An article from last Sunday's Newsday (here) touched on a number of issues related to Race to the Top and the legislative politics, some of which The Chalkboard commented on previously this week.

The brazenness of the head of the state teachers union, Richard Iannuzzi, never ceases on this subject as it relates to charter schools. In the article, his latest pontification asserts that "once [the state has] a quality charter law, then the cap should be on the table for discussion." Swell.

Never confuse the union's understanding of "quality charter law" with the vernacular. In fact, New York State already has a "quality" charter school law which has resulted in enabling charter schools to open and operate effectively by raising student academic achievement.

New York's Charter Schools Act was rated as an effective law resulting in high quality charters by groups like the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (here) and the Center for Education Reform (here). Of course, these organizations measure quality from a pro-charter perspective, and are critical of weak charter laws in some states that mitigate against better schools. By contrast, NYSUT perversely measures "quality" by having few or no charter schools and all of which would be under its control. That is why it opposed enactment of the state's charter school law in 1998, opposed its cap lift in 2007, and sought legislation foe the last 11 years to irreparably cripple the charter law's effectiveness - most recently in January (here).

Accountability & Transparency - Bring it On
NYSUT's repeated invocation of accountability and transparency for charters is plain hypocritical given that the union steadfastly opposes more transparency and accountability for the teaching profession, including opposition to: reforming the teacher disciplinary process (aka, "3020-a" reform), repealing the ban on using student test score data for tenure decisions, the Regents' "turnaround" agenda for chronically low-performing schools and districts, and a host of other areas.

As for the claim by Senate Majority spokesman, Austin Shafran, that raising the charter cap "would not have resulted in us winning" a Race to the Top grant, the account in yesterday's New York Times tells a different story (here), i.e., the cap does matter. Considering New York was 46 points behind top-ranked Delaware, every point matters. That's where the legislature's focus should be. Maximizing points includes not only raising the charter cap, but equalizing charter funding with districts, and enacting the kind of transparency and accountability measures to improve teacher quality that have long been opposed by NYSUT.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard
Twitter.com/petermurphy26
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