Editorials

A new “State of the Sector” report by the New York City Charter School Center is one of the first from within the charter sector itself to acknowledge some troubling data on charter schools that the UFT and other analysts have been raising concerns about for years.

Former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and former Washington, D.C., Chancellor Michelle Rhee are apparently not content with the havoc they have already wreaked on our schools. Now they are forming a New York offshoot of Rhee’s national StudentsFirst organization to promote vouchers and anti-union charter schools, oppose tenure and promote test prep.

It boggles the mind to think that after cutting funding for subsidized child care for low-income families for five years in a row, Mayor Bloomberg would now be pushing to eliminate 16,000 more slots for low-income kids.

Job satisfaction among teachers has plummeted to its lowest level in more than 20 years, according to MetLife’s most recent annual survey of the nation’s public school teachers. Only 44 percent of teachers surveyed reported being very satisfied with their jobs, compared with 59 percent in 2009.

Anyone wondering why teachers need a fair appeals process when their livelihoods are threatened should consider the case of Lisa Capece, an untenured teacher on Staten Island whose principal unfairly terminated her four years ago. The injustice was so blatant that a state judge ordered the city Department of Education to rehire her with full back pay, interest, tenure and seniority.

Editors at the New York Post love to accuse the UFT of being too cozy with city and state elected officials. But they conveniently ignore the enormous and growing ties between their boss, Rupert Murdoch, the anti-union chairman and CEO of News Corporation, and city Department of Education decision-makers.

During his State of the Union address, President Obama urged Congress to reintroduce and pass the DREAM Act, a bill that would create a path to citizenship for students who arrived in the United States as children of undocumented immigrants and allow them to apply for college loans and state scholarships.

The tough economy that has battered so many Americans has been particularly hard on needy children, so it would seem logical for federal, state and local governments to step up efforts to aid them. But given Congress’ insistence on protecting the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor, needy families have sadly learned to lower their expectations.

Most people have the capacity to learn from their mistakes, but there are some who will never get it. Consider, for example, Mayor Bloomberg’s remarks in a Nov. 29 speech at MIT where he claimed the New York City school system would be better off if he could lay off half the teacher workforce, pay the remaining teachers more, and double class sizes.