Our findings confirm that charter schools enroll a smaller percentage of special education students than do district schools. But more importantly, charter schools do not enroll the same kind of special ed students as the district schools.
Reports
Research, analysis and policy recommendations from the UFT.
While research has shown the city is attracting more highly-qualified teachers, the attrition data show many of those teachers move on after a few years. The data cannot tell us where they go, but other reports suggest they leave to teach in suburban schools, they take on administrative assignments, or they leave the profession after putting in a few years.
Despite the fact that New York’s charter school legislation prohibits discrimination in student admissions, it is now clear that New York City’s charter schools, as a group, are failing to serve a representative sample of the city’s public school children.
The proposals crafted here try to maintain what has worked – a very direct tie between the DOE and mayor — and at the same time correct what has not worked, by ensuring checks and balances throughout the school system.
Eliminating overcrowding and reducing class size are among the most critical elements in providing a quality education for New York City schoolchildren. Unfortunately, according to the latest available official data, thirty eight percent of public school students still attend schools in buildings that are overcrowded, and the vast majority of them attend classes that exceed state and national averages. Rather than being an issue of “pocket overcrowding”, this is a systemic problem that requires a systemic analysis and solution.
A Critique of The New Teacher Project Report “Mutual Benefits: New York City’s Shift to Mutual Consent in Teacher Hiring”
Staffing all schools with talented educators is best accomplished by helping those who are in classrooms now be the best they can be, supporting them as they master the craft and become lifelong professionals. While that is obvious to most educators it is not obvious to a management organization like The New Teacher Project, which focuses almost exclusively on getting rid of teachers they deem to be weak and trying to recruit new ones.
Under the state-approved Contracts for Excellence (C4E), New York City agreed to reduce average class size systemwide in the 2007-08 school year, with a special focus on high-needs, low-performing schools. While the system’s average class sizes did go down by a fraction, the averages mask disturbing patterns. Class sizes were almost as likely to increase as to decrease, including in the highest needs schools, and spending was no predictor of class size reduction.
In a series of public forums on high stakes testing this task force held throughout the city in December 2006 and January 2007, teachers, parents, students, elected officials and others with a stake in public education spoke out about the adverse affect the current high stakes testing culture is having on instruction and learning. While recognizing the importance of testing and assessment as an indicator of student progress and a valuable resource for guiding instruction, these forums showed that many members of the public are concerned about excessive testing as well as inappropriately linking the results of these tests to important decisions about a student's or a school's future.
Small schools often provide opportunities for teacher voice in a personalized, collegial, collaborative and professional work place. For parents and students, small schools provide another choice in the public school system. Nevertheless, the recent surge in small schools has caused serious problems.
New York City had to hire more than 9,000 new teachers for the 2003-04 school year alone, the equivalent of 11.5 percent of its 78,000-member teaching force. In fact, the city has hired almost that many new teachers every year since 1997.
Given the attacks on public education, the widespread frustration with the seemingly slow pace of reform, the focus on teacher competence and the public perception that teacher unions, despite proof to the contrary, oppose reform, the UFT established a committee to take a hard and often difficult look at the role the UFT must play in assuring teacher quality.