The charter committee of the State University of New York will decide whether to lower standards for charter teachers. They would be ineligible to teach in public schools because of their inferior credentials. Ironically, setting a lower standard for them is a slap in the face to the SUNY campuses, where fully qualified teachers are prepared.
This email was sent out by The chief of staff for NYC Assemblymenber Deborah Glick:
Standing Up for Teachers
The SUNY Charter School Institute is one of two agencies in New York State that grants and oversees charters at schools. Earlier this summer, the Institute proposed a change to regulations that would allow charter schools to self-certify teachers. It is shocking that a proposal has been presented to the Trustees from within SUNY to abrogate the high standards for some seeking to be teachers. These changes in regulations would undermine the teaching profession throughout New York State. All New York Students deserve a highly qualified and fully certified teacher.
Imagine that we were presented with a complaint that a health care network couldn’t find enough licensed doctors to hire for their urgent care centers. Its solution is to request authority to establish its own training program, which provides substantially less instruction time and dispenses with all the qualifying exams. This is the medical equivalent of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute proposal. It is deleterious, deeply flawed, and unacceptable.
I have been informed that the full SUNY Board of Trustees does not plan to vote on this item, but rather will defer to a vote by only the Charter School Committee. It is my understanding that the committee intends on hearing this item at their October meeting. The public notice and agenda have not yet been posted, but the meeting will be on October 11th, at SUNY Global Center, 116 East 55th Street. Meetings are generally in the morning. You can check on the SUNY Board of Trustees website for announcements, or contact my office next week. Please plan to attend to make it clear to the committee that all children deserve a fully and properly certified teacher. There will not be an opportunity for public speaking.
I have spoken out against this proposal since it was announced. I submitted comments to the SUNY Charter Institute and also wrote letters to each of the members of the Board of Trustees. Additionally, I discussed this issue on Capitol Pressroom with Susan Arbetter, which you can listen to herr.
http://www.wcny.org/september-21-2017-asm-deborah-glick/
Let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Sarah
Sarah M Sanchala
Chief of Staff
Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick
853 Broadway, Suite 2007
New York, NY 10003
phone: 212-674-5153
fax: 212-674-5530
sanchalas@assembly.state.ny.us
Oh, Diane! I love a good Freudian typo! “Ineligible to treachery in public schools.”
Ever wonder what goes on in a closed-to-the-public meeting of the SUNY Board of Trustees — the group that authorizes NYC charter schools such as Eva Moskowitz Success Academy Charter Schools?
Well, hey, now’s your chance!
Somebody secretly videotaped a meeting of the SUNY Board of Trustees meeting — a meeting where the controversial measure to allow uncertified teachers to work in SUNY-authorized charters was discussed.
It’s now on YouTube.
Included in this meeting was a community leader not happy with the proposed new regulations — one Maria Bautista.
This is truly explosive stuff, and should be posted on your blog ASAP, and please feel free to use the TRANSCRIPT I just made.
SUNY Board Chairman Joseph Belluck claims that he is livid at the tweets and overall “smear campaign” that has been portraying him as “racist.”
In response to this, Afro-Puerto Rican activist Maria Bautista of the Alliance for Quality Education is not buying Belluck’s attempt to fabricate victimhood for himself. She then proceeds to unload on Belluck, saying that his new policy is most certainly “racist” in its effect, if not intent.
Would you want YOUR OWN kids taught by these uncertified teachers? Bautista asks him, and this sets Belluck off. Unfortunately, this is when the video cuts out.
Enjoy!
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
TRANSCRIPT
( 0:13 – )
( 0:13 – )
MARIA BAUTISTA: “Well, I just want to clarify that this ISN’T a smear campaign against you. Right?”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Okay.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: *“That this has EVERYTHING to do with black and brown children – ”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Right.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” – and THEIR access to high quality education, and second of all, if the teachers’ union wanted to be here and talk for themselves, they WOULD be.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Okay.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “So I’m here to talk about the Alliance for Quality Education.”*
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Well, I’ll just, I’ll just* … *I’ll just say to you that, when I look at my phone, and someone tweets the following:
” ‘ @JoeBelluck is willing to allow this RACIST policy to persist.’”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “That’s RIGHT!”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “I take – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “Cause you ARE!”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “I take umbrage at it.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “‘Cause you ARE!”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Okay?”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” ‘YOU”RE the Chair – ”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “I take umbrage at it.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” ‘YOU”RE the Chair, and you’re allowing it to proceed – ”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Well -”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” – so that’s NOT a smear campaign.
