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This article actually confirms the theory that charter schools choose their student populations and that they are not representative of the population of the neighborhood. The mother said that the children are well behind in grade and the children beat each other up and the zoned school. Now, according to her, when the charter school comes in, the children will be on or above grade level and the children will behave properly. Now we all know that if the charter school came in and had the same student population that the zoned school had, there would still be children who were behind in grade level and children who did not behave properly. The only way to fix this would be to get rid of the lower achieving kids and those children who did not behave properly. Now my question is where are we sending these lower achieving children and misbehaving children. In my experience, we do not send the kids home with a note and tell them they may not attend school until they get up to grade level and or learn to behave properly.
I am a career educator and I have this anecdote to relate about teaching in NYC in the late eighties. My first job was at a Title 1 middle school in a poor/working class neighborhood. In my experience I had been in schools where a bell shaped curve of students attended- I went to school with low, middle and high achieving students. I was teaching in the school for a month and realized that my students had trouble with reading for a whole host of reasons. I decided to tour the rest of the grade and see the classes who were reading at grade level and reading above grade level just to get a sense of the student population. So I went on my tour and asked the teachers to share the students reading scores and I realized that ten out of the eleven sixth grade classes had below grade reading scores. I thought well how could this be possible? In a normal population of students, we could not possibly have every student read so poorly. So I went to ask my supervisor. She told me that all the students who read on or above grade level went to the magnet middle school across the highway and all the kids who read below went here. Addiitionally, students that had some sort of physical, emotional,or behavior problem also went here. This explained why this school had “children well behind in grade and children who beat each other up.” The other school was touted as a great place to learn and work. But of course, unless we ask the right questions in our investigations, we would never really know the real reasons why the school I worked in was so plagued by problems and the school across the highway was so wonderful.

What we should be asking the zoned school is how is the student population determined? How do you deal with unruly students and what support, if any,are you getting from the people in district offices, and Tweed to deal with these students. If there are sub par teachers in the building, what is being done to help them get to level? If the school is dirty, where is Tweed-are they not the ones who are responsible for such matters?

Stop blaming the kids, anon. There are bad charter schools with the same student population as successful ones. What the adults do matters a great deal. And anyone who has seen a normally well-behaved class go haywire with a substitue (I should know; I was a one of those kids once) knows that adults have far greater influence on school culture than the kids themselves do.

Charter schools are required to follow a strict lottery process, and those that don’t and kick out the kids that they don’t want are unscrupulous–an option that is ALSO available to unscrupulous district public school personnel. I personally know plenty of parents, especially special education students, whose students have been booted from one district school to another. You are really not railing against charter schools (as illustrated by your magnet/not magnet district schools example). You are railing against prejudicial enrollment and unscrupulous management.

To the extent that it exists in charter schools, it exists elsewhere too. It’s not germane to the charter school design or community.

None of this is to excuse the attacks on PS 194 and PS 241 being levied by the press release. It’s mean spirited and not based on facts. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know what’s really happening in these schools.

What this article doesnt mention is that the closing of zoned schools w/out CEC approval is against the law. Perhaps DOE — and Eva Moskowitz — believe that they are above the law, but this is why we have courts in this country.

The title of an article is arguably its most powerful feature—a more accurate title for this article would be “Harlem Success Academy Organizes Parents to Shut Down Their Local School.”

And while the Chancellor may not be able to do anything about teachers who are just
marking time to get their paychecks, surely he could do something about schools being “dirty” and “dangerous, “ no?

Is there any reason why a public school classroom cannot look like the bright, cheerful and clean room Tweed has given over to the Ross Global Charter Academy? It defies credibility to blame apathetic teachers for rundown and dirty buildings.

It is disgusting that Harlem Success pays Jenny Sedlis to insult our public school teachers. If public dollars are used to pay for the disparagements and insults, that is truly outrageous.

Surely Harlem Success could use this money spent on Ms. Sedlis’s salary on additional teaching personnel or materials for the children to use. The comments made by Ms. Sedlis and Harlem Success do nothing to benefit the children at their schools or in the community.

