Charley on the MTA’s posting pasting Pioneer for laughable hatchetry runs up against reality. Yes, 3 of the 4 charters which were voted on at the February 2008 Board of Education were approved, with the 1300-student Brockton charter proposal turned down. Pioneer noted that this was groundbreaking and a u-turn on education reform for several reasons: (1) there is a robust up-front regulatory process used by the Department of Ed to weed out bad proposals (and protect the public purse), (2) no other charter proposal had ever been turned down after the DOE vetting process, and (3) the proponent (SABIS International) has a great record of success.
A couple of shoes dropped when Paul Reville (BOE chair and soon Secretary of Ed) was found to be using outdated DOE reviews to criticize the proposal, and when it was noted that his own Rennie Center report found SABIS in Springfield to be one of the best urban high schools in the state.
Well, uhm, now SABIS has been cited as having one of the top high schools in the US by Newsweek. See for yourself http://www.newsweek.com/id/393… Kids in the greater Brockton area need choices, and god knows we need to close the achievement gap. Laughable hatchetry? Yup. It was that of the administration for playing politics with the SABIS proposal. But I can assure you that kids and parents in Brockton are not laughing.
