GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

A chart from a 2010 analysis that compared charter schools' performance by authorizer.

When a researcher with a penchant for crunching charter school data sat down to compare New York State’s charter authorizers in 2010, her impetus wasn’t merely academic.

For Jonas Chartock, then the director of one of three authorizers, who requested an analysis, the data was a matter of survival.

“At the time there was a real push by some politicians to eliminate SUNY as an authorizer,” said Chartock, who headed SUNY’s Charter School Institute until early 2011.

Chartock asked Macke Raymond, a Stanford researcher who had just wrapped up a broad study of New York City’s charter sector, to examine her school performance data based on which office had authorized it. Her comparison showed up as an attachment to one of several hundred Department of Education emails released last week in response to a teachers union’s Freedom of Information Law request.

Raymond found that students at SUNY-authorized charter schools improved at a quicker pace than students at schools authorized by the State Education Department and the city Department of Education. At schools authorized by SED, she found, students actually lost ground over time. (more…)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo turned up his rhetoric against teachers unions today, charging that their influence made the state’s teacher evaluation law “destined to fail.”

Cuomo was responding to the Obama administration’s warning that New York could lose hundreds of millions of federal dollars if it does not speed up reforms that include overhauling how teachers are rated.

In 2010, with the deadline to apply for federal Race to the Top funds looming, legislators passed a law requiring districts to negotiate more sophisticated evaluations. That law was key to helping the state secure $700 million in the funding competition, and it is that law that the Obama administration now wants to see in effect.

But a requirement that districts negotiate some details with their local unions has hampered implementation, including in New York City.

Speaking several days after negotiations in several districts fell apart, Cuomo said in his State of the State address last week that the state’s teacher evaluation law “didn’t work.” Today, he took that characterization even further, suggesting that legislators had been excessively influenced by teachers unions and arguing that a different law is needed. (more…)