What is Ms. Sedlis’s backgound? Apparently she never taught (just as most Harlem Success network workers haven’t taught) and the only prerequisite for her current position was working for Moskowitz.

This article (http://www.scrippscollege.edu/media/magazine/success-in-harlem), written by Sedlis, shows the lack of experience, lack of expertise, and arrogance that is epitomized by this press release.

Harlem Success denigrates teachers at the local public school, but it’s unclear that their teachers are better. It is clear that more of their teachers are uncertified. Additionally, their turnover is very high and Moskowitz has already fired principals that she has hired.

Perhaps Ms. Sedlis and Harlem Success could focus on running their own schools in a better manner and refrain from insulting other teachers and schools. After all, I doubt very much that the individual public schools are keeping PR people on the payroll to insult the charters.

There have been numerous peer reviewed studies that indicate that even when charter schools get the same educational outcomes as regular public schools, the levels of parent satisfaction and parental involvement are much higher. This has to count for something. I attribute this to the simple fact that parents in charter schools are far more empowered than in public schools. Why? The focus in these schools, which are receiving less funding than regular public schools, is on the child, not on some adult or union/work rules. It does make a difference, even if politics does not want to acknowledge it. Charter school parents are happier with their schools, and it makes a difference in the performance of their pupils.

I don’t know whether DOE followed the law or not in closing these sad examples of public schools. But it does not take away from the fact the PS 194 and PS 241 have for decades, done a terrible job of educating children. If we need charter schools to shine a light on these abject failures, then so be it.

What’s wrong with the Sedlis article, truth? Sounds like the attitude of 90% of the teaching force to me – at least, when the enter teaching…and before being beaten down by the status quo.

Mr. G told me, ten years after I first saw him teach and said to myself, “I’ll never be like him. He’s so burned out and he is not in it for the right reasons. The way he treats kids, how he does the bare minimum to get by…he epitomizest the problem with the system,” do you know what he said to me? He said, “I used to be like you. When I came into the system, I thought I could actually make a difference. I stuck my neck out too many times and when you almost get fired enough times, you stop doing what you think is right for the kids and you do what it takes to get by. You’ll see.”

And when he heard I was involved in a charter school, he said, “Hmm…. I’m too old at this point…” but that glimmer of being freed from the shackles that brought this man’s right judgment to its knees over the years was there.

Jenny Sedlis’s article sounds like pure, untempered idealism to me – and we need more of that in the school system, not less.

The chancellor is not above the law and should not mess with zoning without CEC approval. And I have yet to see convincing data telling me that PS 241 and PS 194 should be closed. But there’s one thing I know for sure about Harlem public schools (including charters) – great change is needed if that idealism that all of us who teach once brought or still do bring into the classroom is to bear any fruit.

I’m interested to hear some of our personal stories, Pogue. Why are you so bittter? Would you share?

So Pogue, are you trying to say that my kids shouldn’t be studying in a crumbling trailer behind a 250% capacity building? But if they give us space, where will Moskowitz build her next charter school?

What’s wrong with your priorities?

Flat out lunacy – tell it to the hordes of poor parents for whom charter schools have been a saving grace. I’d be as rich as Eva Moskowitz if I had a dollar for every parent who told me that a charter school has given him or her the OPPORTUNITY to be an active parent.

Go and tell me about respect, working conditions, etc. for teachers, then tell me about the hordes of district public school teachers, including yours truly, who didn’t find that respect in the district and left the system to teach at a public charter school. And guess what those hordes of found (not universally)? That respect and those working conditions you talk about. Being part of a team and a community that welcomes families and doesn’t shut them out. Now tell me about your nonsense of greed and avarice and flush those down your sink.

To expect our schools to improve under this administration is indeed unwarranted. But it is also absurd to expect that band aid solutions like charter schools which only benefit a small fraction of kids would ever be sufficient.

