Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

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 instruction; few teachers were given a low rating in any of the assessed domains and all were deemed satisfactory overall despite what the observers noted as the low rigor of instruction and lack of student engagement in some classrooms.”

* “At the time of the renewal visit, 42 percent of teachers had no more than two years of teaching experience prior to the current year. Notwithstanding the support provided to these novice teachers and the hiring of some experienced faculty, the school has struggled with teacher turnover throughout the charter period.”

* “The UFT Charter School’s board of trustees has struggled to provide effective oversight of the school…. The large school board’s lack of formality has at times resulted in violations of the New York Open Meetings Law. A review of the school board’s minutes revealed a meeting with no quorum with action taken, votes taken by written submission, executive session not being entered into properly and an inappropriate topic discussed in executive session and a lack of minutes for board committee meetings.”

* “A relatively low number of English language learners (‘ELLs’) attend the school.”

* “Actual expenses per pupil exceeded actual revenue per pupil in FY 2006-07 and 2007-08 contributing to a lack of cash reserves. This evidence suggests that the school has had difficulty balancing revenue and expenditures. Due to the limited cash available, the school has a negative working capital ratio, indicating it does may not have enough short-term assets to cover all immediate liabilities, short-term debt or any unforeseen expenditures that may arise.”

* “The school has assumed a five-percent increase in per-pupil funding each year of the new charter term. Due to the state deficit problems and the uncertainty of per-pupil funding, the school acknowledges that the per-pupil percentage increase they have anticipated is not assured.”

These problems all need to be addressed, but the most significant finding is that “Parents/guardians and students are generally satisfied with the school.” Absent major deficiencies, educational or otherwise, what else really matters?  SUNY correctly renewed the charter, but it was fortunate for UFT that the evaluation team had a more forgiving nature than does UFT’s parent union (here and here).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 08:27 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.