The article was in EdWeek but the first two paragraphs were posted here on 2.0, however, you could only reply to Nancy Flanagan if you subscribed to EdWeek. So here is a sample of my column on Education:

I disagree with Ravitch’s understanding. Many charter schools here in NYS are Public Charter Schools which means, primarily, that the teachers are not members of the Union. The Union (UFT) has a strange relationship to teachers and administrators in terms of its effect on educational quality or student achievement. As you know, teachers are rarely fired or given a poor evaluation by adminstrators but that does not mean that administrators are not feared or that there is no contest between Union activist teachers and administrators in terms of teaching quality and results. The Union’s strongest argument is their ability to improve teacher salary!

Consider a school where the teachers have very high fail rates of students on their report cards. Clearly, this indicates a tension between teachers and students over student work quality, student attitudes and behavior and whether students pay attention or study. But, this also reflects a tension with administration who are not permitted to address teacher’s grading policy beyond a very general notion. So, teachers can typically fail more than one-half of their students without accountability and this ‘prerogative’ cannot be sanctioned by administration. Students in NYC are often unable to master math and reading skills and this is attributed to parental or family life circumstances.

Teachers are also empowered by their Union to resist any administrator intervention into their classroom over teaching style and administrators are restricted in the quantity of observations they can or should make. The result is a competitive atmosphere between administrators and teachers and then between groups of teachers who are pro-union and those who are not; the pro-union teachers see their role as resisting and opposing administration on principle and policing teachers over their attitudes towards administrators and students. The pro-union teachers do not address how to run the schools more efficiently or how to teach so that students actually learn and demonstrate their proficiency – instead they undermine at every turn other teachers and administrator interventions including State and National curriculum changes The result is a punitive stance by small cliques of teachers against admin, other teachers and students empowered by the Union. Cliques which are, like ‘gangs,’ not explicitly addressed except as individual attitudes and behaviors; there is no ‘group dynamics’ or ‘organizational psychology’ in education!

Administrator responses are to attempt to form admin-friendly coalitions and to reduce faculty advantages through budgetary and time reductions.

The Charter School Movement is meant to change this nonsense. Higher pay and greater responsibilities along with greater expectations for success are thought to cause improvements even though the keys are student attitudes towards their own education and teacher effectiveness.