Still Putting Kids Last

Once again putting vested adult interests above the needs of New York schoolchildren, the state Education Department and Board of Regents are suing to try to stop alternative teacher-certification rules for some charter schools.

The new rules, OK’d by SUNY’s Charter Schools Committee in October, only apply to SUNY-governed public schools. But they’re still a threat to the players (education schools and teachers unions) who win under the old rules.

The suit should be thrown out: State law clearly lets SUNY set down the rules governing the charters it authorizes. Nor does the alternative system let just anyone start teaching: It requires both demonstrated subject knowledge and training in running a classroom.

But it will let charters hire in hard-to-fill areas like science, technology, engineering and math without forcing would-be teachers to spend years winning a (largely worthless) degree in education.

The lawsuit charges that the SUNY rules will permit “inexperienced and unqualified individuals” to teach and “negatively impact” student learning. Yet SED doesn’t explain why it’s been watering down its own teacher-certification standards.

Nor does it offer a bit of evidence that its own certification regime correlates with good academic outcomes. In fact, plenty of SED-certified teachers are “negatively impacting” children across the city and state right now — because state law makes it near-impossible to get rid of incompetents.

The whole point of charters is to allow experimentation — to give these independent public schools the freedom to innovate without suffocating bureaucratic regulations and union work rules.

And the best charters (many SUNY-authorized) have proved great successes, even as regular public schools in the same neighborhoods remain failure factories.

The grim truth is, if the Regents and their SED minions were truly concerned about teacher quality, they’d be busy fixing their own rules.