Mayor de Blasio’s PROSE school program, billed as the city’s answer to charters, has produced lackluster results, according to a report by a charter-advocacy group.
Launched in 2014, participating schools were freed from some United Federation of Teachers union and Department of Education rules in a bid to foster greater innovation and creativity.
But StudentsFirstNY says academic advances at Progressive Redesign Opportunity for Schools of Excellence facilities have lagged behind charters.
“In PROSE schools, English proficiency grew by 28 percent from 2014 to 2016, while charter schools nearly doubled those results, improving by 53 percent,” the report said.
“Despite the rhetoric from Mayor de Blasio, it’s clear that PROSE schools are not as effective as the charters they seek to emulate,” said Jenny Sedlis, executive director of StudentsFirstNY.
A UFT spokeswoman said, “Since the StudentsFirstNY ‘findings’ make no attempt to account for the difference in student poverty and other demographics between PROSE schools and charters, the report hardly qualifies as research.”