Influential charter operators in New York have been pressing for exemption from certification requirements for their teachers. This is a truly bad idea. Why should children have unqualified teachers?
Alan Singer writes here about the fight against this effort to lower standards for charter teachers, which is not only bad on its face, but would make these “teachers” unemployable in real public schools.
He writes:
“Politically influential charter school operators in the State of New York are on the verge of pushing through an administrative ruling that eliminates the requirement that children attending their schools be taught by certified teachers. This is happening at the same time that support for charter schools across the nation is in steep decline, probably because of Donald Trump’s endorsement of charter schools and private-school vouchers. According to a recent public opinion poll the growing opposition to charter schools is bipartisan. Support among Republicans declined by 13%. Democratic support for charter schools dropped by 11%.
“The Network for Public Education and New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) are organizing parents, teachers, and the public to flood the SUNY Trustees and the SUNY Charter Schools Institute with protests against the certification waiver proposal. Their opposition to the waiver is supported by the Deans of Schools of Education at eighteen colleges in the State University of New York system.
“Comments can be submitted online or mailed to Charter Schools Institute, State University of New York, 41 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 by September 10. You can also sign the NYSUT email letter. More information is available at the United University Professionals website.
“The Charter School teacher “decertification plan” is under review by political appointees on a sub-committee of the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York (SUNY). The SUNY Charter Schools Institute is interpreting its authority to ensure the “Governance, structure and operations of SUNY authorized charter schools” as authorization to eliminate teacher certification requirements. It calls the proposal alternative certification, but it allows charters to declare anyone they want to be a teacher. In a series of Huffington Posts I explained why this decertification proposal is a threat to public education and the political forces and financial donors behind the charter school plan. In this post I examine whether the people hired under this waiver are qualified to teach children.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That’s an interesting way to look at it- anti-competitive as to to ability of teachers to move from a charter school to a public school.
If they’re exclusively qualified to teach in charter schools then they can’t move from charter to public, perhaps reducing charter turnover.
It could also operate to limit upward pressure on wages and working conditions of charter teachers by creating a pool of employees who MUST stay in the charter system if they want to teach. In that way it’s anti-competitive as to teachers moving between the 2 systems. If public school teachers have better wages or working conditions but charter teachers can’t access that, that would reduce the need for charters to raise wages to compete with public schools.
If you’re trained at a Success Academy you’ll have to stay at a Success Academy. The credentials won’t transfer to public schools.
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If these watered down credentials become accepted, the next step will to try to move them into public schools and a total deprofessionalization of teaching. This proposal is an assault on the profession. Each insult accepted continues to lower the bar for the profession.
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This is not just a New York issue.The decertification and no special experience needed effort is also forwarded by the “learning management systems” pushed onto districts by the tech industry aided and abetted by the non-profits set up by tech moguls who have profits in mind for their corporations.
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moving so very quickly state to state, district to district
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This is why one should never, ever accept that charters are “nonprofit” without looking at the operators:
“The close relationship between St. Aloysius Orphanage and Charter School Specialists, the for-profit company it pays to oversee charter schools on its behalf, has raised conflict of interest concerns for Cleveland city leaders.
The Cleveland Transformation Alliance , Mayor Frank Jackson’s school quality panel, has questioned how the two can portray themselves as essentially a single organization when it suits them, but stand as separate legal entities when it is to their advantage.”
Cleveland charters share in locally levied taxes. They were supposed to be nonprofits. But all the sponsors do is create 2 contracts- the “sponsor” contract and then a contract with the entity who actually run the schools- a for-profit.
People in Cleveland were misled. These are NOT nonprofits. The for-profit is getting 80% of the fees:
“Charter School Specialists, they said, receives about 80 percent of the $2.5 million a year St. Aloysius receives in fees from schools to sponsor them.”
https://articles.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/09/a_conflict_of_interest_for_charter_school_sponsor_st_aloysius_cleveland_panel_raises_questions.amp
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Once these deformers ram a charter through, many politicians turn a blind eye to any form of regulation or accountability. This lack of oversight is responsible for lots of waste, fraud and crooked leasing deals.
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Let’s send Congress to a SNAKE OIL doctor.
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DeVos slime of the day: http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2017/09/devos-slime-of-day.html
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There are plenty of other initiatives in public Ed that try to circumvent the process of certification. One political group sees it as a way to,save tax money. Another sees it as a way to take power from education departments, which they see as too far left, and both find support from cash-strapped students or young people,trying to perform a career change at age 30 or so. Many of these programs involve crash courses and time intensive groups. There are various designs.
