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A small window of opportunity to resume settlement talks between dueling sides in the charter school co-location lawsuit has been slammed shut.

On Tuesday, an attorney for the teachers union publicly invited charter school supporters to discuss a deal on the condition that the group apologize for staging rallies against the NAACP, which is a fellow plaintiff along with the union. Today, a group of those supporters released a strongly worded statement declining the offer.

The union attorney, Charles Moerdler, made his comments after Tuesday’s hearing. Moerdler called the negative sentiment that has surrounded NAACP’s involvement in the lawsuit “disgraceful.”

“What they did to they NAACP is one of the most disgraceful acts I’ve ever seen,” Moerdler said, referring to a large rally organized last month. “This is an entity that made our education what it was. They opened the boundaries and cleared the way for people to get an education.”

He then presented NAACP’s critics a way out: Apologize.

“They’re not sitting with me until they apologize to the NAACP,” he said. ”I don’t even want to talk to them.”

But a statement released this afternoon and attributed to Joe Williams, of Democrats for Education Reform, James Merriman, of New York City Charter School Center and Eva Moskowitz, of Success Charter Network, makes it clear that no apology is coming:

“While the leadership of the UFT and New York City chapter of the NAACP have demanded an apology from the same charter schools that their lawsuit threatens to close before even sitting down to talk, the only people who should be apologizing are those trying to deny families the right to choose the best education for their kids.”

Flier faxed today to City Councilman Robert Jackson

The main purpose of a charter school parent rally tomorrow is to demand that the NAACP withdraw from a lawsuit that threatens some charter schools. But not everyone being recruited to the rally is being told that the NAACP is its intended target.

The office of City Councilman Robert Jackson received a fax at 3:33 p.m. that asks elected officials to “support us and come speak at the rally tomorrow.” The fax, whose origin was not identified, says the rally is “to save our schools from the lawsuit” and is signed “Harlem Parents.”

Jackson, who chairs the council’s education committee, is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the UFT and NAACP to stop 22 school closures and prevent 17 charter schools from opening, moving, or expanding.

In fact, more than 1,600 parents have signed on to a letter to the NAACP, according to Kerri Lyon, a spokeswoman for the New York City Charter School Center, which is supporting the rally. “They clearly know who is standing in their way,” Lyon said. (more…)

A chart from the CREDO study shows black and Hispanic students in charter schools have higher scores on reading and math tests than peers in district schools.

Students in nearly 50 charter schools across the city are outperforming their peers in district schools on state tests, according to a study by an education research group at Stanford University.

The report, which was done by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, known as CREDO, uses the same methodology the group used when looking at the performance of charter schools in several states across the country. Looking at 49 city charter schools from the 2003-04 to 2008-09 school years, CREDO matched data from about 20,000 students in grades 3-8 to an identical number of students with comparable scores at local competing district schools. Though the Department of Education asked CREDO to do the analysis, the foundation procured its own funding for it.

CREDO’s study of charter schools across the country offered a mixed picture — charter schools in some states did better than local schools, while others did worse — but New York City stands out as having a particularly successful crop of charter schools. (more…)

The city’s Department of Education has nearly hit the ceiling on the number of charter schools it is allowed to authorize and will not approve any more until the state cap is lifted.

On Monday, the DOE sent a list of 15 approved charter schools to the State Education Department for final authorization, leaving it and other school boards with only three new charters available.

State law limits the number of charter schools to 200 and there are currently 164 charters operating around the state. Of the 36 remaining new charters available, half may be authorized by the State University of New York. The other half may be authorized by the New York City Schools Chancellor or other local school boards and then approved by the state Board of Regents.

“From our perspective, we’ve approved 15 applications and submitted them to the state and if the cap is not lifted, we will not be submitting any more,” Ann Forte, a spokeswoman for the DOE, said. (more…)

Burned by Albany funding cuts, charter school advocates are turning to a political base that they’ve long left untapped: parents.

In mid-October, a dozen charter school administrators gathered in a conference room at the Times Square Marriott for a seminar on the role of parents in charter school advocacy. Kenneth Peterson, a director of strategic partnerships at the New York State Charter School Association told the group that the charter school movement has a secret problem: it has almost no grassroots parent advocacy.

New York State’s political climate had changed, Peterson explained. Last year, legislators froze the amount of money that charter schools receive for each student they teach, effectively cutting their budgets. A fragile majority of charter school supporters in the State Senate made it imperative for charter school advocates to win over individual senators, rather than relying on friendships with a few party leaders.

“Crisis has a way of galvanizing folks around the need to act,” said Jeff Maclin, vice president for school advocacy at the New York City Charter School Center. “I think the ‘freeze’ in education funds to public charter schools this year was a wake up call to schools to make sure something like this does not happen again.” (more…)