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Well -”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ”It’s ACTUALLY WHAT’S HAPPENING, and whether or not you feel defensive about that – ”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “I’m NOT defensive about it.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” – but this is YOUR responsibility.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “I’m NOT defensive about it.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “Exactly. You ARE defensive about it. You’re saying that this is a SMEAR campaign, and it’s NOT. We’re calling … we’re calling the cards for what they ARE.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “What I’m suggesting to you is that – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “THIS is the card that YOU are ALLOWING to move forward — THIS idea …THESE regulations for people to give comments on, when we know that they (classes taught by uncertified teachers) are going disproportionately impact black and brown children.
“You would NEVER have uncertified teachers teach YOUR children, so WHY is it okay for black and brown children? Why is THAT okay?”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “Okay – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “It is NOT okay!”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “What I’m suggest – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “That is the point.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: “What I’m saying to you – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “This is NOT a smear campaign.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: ” “What I’m suggesting to you is that the things that are going to MOVE this committee to ACT are going to be the SUBSTANCE of the regulations, and WHETHER OR NOT they are the BEST for educating the kids who are in our schools.”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “Would you want THIS for YOUR children? No.”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: (angry) “I’m not going to speak to you about MY children -”
MARIA BAUTISTA: “I would love that -”
JOSEPH BELLUCK: ” – because frankly .. because frankly – ”
MARIA BAUTISTA: ” – because what you would want for YOUR children is what you should want for EVERY child in this city.”
MALE SUNY BOARD MEMBER: “Alright. Can I just – ?)
x x x x x x x x x x x x
Video CUTS OUT
Thanks, Steve.
Diane and Sarah It’s fox in the chicken-house thinking, again (FITCHT).
My sister lives in Oklahoma and taught there for over 35 years. I haven’t check the evidence yet, but she says they are having a terrible time keeping teachers (probably qualified teachers) and that they are taking anyone who will work for them, including even those WITHOUT a four-year degree.
My guess is that they don’t pay well, and that they want “lockstep” thinkers. This is Tom Coburn territory. Coburn has just written a book charting out how to change the Constitution so that it reflects more “conservative” principles. Now THAT’s really FITCHT writ-large.
*** BREAKING ***
SUNY just released the latest draft of the SUNY proposal on alternative credential. It appears to incorporate a slight revision of the earlier proposal that’s been so controversial.
It will still allow SUCCESS ACADEMY to “certify” its own teachers,
However, proponents on the SUNY board claim that this new draft “beefs up” the requirements that SUCCESS ACADEMY and its teacher training branch will require of its teachers in order to obtain this “alternative” credential.
It sounds like a half-assed attempt for the SUNY board to present the fiction that they have compromised with their critics when, in truth, they’ve done nothing of the kind.
SUNY claims this new draft will be “less insulting”” to traditional public school teachers, as if the “insulting” impact on non-SUNY teachers was the main thing at issue, when it’s the detrimental effect on children at SUNY-authorized schools that’s the real problem.
Also, the credential that SUCCESS ACADEMY confers on these soon-to-be pseudo-teachers will still be only valid at SUNY-authorized schools, so they’re still screwing those teachers in this regard.
Furthermore, there’s nothing binding SUCCESS ACADEMY to actually to carry out what’s called for in these “revisions.” In the past, SUNY has been absolutely powerless to stop Eva from doing whatever-the-hell she wants to do whenever-she-wants to do it.
That ain’t gonna change.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2017/10/08/suny-revises-controversial-proposal-to-let-some-new-york-charter-schools-certify-their-own-teachers/
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CHALKBEAT:
*”A state group that oversees some New York charter schools has revised a hotly contested proposal to let its schools certify their own teachers ahead of Wednesday’s vote, according to an updated proposal.
*”Though the basic elements of the original proposal remains in tact, prospective teachers will now be required to sit for significantly more hours of instruction (though the amount of time they must spend practice teaching has been reduced), and they now must pass one of the exams used in the traditional certification process or an equivalent test.
*”“We appreciated all of the comments we received and we made significant changes based on those comments,” Joseph Belluck, the head of SUNY’s charter school committee, which will vote on the proposal next week. “We feel like we now have a proposed set of regulations that accomplish our goal of putting highly qualified teachers in our charter schools.”
*”SUNY, the charter authorizer that created the proposal, is attempting to beef up the certification rules following intense pushback by a host of critics, including the state education department and teachers unions.