All these ideas seem to spring from the belief that good teaching is a gift, and that all those education courses are for the birds. The philosophy is simple: find a smart kid, give him a good BA or BS and see if he/she makes it in the shark pool. Granted, all education courses are not created equal, but I would argue that we should be putting greater, not fewer resources, into teacher training. How that looks to the issue of certification is another matter.
I would like to see far more time given young teachers to plan for classes. It is beyond preposterous that we think an hour a day is sufficient for all the needed organization of teaching. This is true for all teachers, but even more so for young teachers. This is particularly clear to me, because I was asked to teach World History after almost three decades of math teaching. I am delighted to do that, but it is very intense to get started teaching a class. Young teachers are not only required by their profession to organize the learning of students, but they are also charged with deepening the understanding of their topics in ways they might never have encountered in college.
Young teachers should remain in relationship,with the university long after they are hired. Programs should be designed whereby university professors actually involve themselves in the learning process at schools in tandem with the young teachers. These teachers should actually continue to be involved in university classes that are content-oriented as well as technique-oriented several years after they earn their undergraduate degree.
This will never happen, of course, because the political leadership we have does not want education to have enough air to breathe. But it would be better.
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Ever since Pedro Noguera resigned in early 2012, the SUNY Charter Institute has always done exactly what the most powerful charter chain wanted. I’m sure the fact that the same billionaires who donate many millions to the charter chain, sit on the board, AND donate to Gov. Cuomo, who appointed those SUNY trustees has nothing to do with it. They just believe that anything that the richest charter chain wants is – coincidentally – always right.
It is certainly important for the public to write to them, but the likelihood of the SUNY Charter Institute not approving something that Eva Moskowitz and the billionaires who support her want is about as likely as the Republican Congress stopping Donald Trump from doing whatever he wants. It could happen but I won’t hold my breath and it will only happen if they are shamed into not doing what they desperately want to do because it pleases the people with money.
I could list the number of times that SUNY has acted in questionable ways for the benefit specifically of Success Academy. They include granting early renewals of their charters — sometimes years early, allowing them to change their charter to DROP lottery priority for that at-risk students that charters are mandated to serve, allowing them to change locations at will — specifically when they decided that as long as a charter was anywhere in the same BOROUGH as the original request, it’s fine! If Success Academy wants to request a charter in the poorest district of Brooklyn and move it to one of the richest districts, and give priority ONLY to the students who live in that affluent district, that’s fine with SUNY. SUNY says as long as it is in the same borough, they don’t care.
I could go on, but you only have to watch one of their typical meetings to understand how little oversight is done by SUNY.
https://livestream.com/hvccstreaming/OctCharter/videos/64314064
This meeting is from October 2014.
At 27.58 Joseph Belluck says “there was a little concern raised” (only because a group of public parents got some press coverage of the empty seats at some Success Academy charters). Belluck immediately parrots back Success Academy’s truly ridiculous defense: “my understanding is that that was largely due to factors beyond the network’s control….they were unable to get parents!……” See, Success Academy explained why and their “oversight” is done! This is the way that SUNY addresses all complaints. They check with Success Academy, they offer a cockamamie excuse like “we have lots and lots of violent 5 year olds who win our lottery” and Joseph Belluck says oversight is complete!
At 30:25 you’ll hear them convincing themselves that it’s fine to change a location as long as it is in the same borough! After all, to SUNY whether a charter locates in a place where they will serve mostly affluent students or mostly poor students is a “non-material revision”! They approved this change on video, published it, and a day later had to change it back to the original district because a reporter actually asked a question (a very rare occurrence). When Pedro Noguera resigned in 2014 (2 years previous to this), SUNY approved changing a charter in District 13 to District 15 because Mayor Bloomberg offered them space in one of the richest neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
Nothing will change until the entire SUNY Charter Institute board and staff is replaced.
And if you need ANY evidence that the NAACP was correct in calling for a moratorium, you only have to listen to what Joseph Belluck says at 42:51 in the video where he talks about how PROUD he is that the SUNY Charter Institute is the MODEL for charter authorizers across the country! This is the very most oversight that we can ever expect from charters. We just watched it on video. It goes something like this: “we asked Eva Moskowitz why and she explained so we are done and how many uncertified teachers does she need because we want to make sure she gets all of them.”
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^^I had a typo: Pedro Noguera resigned in 2012 (I had it right the first time, but incorrectly wrote 2014 later).
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