The Alliance for Quality Education, a civil rights group in New York, has threatened to sue if the State University of New York charter committee passes a regulation allowing certain charter schools to self-certify their teachers with lowered standards.
AQE maintains that the changes in the original proposal require new hearings and a new comment period.
The chair of the committee says he plans to call a vote.
The state Board of Regents, which is supposed to be the ultimate education authority in the state, has e pressed concern about this end run around the state’s high standards for teachers.
The SUNY committee will create teachers unqualified to teach in public schools. At the same time, it insults the teacher certification programs at SUNY campuses across the state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The creepy picture accompanying this article looks like something out of Jonestown, all the kids terrified into making the same pose, every single one with interlaced fingers, and SLANTing the speaker:
The kids look like they’re starring in an African-American remake of the horror movie classic CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED:
We need to import such charter innovations to the traditional public schools ASAP.
Jack, those pictures are totally more than creepy. There’s no life and no joy. I did notice who the students are. In the meanwhile, the entitled have ______ and on and on ad nauseas. It’s a SET UP SCAM.
Here’s another classic “S.A. SCHOLARS OF THE DAMNED” shot:
Again, here’s its *”CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED” movie counterpart:
And here’s the Supreme Leader to which they all must bow:
I think you made a typo
“To witch they must bow”
Oooh, snap!
Just imagine what a photograph of a Success Academy staff meeting would look like !
Prolly like this
Here’s the Simpson’s CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED parody…
“The Bloodening”:
And lastly, the real thing:
I just thought of something. That was Christopher Reeve’s last movie before the horse riding accident that paralyzed him.
R.I.P. Superman
Oh, and Pink Floyd’s THE WALL video also makes the same point:
(go to about 3:08 for the marching zombie kids)
(go to about 3:08 for the marching zombie kids)
Meanwhile, Success Academy Board Director Campbell Brown sends her kids to be educated like this at Heschel, their rich kids’ private school:
Come on.
No hideous uniforms?
No marching like robots?
No Children of the Damned regimentation?
How are Campbell’s kids ever going to succeed in life?
Oh, I almost forgot that classic Charlotte Dial (who was later put in charge of training Success Academy teachers system-wide). Wouldn’t it be great if this was played during the lawsuit trial, and then Dial herself gets grilled on the witness stand about it:
A teacher friend and I familiar this video have a running joke about “One day, I’m gonna go all-Charlotte Dial on these kids.” OR “I came close to going all-Charlotte Dial today, but kept my cool.”
Meanwhile, over at Heschel, kids act like this: (granted this is not the NYC Heschel, but its Toronto affiliate, but the point still holds):
Wow. Looking at the “Children of the Damned” first thing in the morning. Hey, not to sound dense but how did you post all these pictures and videos on here?
1) Go to http://www.Google.com
2) Click Images below the rectangle where you type in what you want searched;
3) Type in the words describing image you desire — in this case — “Children of the Damned” — making sure to put quotations marks around it.
4) Hit “Search”
OR
CLICK the “Return” key on your computer …
and you’ll see the images you asked for.
5) CLICK the desired image
6) To the right of the image, you’ll now see the second rectangle to the right is View image
CLICK View image
7) That image will now appear in a black field; the url that is now in the url bar is what you need to move over to wherever — an email or a blog post.
Highlight that url
8) CLICK “Copy” underneath “Edit”
OR
hold down the “Command” key, then hit the “C” key;
You’re now ready to move the image a blog, or to an email
9) When typing in a response on this, or any blog, (or an email) decide where you want your photo to be in your post — beginning, middle, or end — then move the cursor to that spot
10) CLICK “Paste” underneath “Edit”
OR
Hold down the “Command” key, then hit the “V” key;
11) Finish writing your post, then — in the case of this blog —
then, of course, hit the rectangle, Post Comment
You’re done!