*”Critics think the proposal is “insulting” to the teaching profession and will flood classrooms with unqualified teachers, while SUNY officials say the proposal is necessary to fill hiring gaps at charter schools.
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*”The original proposal required prospective teachers to sit for 30 hours of instruction and then practice 100 hours of teaching under the supervision of an experienced teacher, far less than the requirements for a traditional school teacher.
*”The limited training came under attack, even drawing uncharacteristic ire from State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia, who said, “I could go into a fast food restaurant and get more training than that.”
*”In the revised proposal, prospective teachers will be required to sit for 160 hours of classroom instruction, which amounts to about a month of full-time work. However, the time required for teaching practice will drop from 100 to 40 hours.
*”Belluck said the changes were made to align with already existing alternative certification paths that allow some prospective teachers to circumvent traditional requirements. Though the hours of field experience and instruction in SUNY’s proposal mirror an existing alternative route, the proposal does not have all the same requirements. For instance, SUNY’s plan does require aspiring teachers to be enrolled in a college’s teacher education program.
*”The new regulations ask prospective teachers to take the Educating All Students test, an exam designed to test strategies for teaching students with special needs, including English learners and students with disabilities. (If prospective teachers don’t take that exam, they must take a different one approved by SUNY that has “all required elements” of the test.)
*”Prospective teachers in New York are typically required to take three certification exams, including a content test and the controversial edTPA, which requires a portfolio of work.
*”Critics of the traditional teacher certification process say it is out of touch with the real-life demands of teaching and unnecessarily weeds out prospective teachers. Across the country, teacher certification requirements also disproportionately shut out black and Hispanic prospective teachers, a Chalkbeat analysis found.
*”Several charter school operators think they can put together a better system that focuses on the practical aspects of teaching. But whether this proposal gives them too much leeway to make their own rules is likely to be debated.
*”In the original proposal, the teacher certification would only count at SUNY-authorized charter schools, meaning teachers would not be able to switch to district schools and even some other charter schools without additional training. Some warned this would create “two tiers of certification,” trapping teachers in certain charter schools.
*”The new proposal is still only valid at SUNY-authorized schools, but Belluck hopes that it will be easier for teachers who are certified this way to gain full state certification since the new regulations are more closely aligned with the state’s certification process.
*”The draft revisions also allow charter schools to contract with higher education institutions to create their training programs and require schools to explain their need for an alternative certification path. (Currently, only 15 uncertified teachers are allowed in a given charter school.) It also stipulates that charter schools must meet certain academic benchmarks before they can apply to train their own teachers.
“SUNY’s charter school committee is expected to vote on the revised proposal at their meeting on Wednesday.“
Jack Exactly that: They can change back to old or worse ideas at will; and they are appealing only to the social demands of teachers (teachers were insulted), rather than to the principles of either qualified teaching or democratic order. Those two issues, if handled rightly, (they think) would have hidden their not-so-subtle shifts of power that the whole movement of privatization embodies.
What they have apparently realized is only that they moved too fast in the first place, and they didn’t cover their moves with enough schmooze (double-speak and compliments) to allow themselves to get away with it. (BTW, Hitler did that, even wearing better suits to gain a sophistic respect [“branding”] from the public who couldn’t tell what he was up to.)
Besides the old game of bait and switch, it’s just the same wolf only in different clothing. And it’s so dispiriting because it is totally empty of any field of trust that legitimate teachers could and would hold on to, were there an ounce of reasonableness and well-meaning to it. But it’s predatory and tribal, as are the more modern-sounding but old-as-the-hills principles hidden in the idea of “zero-sum-game” and the planned irresponsibility and lack of intelligibility embedded in the idea of “the invisible hand.”
SUNY is going to have the same effective oversight of Eva’s new teacher training system that it has over its schools: NONE.
Eva’s going to do whatever-the-hell she wants whenever-the-hell she wants to do it.
If nothing else it will be an interesting labor market experiment. I bet you’ll see charter teacher wages drop, because charter schools won’t have to compete with public schools anymore for employees.
The only thing holding up charter school wages in Ohio is that fact that 90% of the schools are public and they’re all union members and they STILL pay charter teachers about 10k less a year than public school teachers.
We get former charter teachers at my son’s public school. They do their first two years in a charter and switch to the public system- the pay is better.
Teachers face young human beings, and for 10 months are responsible for knowing how to motivate them to LEARN. Grasping psychology, and knowing how to help young minds to LEARN TO DO WORK, takes more than training.
