Help East Harlem Tutorial Program Win $1 Million
It’s not every day that you have an opportunity to make a big difference with very little effort expended. This is one of those days. East Harlem Tutorial Program (EHTP), a gem in the Harlem educational community, is part of Chase’s annual million dollar grant contest on Facebook. Voting ends tomorrow, October 5, at 12:OO […]
More A’s for Charters on NYC Progress Reports
Today, the NYC Department of Education (DOE) released its 2010-11 Progress Reports for public schools serving grades K-8, including charter schools. Overall, charter schools’ grades are improved from the previous year. More than a third of all charter schools, and half of charter middle schools, received an A grade. Powered by Tableau As in previous […]
Know When to Fold ‘Em
As has been widely reported (Times, Daily News, Reuters), Justice Feinman of New York Supreme Court recently dismissed the lawsuit (referred to as Steglich) aimed at seeking to stop the co-location of Upper West Success Academy Charter School in the Brandeis campus. Relying on an appellate court’s ruling in a separate lawsuit that the UFT […]
2011 Test Score Analysis
The Charter Center is committed to a sector built upon accountability and results for kids. Accordingly, we have conducted an analysis of New York City charter school state test scores that will allow the public to better understand the performance of individual schools and the sector overall. It is our hope that this report spurs […]
Conversation, Not Litigation
Over at the StudentsFirst blog today, I offer my take on where things stand after the recent ruling in the co-location lawsuit filed by the UFT and NAACP: The question is where do we go from here? School leaders and teachers are focusing on opening their doors in a month’s time. But the UFT and […]
District Principals Need Autonomy, Too
When charter school critics wax eloquent about traditional school districts, I always wonder (sometimes out loud) when they became enamored of the Department of Education bureaucracy. I know many principals and teachers don’t share that affection. Take this whole saga of principals who prudently saved money in 2010-11, knowing they would face harder times in […]
Not Civil, Not Right
I sat across the aisle from Clifford Thomas at the PEP meeting yesterday. He looked bone tired. Cliff grew up in the projects, eventually making his way to Harvard. He has now returned to New York to start a public charter school in CSD 19. As anyone who has ever started a public school knows, […]
Thoughts from the National Charter Schools Conference
I attended a session this morning at the National Charter Schools Conference on whether the charter movement can follow through on its accountability promise of closing low-performing charter schools. It’s a critical topic for reasons too obvious to lay out here. Fact is that too many states (though generally not New York) haven’t been closing […]
The Case of the Missing 20 Yards
In today’s NYT, we read about the mystery of the missing 20 yards from Lehman High School’s football fieldówhich will somehow still be missing even after a nearly $4 million remodel. Where are those missing yards? If you listen to the bureaucrats at the Department of Education and the School Construction Authority, you would be […]
No Win Situation
Today, the Daily News ran a story whose headline and lead sentence implied that the decision of the Brooklyn Prospect Charter School to seek space in a privately owned building has resulted in its displacing two day care centers. This couldn’t be further from the truth. A careful reading of the whole article reveals a […]
