De Blasio Counters Charters With His Own ‘Innovation’ Schools
Jill Colvin
Mayor Bill de Blasio seems to have finally found a way to hit back at charter schools: beat them at their own game.
Among the many proposals in the new contract, unveiled yesterday between the city and the powerful teacher’s union, is a plan to create up to 200 “reform” or “innovation” schools that would be allowed to operate outside of the usual Department of Education and union rules. The plan, officials said, would allow the city to experiment with longer school years, different school day hours and other changes–including shaking up hard-fought hiring and seniority rules.
The vision, however, also struck some as surprisingly similar to charter schools, which have proven politically problematic for Mr. de Blasio during the early months of his first term. Today, during an interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, Mr. de Blasio made clear that’s exactly the point.
“This is different because this is the traditional public school system now squarely going down the road of innovation, but on our terms, in our way,” said the mayor when asked how the schools would compare to charters. “And what I’m committed to is changing the foundations of the New York City public schools and doing it within our own rubric. So now our schools, our teachers, our principals will decide on the path of innovation school-by-school and explicitly be charged with sharing what works with their fellow traditional public school principals and teachers.”
Read more at http://observer.com/2014/05/de-blasio-counters-charters-with-his-own-innovation-schools/#ixzz30ZpQTLyt