Genuine, LEARNING is facilitated and enabled. by an authentic teacher, but they have been systematically eliminated n the 15,880 school systems, so that the young, novice teachers that replace them will do what TOP-DOWN mandates direct them to use.
Would you let a trained medic, even an excellent one, operate on you? Would you want a law clerk to represent you in court.
Cross posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/New-York-Should-Charter-T-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-Schools_Diane-Ravitch_Fraud_Public-Education-171008-694.html#comment675924 with this comment:
The disrespect for the PROFESSION OF PEDAGOGY, has been enabled by the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, which owns the media, and the legislators.
The plan is to bamboozle the public (which believes that anyone can teach)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html so as to end Public education (and thus–> democracy which depends on shared knowledge)! http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/hirsch.pdf
The PLOY is to remove the real professional WHO KNOWS WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE, and cannot be fooled into using ‘magic elixirs’. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
The privatization movement is working.
Read * Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/reform-reform
Is this any different than Charters hiring “teachers” from TFA? Seems like a money grab to me. The Charters don’t want to pay TFA so they will form their own pool of fake teachers. Personally, I think they are eating themselves from the inside out and the whole mess will soon collapse. The news papers and reporters are doing a bang up job lately of exposing the dirty deeds of the Charter industry. They need to keep on reporting!
I think the goal is to create a stand alone credendial that will prohibit charter teachers from making a lateral move into public schools. It may also set a bad precedent for the future negotiations of public teacher contracts.
It also undercuts SUNY Teacher education programs
Here’s a relevant story.
It’s from Colorado, but the issues are the same.
For an understanding of SUNY’s reasoning, here’s a long post about the “allternative” to university teacher training that the corporate ed. reform world is trying to replace university training with. This alternative, or so corporate ed. reformers claim, is actually better for training teachers who serve kids from minority or low socio-economic backgrounds — i.e. the kids in the SUNY-authorized charter schools.
It’s long, but worth reading for its insight into the corporate ed. reform mindset:
x x x x x x x x x x x x
Low socio-economic kids “need a different type of teacher”… i.e. a graduate of programs such as the Relay G.S.E. (Graduate School of Education) …
That’s according to one of the proponent of Relay. In fact, contrary to the school’s name, Relay G.S.E. is not, in fact, “a Graduate School.”
Instead, it is a totally unlicensed, unaccredited school taught by unaccredited, unlicensed, pseudo-teachers, where, after this short crash course, students earn bogus “degrees” that are not recognized as degrees by any licensing authority in education anywhere.
Sometimes it is within an article’s COMMENTS section that corporate ed. reformers reveal themselves “not wisely but too well,” to quote The Bard.
(In one COMMENTS section, Dmitry Melhorn owned up to the fact that, yeah, we ARE, IN FACT, out to wipe out all traditional public schools .. something denied repeatedly by corporate reformers such as Secretary Devos, who instead lie their heads off and claim that they seek an idyllic “family of schools” — private, traditional public, public charter — all co-existing in peace and harmony. Yeah, right. You mean like they have in New Orleans?)
For example, a Relay G.S.E. supporter got into it with Denver’s Jeanne Kaplan — and one other person calling himself “CONCERNED EDUCATOR” — in the COMMENTS section of an article covering Relay’s expansion into Denver. Alas, this Relay person deleted all of his/her COMMENTS before I arrived at the article and its COMMENTS section.
This article included quotes from both Relay G.S.E. supporters and opponents:
http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2016/09/13/new-teacher-training-favored-by-charters-comes-to-denver-as-critics-sound-off/
First of all, in the COMMENTS section, this “Relay Proponent” kind of let some cats out of the bag with what he/she posted, then deleted everything that he or she posted (with quote remnants present in the Comments responding to him or her. I’m calling this poster “Relay Proponent” as her or she deleted her on-line handle along with his/her posts.)
Check out this doozy (an actual quote) that includes Relay Proponent’s claim that Relay pedagogy should only be used in poor, minority communities, not in wealthy white communities (this just drips with racism and classism):
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
RELAY PROPONENT:
“Kids from less affluent areas are typically raised in a much different household than those in affluent households. Moreover, those kids raised in affluent households in most cases need less teaching and structure and more flexibility.
“If they’re in an affluent family, they likely have educated parents, and are being afforded opportunities in their family life to learn.
“Kids from impoverished areas? Not so much. They need structure in their classroom. They need to be reminded to track and listen to the teacher most likely.
