New York state's charter schools breaking their promise

Most charter schools are underperforming the traditional public schools in their districts, according to a report released today by New York State United Teachers. The report found that only 13 percent of charter schools had shown higher academic achievement than their public school counterparts.

"The numbers don't lie," said NYSUT President Richard C. Iannuzzi. "It's clear that the performance of charter schools has been lackluster at best. Increasing the number of charter schools in New York state may serve some political agenda, but it won't serve the needs of our students."

The study, titled "Broken Promise: How the charter school experiment is falling short," compared the results of 2004-05 4 th and 8 th grade state assessments for students at charter schools with comparable public schools in the district. Fewer than 13 percent of the charter schools had better test results than the traditional public schools. NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan B. Lubin also noted that charter schools have drained tremendous resources from local public schools, particularly in Albany and Buffalo.

"Charter schools were created to be better than traditional public schools," Lubin said. "That's just not happening. And who knows how much better public schools in cities like Albany could be performing if they hadn't been devastated by cuts made to pay for charter schools."

Lubin said the charter school report has been sent to the governor and every legislator. He said the goal of the study was to ensure that the Legislature had a clear picture of the poor performance of most charter schools before they returned to Albany for this week's special legislative session.

" New York state hasn't received much bang for its charter school bucks," Lubin said. "There should have been a Hippocratic oath applied to the creation of charter schools: First, do no harm. Unfortunately, a lot of harm has already been done to public schools. But, hopefully, this report will help ensure that the Legislature doesn't do any more harm when it's in Albany."
"Charter schools were set up to encourage the use of new and innovative approaches to education that could be replicated in other schools," NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira said. "This report shows the educational programs offered by charter schools are already being used in public schools throughout the state."

The report also found that charter schools tend to serve students who are more advantaged than the general population of the district they're located in, and charters also have one-sixth the number of English language learners and far fewer special education students. The report examined test results for local public schools with the same or a higher percentage of students eligible for free lunch as the charter schools.

"We compared apples to apples, and that's the only comparison that matters," Neira said.

NYSUT represents 575,000 teachers, school-related professionals, academic and professional faculty in higher education, professionals in education and health care and retirees. NYSUT is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association and the AFL-CIO.

DOWNLOAD: Complete Report.
http://www.nysut.org/files/BrokenPromise_brochure061207.pdf

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