Steve Nelson recently retired as headmaster of the Calhoun School, a progressive independent school in Manhattan. He joined the board of the Network for Public Education, to lend his aid to our fight for better public education for all.

Today, he read an article in the New York Times by a charter school teacher, arguing that charter teachers need not be certified. His argument boils down to this: charter teachers do not need certification like public school teachers. Charter teachers are “gtreat” just because they are.

This is Steve Nelson’s response:

“The New York Times is at it again. Today they printed an Op-Ed by Willy Gould, a teacher at Democracy Prep in NYC.

“Willy waxes whiny about having to go through NYS certification, a process he found a great burden. His piece, as you might expect, ultimately argued for charter self-certification. Willy is hardly an innocent victim of bureaucracy. I suspect he is a very willing propagandist, in that his life partner is a director of recruitment for Teach for America.

“Perhaps the NYS certification process is arcane, but charters self-certifying teachers is like having drunk Uncle Fred certify himself as a heart surgeon.

“The “training” provided in most charter schools, most particularly places like Democracy Prep, prepares “teachers” to do unconscionable things to children. They “teach” by call and response. Their disciplinary practices are abusive. I have written about this at length in my book and have documentation directly from a former Democracy Prep teacher, whose heart was broken by their policies and practices.

“Look to Success Academies for another example. I’ve visited and found the pedagogy rote and formulaic. They too use canned gestures and phrases. They too abuse children, as has been well exposed. They are training children, not educating them.

“These charters want to “self-certify” so that they can drill their teachers in these methods, which constitute educational malpractice. They also believe that 2 ½ weeks of training ought to be sufficient, given the rote practices and manuals involved in this kind of teaching. I would be remiss if I failed to note that these young teachers are cheap and easily replaceable, just like all the other cogs in the charter machine: Industrial education with a 21st century technological patina.

“They are hell-bent on the destruction of public education and the creation of an unaccountable patchwork of militaristic training academies, many run for excessive profit.

“I wish the Times would expose this threat to our democratic republic, rather than print propaganda like this.”