State Teachers’ Union Urges More Oversight of Charters |
A Buffalo charter school, run by a for-profit company, received $7.2 million in taxpayer money last year to educate about 500 elementary and middle school students. But at the end of the year, the audit it submitted to the state listed its expenses only in broad brushstrokes, including $1.3 million in rent for a building the company owned, $976,000 for executive administration and $361,000 in professional fees.
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Officials from the New York State teachers’ union, testifying at a crowded State Senate hearing on Thursday, raised the case of the school, Buffalo United, as an example of what it said was wrong with the oversight of charter schools throughout the state. The union said the case supported its view that no new charter schools should be authorized unless oversight is strengthened. |
Because public money is used, most states grant charters to run such schools only to nonprofit groups with the expectation that they will exercise the same independent oversight that public school boards do. Some are run locally. Some bring in nonprofit management chains. And a number use commercial management companies like Imagine. |
Students at Kennesaw Charter School in Kennesaw, Ga. The school has ended its contract with Imagine. |
But regulators in some states have found that Imagine has elbowed the charter holders out of virtually all school decision making — hiring and firing principals and staff members, controlling and profiting from school real estate, and retaining fees under contracts that often guarantee Imagine’s management in perpetuity. |
Squabbling lawmakers couldn't reach agreement Tuesday on raising the current cap beyond 200 charter schools, missing the deadline to apply for up to $700 million in federal education money. |
Gov. Paterson wants lawmakers to increase the cap to 460, arguing it's needed to score maximum points with Uncle Sam. |
Legislative leaders back a rival measure that would raise the cap to only 400 schools and, among other things, strip the city schools chancellor of the power to issue new charters. Read more at www.nydailynews.com |
AECI educators seek formal coice in school policy and more collaborative work environment
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Teachers and staff at the NYC Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries (AECI) in the Bronx announced on Jan. 13 their intention to join the UFT as a new collective-bargaining unit. |
Seventeen of 19 teachers and other pedagogical staff at the school have signed union authorization cards. |
AECI is run by Victory Schools, a for-profit educational management company based in New York City. |
The New York City Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries (AECI) opened in the fall of 2008, and currently serves approximately 240 students in grades 9 and 10. The school employs 17 teachers, as well as a guidance counselor, a social worker, a director of student culture and a handful of administrators. |
| UFT operates two unionized charter schools, and co-operates a third |
Charter school advocates, including the New York Charter School Association and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, this week blocked legislation that would have made charter schools more transparent and more accessible to high-needs students. Lawmakers were under pressure to pass legislation by Jan. 19, the deadline for New York State to apply for the first round of federal Race to the Top funds. |
| new restrictions on how charter schools are created and managed to make them more fair and transparent. Charter schools would have been required to admit and retain high-needs students. The bill would also have taken the power to approve charters away from the New York City schools chancellor and the board of trustees of the State University of New York. For-profit companies would have been prohibited from running the schools and charter schools would have been placed inside district public schools only if the parents of the students already attending those schools approve.Read more at www.uft.org |
| Arizona’s charter school plan has been called the “gold standard” for charter school plans. The plan has been ranked 1st for its policy environment by researchers, and has received an “A+” for financial audits. It is highly deregulated and includes a huge number of charter schools, the most per capita in the nation. |
Arizona policymakers have stressed efficiency in intent and on paper, but there is little available evidence that levels of this dimension are high. Together with likely low levels of equity and debatably similar or lower levels of social cohesion, the conclusion is that on balance there is little basis upon which Arizona’s charter schools could claim any significant general advantage over their non-charter public counterparts.
Read more at www.ncspe.org |
| The Qualifications and Classroom Performance of Teachers Moving to Charter Schools |
| Little empirical research is available to help policy makers develop informed decisions regarding the educational value that for-profit schools provide to our students. This paper fills in part, for the first time in detail, this void. This paper uses a four year panel of charter schools from the state of Michigan and a random effects model that controls for student and district characteristics. Results indicate that for-profit charter schools have lower math test scores than not-for-profit charter schools. Interestingly, this result holds even when expenditure per pupil is controlled for. The analysis developed in this paper takes the debate one step further as well, and examines the role that the size of for-profit firms plays in the associated outcomes. Read more at www.ncspe.org |
| Do charter schools draw good teachers from traditional, mainstream public schools? |
| High rates of
inexperienced and uncertified teachers moved to charter schools, but among certified teachers
changing schools, the on-paper qualifications of charter movers were better or not statistically
different than the qualifications of teachers moving between comparable mainstream schools.
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| findings reveal
nuanced patterns of teacher quality flowing into charter schools. Charters drew certified,
highly qualified, and perhaps locally effective teachers from mainstream schools, but they also
attracted uncertified and less qualified teachers. The distribution of persistent teacher quality
among charter participants was significantly lower than, but largely overlapped with, the
quality distribution of exclusively mainstream teachers.
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| 1997-2007 panel of all North Carolina public school teachers to examine the qualifications
and classroom performance of mainstream teachers moving to the charter sector.Read more at www.ncspe.org |
| Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools. 2009. |
| Many U.S. states provide public funding for charter schools—deregulated and privately
managed schools operating in direct competition with government-run schools. While the impact of
charter schools on student achievement and sorting has been intensely studied, less is known about
the demand for these alternatives. |
| We find that low student achievement predicts
greater charter support across school districts, but is relatively unimportant in explaining variation
across precincts within districts. Residents of districts with more highly qualified teachers and greater
local spending were less likely to favor charters, as were districts with high teacher union
membership. The strongest predictor at all levels was political partisanship: areas with more
Republican voters were strongly and consistently more likely to vote in favor of charter schools.
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| This study examines how teacher turnover differs between charter and traditional public schools and seeks to identify factors that explain these differences. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) 2003-2004 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and Teacher Follow-Up Survey (TFS), we found that 25% of charter school teachers turned over during the 2003-2004 school year, compared to 14% of traditional public school teachers. |
| Our analysis confirms that much of the explanation of this “turnover gap” lies in differences in the types of teachers that charter schools and traditional public schools hire. The data lend minimal support to the claim that turnover is higher in charter schools because they are leveraging their flexibility in personnel policies to get rid of underperforming teachers. Rather, we found most of the turnover in charter schools is voluntary and dysfunctional as compared to that of traditional public schoolRead more at www.ncspe.org |
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Charters & New York State teachers’ union
