The very successful states in the USA are all very highly unionized. The Right to Work states are all close to the bottom. The Finlands and Albertas, ans Massachusetts of the world are highly unionized. Black kids in highly unionized Mass. do as well as Finland.

I had to laugh at this - ““The parents are very unhappy. Some of the parents are talking about taking their kids out of the school,” Ms. Cribb said before the meeting. “I don’t want parents to take their kids out.”
A regular review of the school issued by the State University of New York’s Charter School Institute about the 2006-2007 school year called teacher quality “limited,” describing “a lack of student engagement throughout most classrooms” and widespread misbehavior.
The report also noted that, “Teachers did not capitalize on ‘teaching moments.’..................They said one man, a former parent who is a city firefighter, gave a stirring description of challenges his son faced at the school that ultimately led him to pull his son out.

“Things like that should not happen,” the father of two children at the school, Daniel Morgan, said as he left the meeting. “I’ve had an excellent experience with my children, but I would like to make sure it remains that way,”
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/uft-in-a-race-to-avert-a-school-revolt/73539/

LOL, because union contract agreements of the teachers’ kind, with the competing ideologies unions favours,  usually impacts students’ achievement and the students/parents ability to exercised and insert their individual students’ rights to come first over the collective of the teachers’ unions needs and wants.

Translation, no doubt the firefighter parent was faced with the situation of his children declining achievement grades versus the ‘the teacher knows best’ dogma versus the ‘the parent doesn’t know anything’ dogma that was having a negative affect on the parent’s and children relationship at home. The parent could not change UFT school policies, but he could change schools to rescue his son’s education.

That said, I tried searching under various search terms to get the goods on the UFT charter school. Even the school site web site, is devoid of information, that makes me wonder why are they maintaining a web page, in the first place, when there is little information on it, besides when the first day of school is for January. In other words, it is a closed shop like the teachers’ union is a closed shop.

In the Huffington Post - “As members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) often say, charter schools are no silver bullet for fixing education. No greater proof point exists for this statement than the alarming failure of the UFT Charter School in New York City. Founded by representatives from its union namesake, when it opened, union heavyweights like Randi Weingarten expressed surety that the UFT could birth and sustain a good school. Sadly, several years later, the school has repeatedly shown that it is not able to educate students well. On any given day, two out of every three students you walk past in the school’s halls cannot read proficiently at grade level standards, and are barely able to function mathematically at grade level standards.”

The Huffington Post article goes on to state - “How can a union that claims to care about improving academic standards, buttressing the quality of instruction and closing the achievement gap, sponsor a school that is apparently doing none of the above? Part of the answer lies in the fact that many of the rules that the UFT has instituted or has gone to great lengths to defend run counter to what evidence is showing to be pivotal to the academic success of historically underserved children. Is it possible that the UFT doesn’t realize that best practices, not politics are what really matter for kids? More time for students to learn, a robust instructional culture that includes review and critique of lesson plans in advance of teaching, frequent teacher observations and feedback—these factors are all hallmarks of successful learning environments yet they are among the very ideas that the UFT has been loathe to embrace.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paula-white/the-uft-charter-schools-w_b_1965954.html

Not only do teachers’ unions don’t like competition, but they also don’t like schools that moved beyond politics of the unions, that wants education quality dictated by the political and ideologies of union culture. It is clearly displayed in the UFT charter schools After seven years, the UFT union rhetoric that they have all the answers clearly shows that they don’t, and may very well indicate that teachers’ unions inhibits achievement of all students.

With a trained eye one can see what is going on. The union school is attempting to educate every kid that shows up. The non-union schools are up to the old tricks of pushing out the hard to teach kids and raiding other schools for “good kids” . It is the oldest game in education. By using srlective enrolement policies and pushouts they are later able to claim superior results.

Watch the number if kids pushed out just before big exams to maximize the grant and minimize the weak results.

The speak openly in meetings that “Bobby” is dragging down our scores. Time to get rid of him.

thought I’d check to see what and who is new here today.
lucked out on both counts. The Doug/Nancy bait, catch and release.
On to 2013 I guess.

Mr. Union Joe/Doug/Dean,

1000 excuses. How about providing some quantitative insight rather than bald, generalizations and condescending dismissals.

You sound like one of the executives from Morgan Stanley as he walked out of the building for the last time when the thing melted down.  Until the final moment, they rationalized and made excuses..until they didn’t have an office anymore.  Never a moment of humble apology for failing their depositors. Will the unions slide down the same hole, I sure hope not. I am not against unions. Unfortunately, they in many ways are a victim of their own success which coupled with an extraordinary lack of creativity and imagination has brought them to a very dubious position to provide any kind of leadership outside of totalitarian rule.

To be unable or unwilling to acknowledge failure, virtually guarantees that there can never be true success. Our successes are more often than not built upon our learned experience, some of which represents failure.

Season Greetings to All and a Happy New Year !

There are really no excuses needed, depending how you measure it Canada has one of the worlds best education systems. In terms of thr % of students who graduate from post secondary it IS the worlds and the only system on Earth over 50%. Nevertheless, some people want to introduce mediocre experiments from the USA #17 in the world. The Canadian system is not perfect and increasingly underfunded. The onus is on critics to point to a full size nation, not one school or a city-state but a full sized nation with better results. I never seem to get a real answer to this quuestion.

First Joe, better obtain the stats on the graduation rates of post secondary and compared it to the entry of first year students. In other words track student data beyond the K to 12 system. Good luck in finding it, because there is no formalized tracking.

Post-secondary includes adult schools, even if the adult schools are within the K to 12 system. Its data if track are categorized as post-secondary.

No nation, including Canada are willing to provide the data tracking students after the K to 12 students. None of them are willing to published the data streams that tells a much different story than the the educationalists and their spin on the numbers.

Doug, your’re dislike for charter schools and vouchers are apparent. But it did not stopped you from opening up an exclusive private school, for the wealthy Chinese parents and their children. Nor did your scrubbles stopped you, from taking advantage of the foreign student and other immigration programs to facilitate the flow of Chinese students from one year to the next, and the guarantee for the Chinese students, entry into their choice of post-secondary institute.

In Canada, the Moores were awarded $100,000 for the cost of private tuition, starting at grade 4 to grade 12. The school board got off cheap, at a cost no more than what the costs are funding per average student. Note the costs of the private tuition did total $100,000, and yet the school board could not provide the education services for the Moore boy, let alone any other severe LD boy unless the school board double the funding, to $20,000.

Underfunded? No, the public education system is far from being underfunded. They system is unsustainable, for two reasons. The high price help and the structural design of the education system, that prevents innovation, in favour for the high price help. Some students can be educated for far less dollars, than other students. But according the public educator experts, all students required the same number of hours of schooling, no more or no less for the same amount of dollars. That is just the start, but underfunded no way. The union has ensure that funding is redirected away from students to the small army needed to educate the students, to pay for the salaries, and increasing staff additions, while maintaining equal funding per student formula.

No doubt, teachers’ unions will be against any funding changes that does not serve their best interests first and foremost. Bottom line, it is why they are against choice, because choice works against the teachers’  union’s best interests.

Of course more enter first year than graduate, this is the same in all countries. Canda has the highest graduation rate on Earth. Like everyone in the federations i am happy about the Moore case. My wife owns and runs her school i just help her out. One thing we believe, we should not receive public money of any kind. I dont oppose all charters it depends on the rules but they are experiments not a parallel system. Vouchrrs are a terrible idea but luckily they are unpopular.