperate parents.

Consider Jasmine Morrison, one of a coalition of parents fighting for their right to direct the course of their own childrens’ education. *** Morrison authored an op-ed published in the Star-Ledger titled If parents want charter schools, they should be able to have charter schools. In a passionate plea, Morrison condemns the

outsiders [who] are attempting to deny Newark parents our right of self-determination — a case in the New Jersey Supreme Court that would block the expansion of seven desperately-needed, high performing public charter schools. This case — brought by the Education Law Center (ELC) — may have a much lower profile than the election but the impact on Newark’s children could be profound. That’s why a group of parents (myself included) have launched a coalition we call Unapologetic Parents to tell the law center that we’re not going to apologize for choosing the schools that are best for our children.

Peruti and Gurski are from the upscale NJ communities of Morristown and Clark, respectively. Peruti disingenuously blusters, “If charter schools have some magical formula for success, why not just duplicate it for all public schools?” But this is exactly why parents choose charters—because public schools don’t, and haven’t for decades. How many generations of kids have to be ruined waiting for traditional public schools to discover the “magic formula”? These two blowhards are precisely the outsiders that want to condemn city children like Morrison’s to perpetually failing schools. Does Peruti really believe that these parents, and the many many others across New Jersey and across the nation, are pulling their kids out of good public schools for the sole purpose of “bleeding” the envy of the world?

And NJ Governor Phil Murphy is one of the reactionary deniers. How is it fair to tell parents like Jasmine Morrison, and many others, that they have no right in “choosing the schools that are best for our children?” As Morrison passionately argued recently in her latest Star-Ledger guest column,

[T]he cynicism directed at charters that outperform public schools in their own districts is morally senseless for charters parents whose kids might not have had the chance to academically shine with the right support systems. 

[Murphy’s] present moratorium on charter growth in New Jersey is frightening for families that need charter flexibility to implement standards that work and who are desperate to get their child out of a failing school.

The American public school system is failing; at differing rates, in different places, albeit with exceptions here and there. That’s why it is "bleeding" customers—and that’s as it should be. That’s why school choice is gaining. That’s how free markets, even hampered free markets, work. It’s called justice. It’s time to defund the public school monopoly—not in the unthinking way police departments were defunded, without plan, alternatives, or consideration for consequences—but defunded systematically through school choice, parent by parent, as and when alternative options become available, by funding the student rather than the school district.

The arguments against charter schools disintegrate in the face of the facts and in the face of moral certitude. Their collectivist, egalitarian, disingenuous, reactionary nonsense is hogwash across the board. Charters’ enemies, and school choice opponents generally, offer nothing more than reactionary rationalizations in defense of the public school monopoly and its criminal monopoly offshoot, the teachers union. In the end, all the enemies of charter schools can muster is hatred of the good for being the good.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* [Of course, in a fully free market that features the complete separation of education and state, all schools would be private and free to accept students according to their own criteria. Some may focus on special ed. Some may focus on the gifted. Some may offer a broad array of services, accepting all.]

** [Contrary to the idiotic claims of the public school hacks, education is a business. Like all monopolists, the public school establishment seeks to protect their illegitimate power from competition. So they proclaim that education is not a business. Sure it is, and it should have to face the challenges and earn its customers and their cash like any business does. If you want maximum educational quality, recognize and treat education for the business it is.

*** [Morrison’s activist campaign is called Unapologetic Parents. Here is their Facebook page.]

Related Reading:

Gov. Murphy needs to support school choice for the sake of families and children By Jasmine Morrison, guest columnist for the NJ Star-Ledger

‘Investing’ of ‘Resources’ In Education Is Up to the Taxpayer

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

As NJ State Closes 3 ‘Failing’ Charters, What About the Parents and the Children?

NJ Mom Should Demand More Educational Freedom for Herself, Not Cut Down Others’ Freedom

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 1

Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 2

Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 3

While NJ Gov Attacks Charter Schools, Legislators Focus on ‘Segregation’

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is a well-known bedmate of the New Jersey teachers unions, misnamed the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA). By extension, he is an enemy of charter schools. Murphy’s predecessor, Chris Christie, initiated a major charter school program that brought new opportunities to NJ parents, especially in big cities like Newark and Camden. 

