New York State Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos is outraged by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to cancel classroom space for three high-performing Success Academy charter schools.

In an interview for “The Capital Pressroom,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo praises the charter school movement.

Next year, Shea Reeder will likely have to enroll her son in a public school that is performing at a significantly lower level instead of keeping him in a successful charter school.

Thousands of New York City parents and students fear that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña will curtail the charter school movement.

The decision to allow the UFT Charter School to remain open for another two years is yet another example of politics coming before the interests of our kids. We must never accept failure in our schools. When that failure is as consistent and persistent as has been the case since the union opened its charter school in 2005, then we must be willing to stand up to powerful interests and say enough is enough. This should be true for all public schools, regardless of whether they are a charter school or a district school. Undoubtedly, the union would be making the same argument about a charter school with the same record of poor performance and mismanagement were it not their own. And one can't help but wonder whether this decision was made fully on the merits.

In its second report on New York City charter schools released last week, Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) highlights some promising results, along with some areas for improvement. The report found that the typical student in a New York City charter school gained about five more months of learning in math and one more month of learning in reading when compared to their district school peers. 

Opponents of charter schools often cite a national study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) as evidence that charter schools don’t have a significant impact on student achievement. The 2009 CREDO study (PDF) examined charter school performance across 16 states (New York was not included) and found that only 17% of charter schools outperformed traditional public schools, while 37% performed worse.

Charter school leader Deborah Kenny’s op-ed in today’s The New York Times argues against the move by many states toward teacher evaluations based on multiple measures, including both student progress on achievement tests and the reviews of principals. She criticizes the evaluation systems, in essence, for being too rigid for a profession as complex as teaching.