Orange is the new cap

Because using the hed “Orange is the new black” wouldn’t have actually been a play on words. ...

New York City Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Queens), chair of the Education committee, donned an orange T-shirt today to dramatize the differences in rules, regulations and requirements between public schools and charter schools.

The tee was meant to resemble the orange shirt students are required to wear as punishment when they break the rules at Coney Island Prep Charter School. The school’s alternate uniform is, of course, reminiscent of the standard issue at another famous New York Island:Rikers.

Images of kids in dunce caps is, at this point, mostly considered a quaint relic of a less-enlightened age — but that disciplinary headdress was tied specifically to failures in an educational setting. (Indeed, the etymology of the word “dunce” ties it directly to clinging to old or uninformed ideas.) The sight, however, of a kid at Coney Island Prep (whose student body is over 70 percent black or Hispanic, according the NYC Department of Education [PDF]) in what is, in no uncertain terms, meant to imply a prison uniform, not only raises questions about pedagogical value, but cultural bias, as well.

But maybe the founders of this charter school have some new study that proves the merit of their “unconventional” ways?

If so, those findings were not in evidence Tuesday … because no one from Coney Island Prep showed for the City Council hearing. In fact,no one from any prominent New York City charter school was in attendance.

It was not that they weren’t invited — they were — it was that they all declined to come.

And there’s the rub. NYC charter schools, which take students, resources and space from the city’s public schools, are private institutions. They do not officially answer to the city council, and are not required to attend an oversight hearing of the sort seen Tuesday.

This has implications beyond prison garb for prep schoolers, as the council hearing was meant to highlight — issues such as teacher certification, curriculum standards, class size and school safety all deserve at least a measureable standard, if not official oversight and public scrutiny.

Charter schools and their advocates would no doubt tell you that they are responsive to different metrics — if they are bad schools, so the argument goes, they will eventually fall of their own weight. But how many children will fall with them in the meantime? And are New York parents really OK with trusting school standards to “the invisible hand of the market” over a transparent public organization?

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