“They need a DIFFERENT type of teacher.”
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Oh boy, this got a Relay critic named CONCERNED EDUCATOR riled up:
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CONCERNED EDUCATOR:
“I want to just point out that, by placing students of low socio-economic status in this light, you have highlighted a very important gap that we are perpetuating by allowing the language of RELAY (G.S.E) to continue.
“Yes, students who grow in homes with severe trauma need specific psychological structures and interventions in place, because their brains function differently, and have been altered by the toxic stress.
“However, NOT ALL STUDENTS IN POVERTY HAVE GROWN UP IN TOXIC STRESS ENVIRONMENTS. Making this assumption lowers our expectations, and devalues those students. You are making assumptions that devalue children, and RELAY perpetuates that.
“We can value the culture of our students without assuming that culture is negative.
“In addition, assuming that our impoverished children ‘need’ a negative, controlling structure creates prison-like environments, where we do not teach critical thinking skills or self-awareness, but lock children into negative patterns of thought and behavior.
“We also perpetuate the opportunity gap, because we are denying students the opportunity to have the education that wealthy white students have, simply by making the assumption that ‘those students need structure.’
“ALL CHILDREN NEED STRUCTURE. ALL children also deserve the opportunity to have an education that prepares them to excel to their greatest potential, which does not mean treating them like prisoners.
“RELAY perpetuates this cycle of creating sub-par education for students, based on the excuse of ‘those kids’ (always meaning children in poverty and non-white children) *needing more ‘structure’. SOME students with trauma need more specific interventions, but ALL children deserve the chance to be a child.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
RELAY PROPONENT, in another deleted COMMENT of his/hers, then incorrectly claims that Relay students attend Relay G.S.E. “to earn their Master’s Degrees.”
Jeanne Kaplan’s replies that Relay G.S.E. most certainly does NOT award accredited “Master’s Degrees” or anything of the kind.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
JEANNE KAPLAN:
” ‘To earn their ‘Master’s Degrees’ …’
“Teachers attending Relay G.S.E. cannot acquire a ‘Master’s Degree’ because the ‘RELAY Graduate School of Education’ is NOT a certified Graduate Program.
“The (RELAY G.S.E.) ‘degree’ is bogus.
“Students are being taught by unlicensed people.”
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In another deleted comment (which I’m reconstructing, using inferences drawn from Jeanne Kaplan’s reply to her … sorry no exact quotes this time) RELAY PROPONENT replies to Kaplan’s accurate statement
— Kaplan’s claim that Relay G.S.E. is not accredited, and thus can issue not legitimate “degrees” —
… by saying that traditional teaching programs — the ones with genuine recognized accreditation, and that grant genuine degrees one can post in, say, one’s resume or c.v — are all failures according to the data, and that research proves that Relay alone works with low income children. RELAY PROPONENT further claimed that Kaplan has “no research” proving the efficacy of traditional teaching programs, and that any data that Kaplan could offer to the contrary comes from “biased resources”, again, from the Gospel according to RELAY PROPONENT.
Again, from Kaplan’s response, it can be inferred that, in making his/her point, RELAY PROPONENT also called Kaplan names, and insulted Kaplan (again, no quotes, just reasonable inferences from what Kaplan replied … I’d love to know exactly what “names” that RELAY PROPONENT called Kaplan… if you’re reading this, Jeanne, please chime in.)
At this point, Jeanne Kaplan simply ain’t havin’ it.
Kaplan also wants to know if RELAY is paying rent at the Denver public school building where it holds it courses:
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JEANNE KAPLAN: (to RELAY PROPONENT)
“Who are you?
“Identify yourself, at least. I could say the same about you. I could also call you names. That is the M,O, of most ‘debates’ in America today.
””‘Biased resources.’
“Only you ignore data that shows repeated failure.*
“As for ‘no research’ — I beg to differ. I have actually talked to people who have undergone the Relay (G.S.E.) indoctrination. Some have quit. Many have ended up
in great debt.
“I ask again: is Relay paying rent?
“And please don’t take the chicken way out and not identify yourself. Transparency is another trait lost in ‘education reform.’”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Relay Proponent didn’t just “take the chicken way out” and not identify himself/herself. He/she deleted everything which he/she had earlier posted.
Charter school teachers should absolutely have their own independent standards for teaching acumen. I see no reason why they have to have the same credentials and licensing as public school teachers.
