Good day, CharterFolk.
Longtime CharterFolk readers will recall that I have often compared housing NIMBYists with education NIMBYists.
For years, both forces have stood in the way of progress.
They’ve blocked our nation’s ability to build — to build the affordable homes our people need to live in, and the excellent schools our kids need to learn in.
Now, at long last, we are beginning to make headway on the housing front.
But in public education, the barriers to building remain firmly in place.
When the Biden Administration first proposed its revised CSP regulations in 2022, I highlighted how the law was designed to give the purveyors of education scarcity the same legal hooks that the architects of housing scarcity use to block new things from happening.
The prototype for NIMBYist protection that I cited was California’s CEQA law.
So it is with a mild sense of relief that I saw that California has finally begun to rein it back in.
Apparently, California’s housing crisis has become just too severe. And its governor is just too intent on repositioning himself to the center in preparation for an upcoming run for president.
In the end though, it took courage, and he got it through. And he deserves credit for it.
As does Ezra Klein who specifically called out the inanity of CEQA in his recent book.
Recent guests on his podcast are showering him with praise for having helped change the discussion within the Democratic Party such that positive policy change has occurred.
None of which I dispute.
But I stand by my assertion that Klein and co-author Derek Thompson’s refusal to include education scarcity in the scope of their book represents a fundamental dereliction of duty.
It leaves the dysfunctional national conversation about education policy inside the Democratic Party essentially intact. And it ensures that the pain caused by education scarcity continues to be widely felt.
California still offers a clear example. A bill is advancing that would do massive damage to charter schools.
But no place reveals the problem more starkly than New York City, where the presumed next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has made his education stance abundantly clear.
Mamdani calls for active opposition to the growth of charter schools.
He does so while making the most egregiously inaccurate accusations against schools that are working, and that families are clamoring to get into.
When asked for his position, this is what he says:
I oppose efforts by the state to mandate an expansion of charter school operations in New York City. I also oppose the co-locating of charter schools inside DOE school buildings, but for those already co-located my administration would undertake a comprehensive review of charter school funding to address the unevenness of our system.
We’ve seen this before. CEQA-style tactics, dressed up as progressive reform, used to stop the construction of something better.
It has become the default education platform of the national Democratic Party.
And it is causing high-performing charter school organizations like Success Academies to move to Florida.
Unlike New York, where the mayor-in-waiting talks about evicting charter schools from public buildings, Florida is promising to provide them with space to grow.
Success Academies aren’t the only New Yorkers moving to Florida.
The new school choice tax credit program within OBBB will only accelerate the trend.
Originally pitched as a national tax subsidy to help families access private school alternatives, the final version includes a last-second amendment:
States must opt in.
And blue states almost certainly won’t.
Which means the only New Yorkers who’ll be able to benefit are those who move to red states like Florida and Texas.
And that, in turn, will further fuel blue-to-red migration.
Not just because families are seeking lower housing costs.
But because they are fleeing states that block their children from accessing better schools.
In the end, people will go where opportunity is allowed to grow.
That includes the opportunity to learn.
And maybe, just maybe, when the consequences become too obvious to ignore, even the most committed defenders of the status quo will be forced to confront what Abundance so conspicuously ignored.
That the greatest scarcity of all is not housing.
It is educational opportunity.
CharterFolk, the time has come to build.