Charter Schools Help NYC

The evidence piles up that in our largest city, charter schools can help the poor, even while the city's traditional public schools continue to pile up an abysmal record.

Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that in New York City public schools:

• "The new results for charter students represent an increase of 22 days of learning in reading compared to their results four years ago. Results for math have remained the same.

• "For Black and Hispanic students, the analysis indicates a significant academic advantage from charter school enrollment.

• "Hispanic charter school students perform at the same level as their white district school peers, representing no annual learning gap.

• "For the analysis, a total of 97,118 charter school students from 248 schools are followed from the 2011- 12 school year to 2015-16 school year.

• "Students attending charter schools affiliated with a Charter Management Organization (CMO) have better learning gains than district school peers in both reading and math. The positive impact is equivalent to about 57 days of learning in reading and 103 more days in math."

Meanwhile, "The same toxic conditions plaguing a Bronx school where a teen was murdered last week -- bullying, verbal attacks and violence -- are rampant across its home district, according to Department of Education data," Selim Algar reported in The New York Post on October 3, 2017. "A total of 53 percent of polled District 12 teachers said they observed bullying 'some' or 'most of the time' in a questionnaire last year-- the highest rate out of the city’s 32 school districts."

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia. He can be reached at mal.kline@academia.org.

Really? The State University of NY just lowered the standards for teachers teaching in charter schools because they can't get enough suckers to teach under the inferior conditions there. Charter schools cannot retain teachers for more than two or three years due to the increased school time, lower salaries, and inferior benefits.

Currently, only a maximum of 15% of the teachers in a charter school can be uncertified. Some schools have had difficulty meeting that goal and some charter schools have a majority of teachers uncertified in the subject that they are teaching in. And many charter schools have 2 or more teachers covering a class during a given school year, as the first one leaves for greener pastures.

The proposed changes mean that these uncertified charter school teachers will never need to pass State certification tests or obtain a master's degree, therefore, limiting the charter school teachers to teach in charter schools. With their abbreviated requirements, charter schools will simply hire any Tom, Dick, or Harry with a college degree and dump them into a classroom, unprepared in the art of teaching. Yeah, that sounds GREAT for students!

The NYC school teachers are required to teach according to the syllabus and system chosen (without any teacher input) by their administrators, who usually have it foisted upon THEM. That includes what you can teach and how you are required to teach it. Never mind what experience teaches teachers what works—if you don’t teach according to the prescribed methodology, you will be rated out of a job. Second, thanks to the last couple of mayors and particularly this incompetent corrupt commie, teachers are no longer allowed to impose discipline in the classroom. They can be brought up on charges and terminated on the word of a couple of lying teenagers who want some “getback” ‘cos the teacher made them put their cell phone phone away or actually expected them to be quiet during class or some such. So who would be able to learn much in a noisy classroom where you can’t ban cell phones (thanks to the current Commie mayor imbecile), and students spend most of the class watching videos on their phones, texting, making actual phone calls, photographing the teacher or recording them on the sly to try to get them in trouble, etc.? No one is paying attention. Oh, and with Commie Core, students don’t have to pay attention and take notes any more-—the teacher has to hand out xeroxed copies of the notes with a few blanks to fill in. The lessons are basically 4 totally unmotivated students in a group, reading a handout and answering some punk questions. Teachers are heavily discouraged from “chalk and talk” actual lessons. Third, teachers are very heavily pressured to pass any student who can fog up a mirror and even those who can’t, so that administrators can get their thousands of dollars “good passing stats” bonus. Thus, the diplomas handed out to NYC high school “grads” are not worth the paper they’re printed on. About 80% of NYC high school grads of this corrupt and plain stupid dumb factory must take at least a year of remedial courses in college if they get into college, remedial courses which are nothing more than high school level work with a higher price tag. It’s a complete farce. And YOU want to blame this mess on the teachers? The wait lists for charters reflect parents who think as you do, thinking it’s all the teachers’ fault. But charters very much cherry pick who they accept AND, if there are any behavioral issues, academic weaknesses or special ed concerns, those students are quietly tossed out the back door back to regular public schools.

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