Children and families who use charter schools are freely choosing to subject themselves to free market forces, competition, profiteering, and privatized, corporate interests that trump civil and human rights to a free and appropriate education. Free market forces – ones that inevitably produce winners and losers with vastly redistributed wealth and power – are far more important than the individual child’s right to an excellent and equitable education.
Free market forces weed out the weak and retain the strong. Therefore, the quality of the child or teacher does NOT matter in charter schools. Eventually, pure cognitive rote-and-drill Darwinism will select those who can survive and get to attend and teach in a charter school until either individual leaves the school for something “better” and more promising in the open marketplace.
As for the rejects, they eventually won’t have a public school to go to because many of them will have been turned over to privatization.
It makes no sense, therefore, for charters to have any kind of standards other than excellence in making money for those high up in executive administration. I’m sure there are rubrics that assess how well a charter turns over a profit.
Profits over people and humanism drive the economy.
It’s the economy, stupid. It’s not teaching and learning that drive this society. I’d think Betsy DeVos would totally agree with, if not celebrate, what I’m saying. It’s just that she’d be a lot more gentile and politely voiced about it.
Charter schools hire many uncerified teachers.Charter schools should not be able to certify their,. ” teachers” this is a silly, not well thought out idea. Charter schools come and go they do not and should not have the authority of the state government to issue teaching certificates or licenses’.
Here is my suggestion to Deborah Glick’s staff and anyone who is able to speak at the SUNY Charter Institute’s meeting:
Make this about the SUNY Charter Institute’s alarming pattern of not doing any charter oversight when it comes to large charter networks with rich and powerful donors to Cuomo who are the very people pushing to certify their own teachers.
Ask the SUNY Charter Institute why they are letting charters certify their own teachers when the SUNY Charter Institute has previously acknowledged that they have neither the staff nor budget to do any real oversight of the charters that they are allowing to proliferate.
Ask the SUNY Charter Institute WHO is going to decide whether these barely-trained teachers are doing credible jobs?
Get Joseph Belluck on the record to say that the SUNY Charter Institute will take full responsibility for this new policy and make Belluck explain HOW he will deal with parent complaints and whether we can assume it will be exactly like they have dealt with complaints in the past.
When you get to the meeting, ask Joseph Belluck this:
“The SUNY Charter Institute is the sole oversight agency over large charter networks that have a history of suspending 20% (and sometimes even more!) of their Kindergarten and first grade students in some schools. The SUNY Charter Institute has heard the charter network’s “explanation” for this — that they just happen to get extraordinarily high numbers of naturally violent at-risk 5 year olds who any right-minded teacher would suspend and it has nothing to do with inexperienced teachers who don’t know how to teach 5 and 6 year olds who aren’t well-behaved and ready to learn. The SUNY Charter Institute has accepted this explanation as absolutely true without any question of how absurd it is and refused to look into those high suspension rates at all. ”
Ask the SUNY Charter Institute: “Can the public expect more that that kind of “oversight” from the SUNY Charter Institute? That whatever explanation the charter CEO offers when there are serious problems and complaints with their self-trained teachers will be accepted by Joseph Belluck and other board members at face value without any need to investigate?”
Ask the SUNY Charter Institute what specific actions they have taken in the past when they have been given reports of charter school teacher problems? What investigations have they done in response to the many parents of special needs children who have complained to them about their children being pushed out?
What specific action did the SUNY Charter Institute take when one of their favorite charter network’s “model” teacher — the ones in charge of training less experienced teachers due to their model teaching skills — was caught on video targeting, humiliating, and punishing one of the few at-risk 6 year old children in her school for not knowing the right answer? What investigation did SUNY do when they viewed for themselves exactly how “model” teachers behave in that charter?
What investigation did the SUNY Charter Institute do when they learned that “the principal of Success Academy Harlem 2 Upper, Lavinia Mackall, told teachers not to automatically send annual re-enrollment forms home to certain students, because the school did not want those students to come back, two former members of the school’s staff said…” (NY Times 10/29/15)
What specific action did the SUNY Charter Institute take when they learned that a principal had “got to go” lists and e-mailed top administrators about it and when discussing ways to get rid of those kids, an education administrator reminded her colleagues that the goal should not have been put in e-mail? What specific action did the SUNY Charter Institute take when they learned that the charter network who knew about all this had done nothing and all those people still had their jobs (until many months later when the NY Times wrote about it)?
