Ten years ago the United Federation of Teachers launched a charter school in NYC to prove they could run a charter school and get the same results as the existing charter schools.. They wanted to show teachers know best when it comes to running a school.
Big promises were made by the UFT. But ,alas none came to pass. They have closed the elementary and middle-school portion leaving only the high school. They had high turnover with teachers. They ran through budget money. They had shortages of materials. But, most significant, test scores were substandard. For the 2013-2014 school years test scores were: 11% of third-through-eighth grades scored proficient on state reading exams, compared with 29% across the city, math was 18% compared with 34%.
This, while public charter schools like the Knowledge is Power Program or KIPP and Success Academy, which have a similar student profile, produce exceptional test scores. They have low teacher turnover and good parent satisfaction.
The lesson is clear. The unions can best criticize non-union charter schools and organize protests to prevent funding for expanding the success they create. They herald the fact that these schools have advantages over the public schools by cherry-picking their student populations. They contend the union schools can outperform the charter schools on an apples to apples comparison. But, when given the opportunity to show that is true, the result was abject failure. Running a union-managed charter school the union way resulted in the same poor performance the typical public schools are producing today. The very reason charter schools exist.
There you have it. It’s time for change and it needs to happen sooner rather than later. We owe it to our kids to make it happen. You pay the teacher’s unions more money to produce shrinking results and it just keeps getting worse. The pensions are unsustainable, ask Chicago. Your property taxes will reach a level where your home price will start dropping again. It’s a new housing bubble created by a union that is indifferent to results and supported by one political party and the media that supports that party. Wisconsin got rid of the forced teacher union situation and test scores are going up and the lousy teachers who caused them are going away. That’s reality.
