Chair of the New York Board of Regents Dr. Betty Rosa and State Education Commissioner Dr. MaryEllen Elia issued a statement strongly opposing the proposal by the State University of New York Charter Committee to lower standards for new charter teachers.
Charter schools complain that they can’t hire enough certified teachers so want lower standards. They also have high rates of teacher turnover.
Rosa and Elia suggest there may be reasons for their inability to recruit and retain qualified teachers. They already have significant exemptions to allow the hiring of uncertified teachers, like TFA, tenured or tenure-track college faculty, and “individuals who possess exceptional business, professional, artistic, athletic, or military experience.”
Please sign a letter to the SUNY trustees in support of qualified teachers for every child.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
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That statement was terrific.
It’s a shame that the SUNY Charter Institute board is highly likely to ignore everything in this letter, as they have always done when the choice is whether to approve something that billionaire supporters of no-excuses NYC charters tell them is the right thing to do. After all, this is the same SUNY Charter Institute that insists that there are an extraordinarily high number of violent 5 year olds winning the lotteries of high-performing charters. This is the same SUNY Charter Institute that insists that at-risk parents don’t like high performing charters as much as they like mediocre ones. I know because they have never once doubted any charter operator who told them both those things are absolutely true. I know because the SUNY Charter Institute rewards the charters who tell them that both those things are absolutely true. SUNY believes lots of violent at-risk 5 year olds who win charter lotteries. And SUNY believes lots of poor parents prefer mediocre charters to high performing ones because they just don’t appreciate good schools. Not because the so-called “good” charters don’t appreciate their kids.
The SUNY Charter Institute is proud to ignore everything the NY Board of Regents tells them because when it comes to a choice between the Regents and a charter operator telling them that lots of non-white children who win their lotteries are very violent at age 5, the SUNY Charter Institute knows whose judgement to trust. And SUNY understands that unless those charters can hire the teachers they can train to recognize the violent nature of the extraordinarily high number of violent children who keep winning charter lotteries, those charters won’t be able to do the good work they are doing in punishing the violence out of the non-white children.
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[…] Sign the petition from the Network for Public Education. Every teacher should be held to the same high standards for certification. Teachers in Charter schools should not work with children when they have less training and less accountability. Sign the petition here. To read more background on this issue, read Diane Ravitch’s post here. […]
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