What is a poverty pimp?, from Wikipedia:

“Poverty pimp or “professional poverty pimp” is a sarcastic label used to convey the opinion that an individual or group is benefiting unduly by acting as an intermediary on behalf of the poor, the disadvantaged, or some other “victimized” groups.

Those who use this appellation suggest that those so labeled profit unduly from the misfortune of others, and therefore do not really wish the societal problems that they appear to work on so assiduously be eliminated permanently, as it is not in their own interest for this to happen.

The most frequent targets of this accusation are those receiving government funding or that solicit private charity to work on issues on behalf of various disadvantaged individuals or groups, but who never seem to be able to show any amelioration of the problems experienced by their target population. Some even suggest that that if profit was eliminated as a factor, greater steps in the alleviation of the oppressive situations could begin to truly occur.”

Sound like anyone trying to build a charter school empire in Harlem?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/05/AR2009040501719.\html?nav=hcmodule

The ideologues executing the corporate attack on public education have actively suppressed the fact that poverty and test scores dance in perfect balance. The fact has always been dismissed as an “excuse” for low test scores. Poverty’s twin evil, as identified so many years ago by Dr. Martin Luther King, racism has also been confused to the point its victims are blamed for it.

Gates, Broad, Duncan, Klein, Rhee, the whole gang fully intend to leave behind African-American, Latino, Native American and immigrant children, but they will wring their hands in public over the “achievement gap” because it helps obscure their true intentions. If they had an honest bone in their bodies all the “gaps” in our nations social fabric would concern them. There’s America’s household assets gap, the average white family owns 14 times the average Black family. Then there’s the infant mortality gap, more than twice the rate for Black mothers, the life expectancy gap, the health care gap, nutrition gap, the employment gap…

They are forced to buy influence in the Black community as the recent alliance of Klein and Sharpton is demonstrating once more. The African-American community is enemy territory and snake oil salesmen like Armstrong Williams and charlatans like Rod Paige must front their message. The US Department of Education had to pass thirty pieces of silver to Williams for his No Child Left Behind promotion.

Paige put a blackface on the phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations” after he authored the biggest education fraud in history. Paige called it “the Houston Miracle” with a straight face and he was rewarded with a spot in George Bush’s cabinet.

Their game day slogan is “No Excuses” because it helps excuse away certain damning realities. Historically low levels of federal education spending and lower state funding of public schools can’t be used as an excuse. The perfect correlation of poverty and low standardized test scores can’t be cited, it’s an excuse. The re-segregation of America’s schools is an excuse. Excuses are reserved for corporate downsizing, the outsourcing of jobs, escaping from pension and health care plans through bankruptcy filings, corrupt accounting practices and insider trading, offshore tax avoidance schemes, and obscene profit making. Excuses are reserved for Wall Street bankers and the Business Roundtable.

Paul A. Moore

Everyone can learn, not everyone can pay people off for what they want.

Some are pretty outraged at making $371,000 a year. Non-profit indeed.

Paul didn’t mention the class size gap, which is only solved in charter schools.

Just one little example: Kids are better primed for learning in the AM and earlier lunch hours create post-lunch issues. Note how Harlem Success gets to take over the lunchroom at 11:30 while the publc school kids have to eat earlier.