Oh and for videos, it’s the same process, except click “Videos” instead of “Images”….
or go straight to YouTube, and capture the url for the video you’re watching and want to move over.
Thanks, Jack. I will forever be a citizen of the 20th century despite spending the last 17 years in this one!
More specifically “to Evil Moskowitch”
https://www.alternet.org/billionaires-early-childhood-education
SUSAN OSCHORN:
“Child-centered, experiential learning, on a timeline that allows for the natural variability of development, has become a province of the elite. The daughters of presidents—including Malia and Sasha Obama—have thrived in the dynamic classrooms of the progressive Sidwell Friends in Washington, D.C. …
“The demands of standards-based accountability, entrenched segregation, and the proliferation of charter schools with harsh discipline and developmentally inappropriate curricula—Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy network in New York City an egregious example—are transforming our youngest, and most vulnerable, children into joyless drones, their spirits crushed by benchmarks, testing, drills, rote learning, and the absence of play.”
Good grief! The charter industry is afoul and politicians keep pushing them and also blame public schools and public school teachers for their MANUFACTURED CRISIS. We’ve been spammed by lawyers, marketers, politicians, lobbyists, big $$$$$, the tech industry, the testing industry, and treated like Pavlov’s dog.
This needs to stop.
I am surprised that more lawsuits haven’t been filed, not only about lowering standards for teachers. Charters have targeted minorities for years, and they essentially set up a separate and unequal school. Why should public funds be used to increase segregation? It is about time that African American groups start questioning this different treatment.
Well, the NAACP just put out a report doing exactly that:
https://dianeravitch.net/2017/08/08/the-naacp-report-why-are-charter-supporters-complaining/
A public school could never, ever do this:
“Success Academy is now pushing its belief in parent engagement to a level that may be unprecedented in U.S. public education. With little fanfare, the network has in the past week begun sending home “Parent Investment Cards” evaluating how well—or how poorly—parents are fulfilling their promise to honor Success Academy’s “parent responsibilities” in three areas: “school readiness,” “homework supervision,” and “parent responsiveness and investment.” In each category, the parent is adjudged as “meeting expectations” (green), “approaching expectations” (yellow), or “not meeting expectations” (red)—a color-system that echoes the behavior chart in every Success Academy classroom. It’s no longer just a child who might “finish the day on red” but his parents, too. Some parents are not pleased.”
“Choice” schools have the luxury of pushing people out for ONE reason- because public schools exist.
Moskowitz owes a lot to the public system- they make her schools possible. She gets the most motivated and involved parents and public schools are there to pick up the families who don’t fit her cultural requirements.
If they want two tiered systems, where the public schools act as a disfavored “back up” to the exclusionary charter schools, they should just say so. No one denies magnet and exam schools are exclusionary, yet Moskowitz is insisting she’s running a general admittance public school when she’s just not.
https://edexcellence.net/articles/has-eva-moskowitz-overplayed-her-hand-on-parent-accountability?utm_content=buffera6154&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
This is disgusting and what is even more disgusting is the reaction of Checker Finn and Robert Pondiscio acting as if REQUIRING parent responsibility is not any different than ENCOURAGING it.
“Greeting parents coming to pick up their children. Ms. Moskowitz asks a lot of participation from parents, as a condition of admitting their children. She told one group, “If you know you cannot commit to all that we ask of you this year, this is not the place for you.” NY Times, 11/3/2008 “The Education Crusader” slideshow
THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU. Success Academy-funded MDHC study showed that after the 4 pre-enrollment meetings that lottery winning parents attended, HALF of the parents gave up their coveted spot. Half! After already limiting themselves to the parents who know enough to sign up for a lottery, Success Academy weeds out half. Of the half who enroll, another huge percentage — the number is kept hidden — never make it to 3rd grade testing.
The fact that the SUNY Charter Institute has never been asked by any reporter why they are endorsing charters that are able got say to the most at-risk parents and the most at-risk children “this is not the place for you or your child because you aren’t giving us what we want you to give us” is why I believe that the reporting in education has been one of the most shocking examples of truly abysmal journalism.