Should the public and taxpayers of NY assume that the SUNY Charter Institute will respond to complaints about barely trained charter teachers they way they have responded to complaints about charter school practices in the past? Ignore them? Even when there is video? Even when there are high suspension rates? Will the oversight of SUNY Charter Institute continue to be “whatever you need to get high scores and get rid of the kids who won’t get them is good with us”?
Ask the SUNY Charter Institute whether their SOLE criteria to judge whether the uncertified teachers are doing a good job will continue to be “the test scores of the students who are allowed to advance to a testing grades and haven’t been held back until they drop out or pushed out at alarming rates that we don’t care about”?
Ask SUNY whether they have done any study of the attrition rate of the entering Kindergarten class in charters and how many make it to testing grades without being held back or encouraged to leave? (They haven’t).
Ask SUNY whether they have done any study comparing the attrition rates of different charter networks to make sure that the ones with the best scores have low attrition rates instead of very high attrition rates. (They haven’t).
Ask SUNY to explain in detail what their “oversight” of these uncertified, barely trained charter school teachers will be? And ask SUNY why the public should trust them to oversee uncertified teachers when they have shown no interest in investigating any complaints of powerful charter networks in the past?
In other words, what evidence does the public have that SUNY Charter Institute won’t continue to let charters do whatever they need to do to get rid of the lowest scoring kids and have 99% passing rates?
I would ask the SUNY charter committee why it is snubbing the teacher education programs offered on SUNY campuses. Are they inferior? A waste of time and money? If so, let the SUNY Board know so they can shut down their teacher ed programs.
I agree. But I truly think the focus should be on the SUNY Charter Institute themselves because the SUNY Board seems convinced that the Charter Institute is doing a terrific job.
The SUNY Board needs to be disabused of their false belief that the SUNY Charter Institute does good oversight.
During the very rare times (once every few years) that journalists ever do any follow-up questions with Joseph Belluck, he has admitted that SUNY doesn’t have the staff or resources to do real oversight. Remember, in NYC alone there are twice as many students in charter schools as in all of the Boston public school system. And there are also charters upstate that SUNY is the sole overseer of. So you have this tiny group of people at SUNY who do the ONLY oversight over a spread out charter system that is more than twice the size of most medium size cities.
What oversight has SUNY done? What investigations have they ever undertaken in their role as the sole oversight agency of a charter system that is twice as large as Boston? Where are their investigative reports in response to all the parent complaints they have received?
The SUNY Charter Institute is saying “trust us”. The SUNY Charter Institute is saying “don’t worry we’ll make sure these charter-trained teachers are doing a good job, trust us.”
Make the SUNY Charter Institute go on the record with how they have ever handled complaints about charter networks in the past. Make them go on the record and FINALLY explain how in the world they have never investigated a charter school network that suspends over 20% of its 5 and 6 year olds based on claims that these children were violent and their “model” teachers could do nothing to curb their violent tendencies except suspend them. I’m shocked that Joseph Belluck has never once been asked “do you believe without question that a single charter network could have such an extraordinarily high number of violent children winning their kindergarten lotteries?” Because I would certainly like to hear Belluck have to state for the record: “Yes, I believe it because it is a white CEO telling me about mostly poor African-American kindergarten children and we have no need to investigate further once a white CEO who has billionaires on her board tells us something is true. So yes, the official position of the SUNY Charter Institute is that there are large numbers of violent African-American 5 year olds who get lucky in the lottery for this one charter school that we are thrilled this charter CEO recognizes their violent nature and suspends them. ”
These people should be forced to state for the record the nasty racism implicit in the statements they make when they justify not doing any oversight of charters. Belluck has never once believed any of the non-white parents who have complained about the treatment of their children. He has never found them credible compared to a white charter CEO whose excuses every time her charters are caught is this has never happened before and we fixed it. He has never found it necessary to investigate.
And I hope Deborah Glick’s office asks Belluck why he trusts the word of the charter school CEO who claimed Betsy DeVos is a terrific choice for Secretary of Education over the many, many parents who have complained about the treatment of their children in her schools. Is that because he also believes that Betsy DeVos is terrific choice? Or is it because he believes the charter CEO whose word he trusts without question just has terrible judgement? Where is the oversight and investigation of all the parent complaints to the SUNY Charter Institute? Can SUNY provide Glick with an accounting of the students who enrolled in the charter networks’ Kindergarten classes on or before 2013-2014 to see how many of those Kindergarten students advanced to 3rd grade and beyond with their cohorts and how many were replaced later with “better” students? Given all the complaints of got to go lists and push outs, surely the first thing SUNY would have done is to investigate how many of the starting Kindergarten students advance to 3rd grade with their cohort? Are they not doing even that basic oversight in response to complaints?