http://www.uft.org/news/teacher/general/charter_trying_to_squeeze_out/

A visitor to PS 149/PS 811 in Harlem would be hard pressed to know what exactly was in the building.
Approaching the school from Lenox Avenue and 118th Street, an observer sees a big bright sign announcing the name of the school.
The sign reads “Harlem Success Academy,” for a charter school which now shares a building with PS 811, a District 75 school, and PS 149. Both public schools are staffed by idealistic educators who, every day, brighten the lives of their students.
Harlem Success Academy is run by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz who, according to Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News, earned $371,000 in the 2006-2007 school year running “not for profit” organizations operating four charter schools.
Moskowitz wants even more publicly owned school space — at no cost to her organization — to eventually drive the special education students out of their school.
On March 27, a team of UFT staffers, along with Shelvy Young-Abrams, chair of the UFT paraprofessionals chapter, and UFT Acting District 75 Representative Phil Sylvester, inspected the entire building. What they found was a school that already is forced — by Department of Education directives — to share space with Harlem Renaissance HS. Students at PS 811 must eat lunch before 11:30 because the school run by Moskowitz gets the lunchroom after that.
After touring the school and talking to educators and administrators, Young-Abrams had a succinct comment on what is happening in the name of a “better” privately run education: “It’s a disgrace that our students are being treated like second-class citizens,” she said.
The assistant principal of PS 811, Christina Foti, told the UFTers, “We are losing things that create joy for our students.”
The music room is gone and the stuffy science room has no windows. Visitors saw overcrowded hallways as the public school students waited for the Harlem Success students to pass them by.

One classroom at PS 811 is so crowded that therapist Orli Himmelweit has to work with students in the hallways.
The occupational therapy-physical therapy room is so small that another teacher must use a hallway to teach her student motor skills. One teacher must close her door because it is directly across the hall from the noisy cafeteria. The site coordinator has no telephone in her office to call parents and must walk the length of one city block to the other side of the building to deal with any emergency.
To get to the SAVE room, teachers must walk through another school that shares the building. Also at risk is professional development space now used by District 75.
According to Chapter Leader Mike Santos, PS 811 works. It is a model of collaboration between the staff, administrators and involved parents. He said the uncertainty of what is going to happen to the school “takes a toll on morale.” At the last Parents Association meeting, 75 percent of the parents showed up.
The UFT visitors also found cluttered space marked for egress because there is no room to store supplies and furniture. They found a bathroom in need of an adjustable changing table, an item that costs $2,000, which one DOE staffer called “very expensive.”
PS 811, built in 1968, is named after former New York Yankees baseball player Mickey Mantle, who was a hero to many public school kids in the 1950s and 1960s. The students at PS 811 need another hero to save their school from the grip of “not for profits” that pay their executives $370,000 a year.

Way too much say us critics in the UFT considering the state the teachers are in and especially since she supports charter schools. But the UFT is a like a monarchy with inherited rights. But if you want to compare, Eva has 1000 kids and Randi has UFT 250,000 members plus the AFT who pay dues that pay her salary and we’re not a so-called non-profit that claims to put children first and Randi probably makes less.

“we’re not a so-called non-profit that claims to put children first”

Wow, what a statement of the purpose of the UFT.

Give me one reason why Klein couldn’t close down those schools and replace them with new public schools. Let Eva Moskowitz find her own space. Her charter school expansion shouldn’t come at the expense of public school space. Why do we keep a chancellor who concedes defeat to making better public schools in tough neighborhoods? Perhaps because he has no accountability to parents. It is a perversion of justice that he can send so many kids off to fend for themselves, and somehow the UFT is to blame when they force him to obey city and state laws. It’s pathetic than so many people who post here think that the only way to fix schools is to break the law, and that the “poor chancellor” can’t get his reforms through because the UFT controls school safety, custodial services, food services and the school construction authority.

Ms. Steele,
Of course he could replace failing schools with new public schools. But what fundamental changes will the DOE be able to make? Will the teachers from the old public school be removed, or simply reshuffled into the (most likely) smaller schools that will occupy the same building? Will a new approach be taken by the schools that move in to somehow address the shortcomings the old schools struggled with? What about the costs for new administrative staff in the new smaller schools?
While I don’t believe wholeheartedly in charters as the answer, I do believe they should be an option. Did the Chancellor go about his business in the best way? No. He could, and should, have at least given the appearance of listening to the parents and other stakeholders in the area before deciding to”charterize”. But I don’t believe that a UFT lawsuit to cling to a failing school is the best answer either.

“Given the appearance” is exactly what Bloomberg and Klein have exhibited to the public as far as helping NYC schools. “Keep It Going, NYC.” vs. 83% of NYC high school graduates having to take remedial classes.