The charters that only teach the students they want to teach are not, and never were, “public” schools. They are — as Eva Moskowitz’ loudest supporters like to say “no different than Dalton so why shouldn’t they use untrained uncertified teachers?”
And meanwhile the students who don’t have those motivated parents are abandoned in the underfunded public schools while Eva Moskowitz has the chutzpah to say “I’ve proved that no school needs small class sizes by my success”.
No wonder Betsy DeVos adores Eva Moskowitz. Where else can she get a self-described Democrat to endorse her belief that at-risk kids should be in large class sizes with low funding? No wonder that Success Academy just got a huge federal grant to reward them for their good job in endorsing DeVos and undermining public schools.
Conservative parents here were absolutely outraged that “Obama” put in Common Core – they said it was over-reach and an attempt to impose a value system on their kids.
I cannot imagine the uproar if the school started issuing “parent report cards” based on the school’s definition of appropriate family “culture”. They would be convinced it was some plot to take over their households. The entire school board would be fired.
These “choices” are the luxury of charter schools. Public schools could never put them in. If we started disciplining kids for not holding their hands in a prescribed way at their desks there would be a huge uproar and the policy would have to be rescinded. We can’t even enforce the (minimal) dress code without accusations that we’re opposed to free speech.
Must be nice to be a charter and not to have to deal with “the public”. Makes it a heck of a lot easier, that’s for sure. You just lay down the law with no public input or debate and if someone doesn’t like they can go to the public school down the street. Nice to have that back up system.
“The revisions include increasing the hours of instruction that prospective teachers must receive from 30 to 160, decreasing required hours of teaching practice from 100 to 40, and mandating that aspiring teachers pass one of the state’s certification exams or an equivalent test.”
So if you work full time at it you can be done in 5 weeks- probably 6 weeks, realistically, depending on how often the cert exam is held.
That is a REALLY short training period. They must be extraordinarily fast learners, charter teachers.
What does this do to TFA? Why would anyone go the longer TFA route if they can be in their own classroom at full salary in 6 weeks?
TFA will continue on because, as Wendy Karp has explicitly said, it doesn’t train teachers; it identifies, grooms and trains “leaders” who will then go out and privatize everything in sight.
TFA will “train” the one-year wonder principals who will oversee the sweatshops that the SUNY Charter Institute is promoting.
It’s part of the Best and Brightest ethos. They can’t be employees- they have to be owners of “public” schools.
They’re all destined for CEO status. You can’t expect them to stick around in the trenches. That’s for less talented folks. They rocket right to the top, because they are inherently BETTER.
I was listening to a Senate hearing last year and the Senators were fawning all over one or another charter school CEO. The CEO was outraged anyone would tell her what to do in “her” schools. She’s an owner. This is her small business. She created a job, hired herself, and funds the whole thing with your money. It’s great. For her.
Yes, but just as in Vietnam, where “The Best and Brightest” (author David Halberstam’s term) sent almost sixty thousand young Americans (not to mention over a million Vietnamese) to die, this will not end well.
Is there any way they can write a check to Cyrus Vance and make this case go away? Surely someone on that charter committee has a few bucks to part with>
I love all these comments! And the videos! You guys are awesome!
This is as transparent as a newly washed window.
The reformers are having a hard time getting and maintaining qualified teachers, so they apply the whip to the SUNY Charter Committee, which attempts to lower the qualifications necessary to become a certified teacher in NY State.
This is a logical extension of the barrage of propaganda that’s been hurled at the teachers colleges during the past decade.
The businessmen and women who are in the reform game don’t value teachers as a part of the equation. They have their virtual schools and fully scripted out curricula. All the teacher needs to do is read the script and function as a monitor in the class of perfectly attendant boys and girls. Who needs a teaching degree to do that, after all?