And if it is shown publicly that Joseph Belluck and the SUNY Charter Institute have made no effort at all to investigate the myriad of complaints against powerful charter networks, why should anyone trust Belluck and the SUNY Charter Institute on whether these charters should certify their own teachers? The SUNY Charter Institute’s opinion should be ruled invalid and useless.
Yuh, I’ve got a question for you, Assemblywoman Glick: how is it OK that “the full SUNY Board of Trustees does not plan to vote on this item, but rather will defer to a vote by only the Charter School Committee”? Isn’t SUNY supported by all NYS taxpayers? Don’t all NYS taxpayers have a vested interest in how their children are educated? Isn’t SUNY responsible for recommending/approving whether charters will be placed into sch districts, w/direct consequences to local budgets? Does the state imagine local voters are oblivious that SUNY’s Charter School Committee will vote for what suits charter schools’ pocketbooks, regardless of the impact on quality of local ed paid for by local voters?
Charter schools in New York are doing excellent work with low-income black and Latino children (see latest CREDO study), and with beneficial spillover effects for children in traditional public schools (see Sarah Cordes’s recent work).
The organizations representing the economic interests of traditional public school teachers see the continued success and expansion of charters as a threat to the bottom line.
New York’s graduate education schools are in trouble. There are far more of them than the state needs in the face of declining K-12 enrollment. They need to maintain the illusion that it is worthwhile for students to pay (or borrow) tens of thousands of dollars for a teaching degree.
Allowing charter schools to certify their own teachers represents a threat to business at education schools.
There is no evidence proving that traditionally prepared and certified teachers are more effective than alternatively certified ones. Objections to these proposals are as clear cut of “follow the money” as anything you’ll ever see.
Did you read Carol Burris’s’ evisceration of the Cordes “study”?
I did; I’m very familiar with her sky-is-falling stance regarding charter schools and I take a huge grain of salt along with her opinions. Charter schools are going to destroy public education as we know it! Or, as this study showed, lead to modest increases in test scores, parent/teacher satisfaction, and per-pupil funding. The horror!
Cordes seems much more impartial—she’s actually published critiques of charter school studies, and for the union-funded NEPC, no less!
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-nyc-charters
Tim It’s an old, but still fitting cliche that comes to mind as I read your post: You are fine with rearranging deck chairs in the Titanic. Finding a few good charter schools is equivalent to getting those deck chairs in order. The difference is that no one wanted the Titanic to sink.
We’ve been talking about the long term problems with charters and vouchers and, more generally, privatization of what should remain public institutions, on this site for a very long time–so I doubt I’ll make a dent in whatever is blocking your insights on this larger “titanic” issue.
But just the movement towards self-regulation and abolishing public oversight and regulation ALONE should raise red flags in anyone’s mind–about anything, and not just education. Red flags should shoot up all over the place for anyone who understands the mindset of those who make profit their fundamental goal, and who think money gives them some kind of expertise that, in fact, they don’t have, not to mention the authority to separate education in its democracy from its political base.
It’s silly however, to run around as if your hair were on fire–unless it actually IS on fire and you have the vision to see it. I’m sorry that you don’t.
CBK,
Read Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains”—which I am reviewing elsewhere. It will set your hair on fire.
dianeravitch Thanks. It’s on my list. Also, see the author who gave an interview on it just a few days ago on:
https://www.c-span.org/search/?searchtype=All&query=Democracy+in+Chains
Neither CREDO nor Sarah Cordes excoriated work bothered to check why the better the charter school is, the higher their attrition rate is.
I guess that’s the interesting thing about training your own teachers — they become extremely practiced in how to turn a normal 5 year old child into one that Eva Moskowitz can call “violent” and who needs to be suspended over and over again.
As Eva Moskowitz has stated for the record, it is ALWAYS because so many of the at-risk non-white children who win the lottery are such inherently violent children that she suspends them and the parents who raised those violent children choose to withdraw them from the school once Success Academy has identified their violent natures.
According to Tim, it isn’t racist when Moskowitz says so many of her non-white students are so inherently violent at age 5 that she has no choice but to suspend them. According to Tim, it is just the truth. We should accept it at face value the way the SUNY Charter Institute does. “We asked Eva Moskowitz and she told us the children are violent, no need to investigate any further.”