The test scores for students in a United Federation of Teachers-run charter school in New York City have been obtained by a blogger, and the results are disappointing. Some might ask what the teachers union is doing running a charter school when it already has a lot of influence, through its contract, on the rest of the public schools in New York City. At the New York Sun, we had defended the idea of allowing the UFT to run a charter school while also reporting on some of the school's problems early on. The results: "in 2007-2008, the UFT Charter School received a raw Progress Report score that put it in the bottom 15% of all schools in New York City. In 2008-2009, despite the fact that the school's grade rose from a C to a B, its raw Progress Report Score actually put it in the bottom 6% of schools citywide."
So much for the union's theory that a big part of what is holding back student progress in the city's schools is management's failure to let the teachers run the schools they way the teachers want to.
