Charter school not making the grade, a scathing report by a local newspaper

[erodriguez]

From the New York Amsterdam News a local paper covering Harlem, New York City.

Charter school not making the grade

By Nayaba Arinde, 
Amsterdam News Editor
 and
By Cyril Josh Barker, Amsterdam News Staff
Published: Thursday, October 7, 2010 12:05 AM EDT


Who’d have thunk it? When Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrestled school control from the Board of Education in 2002, he said a near Nirvana would ensue in the New York public school system; thousands of parents – perhaps close to 1.1 million schools kids, may beg to differ.

The release last week of the report card for the city’s schools show a drop in the grades, which have the uber hyped charter schools doing even worse...

“Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have failed,” said City Councilman Charles Barron, the former chair of the City Council’s Education Committee. “The test scores prove that we right all along. Scores dropped 26 percent in reading and 28 percent in math. This at a time when they turned our schools into test taking mills, with test prep every other period. There’s no arts, no music, no science labs, no extra curricular activities. Then they have the nerve to push charter schools, which the test scores show have not been as successful as they claim. Even the banner school – Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children Zone did not fair as well as they declared.”...

Of the schools that made a “C” was the famed charter school Harlem Children’s Zone/Promise Academy II, which had a higher grade last year.

On the school’s report card, the DOE said that while HCZ, which is ran by celebrated educator Geoffrey Canada, had superior performance in school environment and student performance, student progress received an “F” grade.

Student progress measures median student improvement from last year to this year in English Language Arts and math. HCZ received a score of 10.6 out of 60 in the progress area...

The grade has reopened the conversation on charter schools as a better choice for the city’s children. Mayor Michael Bloomberg aims to open 100 charter schools at the same time the report card reveals that charter schools underperformed district schools...



“These scores remind us that we should never believe the hype, that we should scrutinize what we are being told,” said Sen. Bill Perkins. “Our children deserve a state of the art education, and the results show that we are not getting this, even in the places that are bragging that superman has arrived,” said Perkins referencing the documentary film “Waiting for Superman.”

“Where there is success we should celebrate it; but we have those models in the public school system too. You have PS180 in Harlem, with Principal Peter McFarlane. But they don’t look at those types of schools to see what the leadership is doing there and try and to replicate it in other schools. The charter school movement is trying to undermine public schools. Superman may be coming, but in all fairness he’s not here yet, and there’s a lot of room for improvement.”

The charter school movement needs to stop misleading our parents that this is the answer then coming up short come test time. Our parents are desperately trying to give their kids a good education, so they will believe anything. Sometimes their faith is misplaced.”

According to the UFT, of the 60 elementary or middle school charters that were rated, 48 percent got As or Bs. By contrast, 61 percent of district schools got As or Bs.


Assemblywoman Inez Barron said that the grade is a clear example that the city should put the breaks on rushing to get charter schools off the ground and that they are no different from any other school.

She said, “I think that this is a blatant timely revelation that charter schools are not achieving at the level that have been widely reported by Bloomberg and company. With all of the support from large corporations, HCZ is demonstrating that they are no different than public schools.”



Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.amsterdamnews.com/articles/2010/10/06/news/doc4caceb120d81d305342419.txt