And parents responded in droves. In Newark, the charter school sector went from near zero of school age children to almost 40%. There was still plenty of unmet demand for charter school seats. Murphy has spent his 4 years in office undermining that progress.

And then Murphy stepped in, spending his 4 years in office undermining that progress. That was the subject of Tom Moran’s 2/6/22 New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial Murphy’s political games threaten charter success in Newark He wrote:

Charter schools educate more than 1 in 3 students in Newark today, and still there aren’t nearly enough seats to meet the demand.

That demand is robust for good reason: The charters are producing much better results, giving their kids a clean shot at college.

And yet, Gov. Phil Murphy has blocked several requests to expand charters recently, not just in Newark, but in Trenton, New Brunswick and other districts. Over his first four years, Murphy denied nearly two-thirds of the requested expansions and granted just one new license.

Now, charter supporters fear a slow strangulation. Two of the recent rejections banned charters from expanding into high school, which can force charter families to return to district schools when their kids reach 9th grade.

Just three days later, New Jersey blocks expansion of three Newark charter schools, continuing slowdown of charter growth

As Moran explains, charter expansion is vital to the continued educational process. As children advance through the grades, charters need to expand to open up the next levels. For example, “Two of the recent rejections,” Moran writes, “banned charters from expanding into high school, which can force charter families to return to district schools when their kids reach 9th grade.” But Murphy’s Department of Education (DOE) callously throws up a wall, disrupting the childrens’ educational progress, slapping their parents across the face, and devastating the hopes of the families still aspiring to get their kids into charter schools.

And there are plenty of families aspiring to get their children out of the traditional public schools, and into charters. On Feb. 14, Moran fired back with As he sabotages charter schools, phony Murphy asks: “What, me?”.

Every morning, Rakeemah Jordan’s two 8th-grade boys put on their uniforms and head out to a nearby charter school they love, Phillips Academy, where they get plenty of attention in classes that average about 15 students, and eat vegetables at lunch grown in a school garden.

“It’s a great school and my boys are doing really well,” Jordan says. “So, this is just heartbreaking to us. We’re really in a bind now.”

In Trenton, another mom, Danielle Burgess, told NJ Spotlight News she was in the same bind, mystified by the decision to block a planned expansion at Achievers Early College Prep into 10th grade, leaving her 9th grader stranded.

Murphy doesn’t give a damn—about them, or the parents still waiting:

In Murphy’s four years [as governor], charters schools have sought permission to add 16,000 seats. Murphy has granted just 6,000, according to the Department of Education. So, Jordan and Burgess have plenty of company. 

Charter schools operate on a strictly voluntary basis. Charter school growth is wholly driven by parental demand. If those rejected 10,000 seats were approved, they would not be filled unless parents chose to fill them. So as these 10,000 and untold thousands more parents seek a better education for their children, there is Murphy, standing in the charter schoolhouse door, blocking them.

In the middle of this putrid scene, this article, Amid court battle, N.J. lawmakers consider a different way to pursue school integration, was published on February 8th.

What’s more important, education or the skin complexion of the kid sitting next to the student? To the parents, “It’s the education, stupid.” So why is the legislature focussed on non-essentials like skin color percentages in the schools. Oh, well, that’s “diversity”.

To be fair, there is some pushback against Murphy in the legislature, by some in his own Democratic Party. As Moran writes:

The best hope for charters may be a rescue from the Legislature, where Sen. Vin Gopal, D-Monmouth, just took over as chairman of the education committee. He plans to hold hearings this year to draft legislation protecting schools like North Star.

But, come on, why are legislators so focussed on a non-problem? If they’re so concerned with children of darker complexion, shouldn’t education take precedence over the color-based distribution of kids in the schools? After all, America’s failing schools disproportionately affect dark- complexioned kids.

Related Reading:

Chris Christie’s School Choice Achievement.

‘Investing’ of ‘Resources’ In Education Is Up to the Taxpayer

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Dividing Parents Over Charters and Traditional Government Schools