NY Post ed board weighs in on the plight of the UFT Two saying no soup schools for you! They make the point on the cap issue, which is very important, and also raise the conversion issue. The UFT could convert schools to charter status but then you don’t get control over staff as with a start-up…
Still, all things considered, Eduwonk still says, free the UFT Two! A deal on the cap would be nice (and looks like it is coming, minority legislators are getting increasingly frustrated with the status quo), but this is a good project to allow because it’s good to get teachers’ unions in the business of formally running schools and because there will be plenty of scrutiny…
Update: An Eduwonk source in NYC writes:
The thing I can’t get past, and perhaps this is too myopic on my part, is that we have a chance to give kids in East New York (one of the toughest and most underserved parts of the city) a better school. There are some conservatives who feel this is a set-up, that it is meant to fail to give charters a black eye. But the UFT is so insistent that this will prove their contract is OK that those theories are as wacky as the UFT’s about conservatives are.
They will cheat [on the contract] if they have to, but they will make sure this school succeeds. There is not an ounce of doubt in my mind.
The problem is going to be when they start spinning their results a few years from now…