Thursday, October 11, 2012

Union incompetence and self righteousness


The UFT proves a point

File this under “TP” for Totally Predictable: A charter school run by the United Federation of Teachers isn’t cutting it — and may soon be shut down.
The charter saw a mere eight of its 82 eighth-graders pass the state reading test this year, one of the worst rates of any city charter. Just 28 percent passed math.
Last week, the city Department of Education gave the school an “F” in “progress” and a “D” in “performance.”
And those numbers sent a chill up UFT boss Michael Mulgrew’s leg.
“I’m very, very happy with what we see,” he said, according to Gotham Schools. “The teachers are doing a good job.”
If by “doing a good job” Mulgrew means reinforcing failure and collecting a paycheck, it’s hard to disagree.
But by normal standards, that’s crazy talk.
Albany has long had its eye on the school: In 2010, its charter was reauthorized for just three years, instead of the usual five.
In January, it may be shut down altogether.
But what did anyone expect? Charters were meant tobypassunion rules; staffs generally don’t belong to unions. Indeed, the idea of a charter that not only stuck with the union contract but wasrunby labor bosses has long seemed oxymoronic.
If charters — as we said when the school was founded in 2005 — are designed to let educators from outside “the public-school establishment” teach kids in “new and innovative ways,” then “the UFT proposal is an unqualified disaster.”
Yet then-UFT boss Randi Weingarten, seeking to show that kids can do fine under the union model, insisted on her own charter — “the perfect environment for the UFT to demonstrate that its educational priorities work,” she said. It would produce “quantifiable achievement” to dispel the “simplistic notion that the union contract” hinders learning, she vowed.
Hinders learning, for sure.
Now it seems quite likely the school’s charter won’t be renewed.
That’s the neat thing about charter schools — failure isn’t institutionalized.
Not so traditional schools.
But the UFT’s glaring failurehastaught one valuable lesson: The union model may serve labor bosses well; kids, not so much.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for your grateful informations, this blogs will be really help for school admissions.