Editorial: City schools need to adapt to competition from other institutions

THE DEED is done. Amid some of the most well-orchestrated and well-attended protests from parents and activists in recent history, the School Reform Commission last week voted to close down nearly two-dozen schools and consolidate a dozen others.

The next question: What can the SRC and Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. do to prevent more closings in the future? More to the point, what can parents, teachers and public-education advocates do to prevent them?

Before we get to answers, we have to look at the problem. The reality is that in 2013, district schools are losing the competition for students to a variety of other providers, especially charter schools.

The problem is severe in the district's neighborhood high schools, where enrollment has been in decline for more than a decade.

Using district data, Newsworks/Public School Notebook reporter Benjamin Herold did a revealing analysis of where high-school-age students in any given neighborhood go to school. In all but one case (Northeast High), the majority of students go "somewhere else"- a category that includes charters, Catholic schools, "boutique" and other specialized district high schools, and even cyber-charters.

The school drawing the lowest percentage (17 percent) of its neighborhood's high-school-age students is Strawberry Mansion. The majority of the other neighborhood students are enrolled in charters (39 percent) or other district-run schools, most of them specialized (37 percent). The rest (7 percent) are enrolled in other types of schools or are home-schooled via cyber-charters.

These are striking numbers, and they suggest another truth: Despite the volume and the drama of last week's protests, parents have been quietly and silently protesting the district for years . . . by sending their kids elsewhere.

Strawberry Mansion, with only 435 students enrolled, was originally due to be closed. But Hite gave the institution a reprieve. He decided to keep it open but wants to change its mission. It will remain a neighborhood school, but it will also include specialized services, such as becoming a "middle college" where students can earn college credits while also working on their high-school diplomas.

Although it's hard for Hite to be heard above the din over the school closings, the new superintendent has been consistent in his message: This is a new era in education, school choice is here to stay, and to survive, district-run schools must learn how to compete.

And no, we don't mean "compete" in the context of free-market competition, which some lawmakers and politicians insist is a viable path to reform. Education - especially public education - is and must be an institution of democracy, not of free-market forces. The competition that district schools face is one of funding and parental preference, and it can win only by providing a better and safer education than all others.

Words like "competition" and "market forces" and "school choice" were not even part of the vocabulary of public education a few years ago. Educators educated, and that was it. Except for a few niches, public schools enjoyed a virtual monopoly.

Those days are gone. The SRC and Superintendent Hite should be commended for facing the hard truths that too many leaders in the past have ignored.