Humble Pie
The State University of New York issued its renewal report for the United Federation of Teachers Charter School in New York City (hat tip: Eduwonk) and you’ll want to spend time with it if you have any interest at all in charters, unions and the relationship between the two. What’s striking is not that the school has unique or unusual problems – it’s that it has all the typical problems of many charter schools. The UFT Charter School has virtually every perceived defect AFT has fulminated against for years.
SUNY issued the school a short-term renewal of three years, rather than the full term of five years, which means the school has shortcomings that the evaluation panel believes it will overcome.
Here are a few of the findings:
* ”The UFT Charter School does not meet the standard for a Full-Term Renewal to the extent that it has not compiled a strong and compelling record of meeting or coming close to meeting its academic Accountability Plan goals.”
* “While the school has had a formal process for evaluating teacher quality and effectiveness throughout the charter period, this system has not been used effectively to hold teachers accountable for high levels of instruction. For example, teacher evaluation documentation reviewed during the renewal visit was not consistent with observations of classroom