The Hartford Courant’s Kathy Megan reported that yesterday the State Board of Education (all gubernatorial appointees) granted a three-year approval to the Achievement First – Hartford charter school (rather than 5 years) and a one year probation for ongoing problems of violating teacher certification laws, poor culture and climate, and excessive suspensions of children.
As I’ve written before here, Connecticut’s law, despite some tweaking last year, is endlessly flexible when it comes to charter school accountability. Being the State’s preferred education reform policy, privately-managed charter schools will never be shut down regardless of the laws they happen to violate or the harm they cause students. Flexible accountability is an advantage that public schools do not enjoy, however.
You can read the State Board’s resolution here and below is a segment of the text from the resolution.
Renewal of State Charter – Achievement First Hartford Academy (pg.4)
Source: CT State Department of Education, 2016.
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Robert Cotto Jr.
Robert Cotto, Jr. is a Lecturer in the Educational Studies department. Before his work at Trinity, he was a Senior Policy Fellow in K-12 Education for CT Voices for Children where he published reports on Connecticut’s testing system, public school choice, and K-12 education data and policy. He taught for seven years as a social studies teacher at the Metropolitan Learning Center for Global and International Studies (MLC), an interdistrict magnet school intended to provide a high-quality education and promote racial, ethnic, and economic integration. Born and raised in Connecticut, Mr. Cotto was the first in his family to go to college and he earned his B.A. degree in sociology at Dartmouth College, his Ed.M. at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. in American Studies at Trinity College. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in education policy at the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education. Robert lives with his wife and son in the Forster Heights area of the Southwest neighborhood in Hartford. Views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Trinity College.
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You are correct, the areas where they are not in compliance would not be tolerated. At HPHS, they were on probation for issues related to the delay in construction, not that it was ok, but at least there was a reason. In the fall, you know who the teachers are going to be,and you know what their credentials are… so how could occur? And the expulsion rate, it seems they don’t look at their data sets. It had to show an increase in discipline issues and sorted by the types of referrals. I know that in public schools it is reviewed and scrutinized at every staff meeting.