Bennett closed two public schools rather than give them the break he gave donor's charter

[phantom power]

It's not enough that former Indiana and Florida schools chief Tony Bennett raised the grade of a charter school run by a Republican donor during his time in Indiana. No, Bennett actually closed two Indianapolis public schools rather than give them the same loophole the charter school got:

The issue was similar in both cases. Christel House had recently added ninth and 10th grades, and IPS’ Howe and Arlington had added middle school grades. The students who filled those seats posted poor enough scores to drag down the schools’ overall ratings.

In the case of Christel House, emails unearthed by The Associated Press show Bennett’s staff sprung into action in 2012 when it appeared scores from the recently added grades could sink the highly regarded school’s rating from an A to a C. Ultimately, the high school scores were excluded and the school’s grade remained an A.

But in 2011, after IPS’ then-Superintendent Eugene White demanded Bennett consider the test scores of high school students separately from those of middle school students so the high schools could avoid state takeover, Bennett was unmoved.

In corporate education policy world, public schools get the losing end of a double standard that absolves charter schools of all kinds of failure. Where it's not directly because charter schools have money and cozy relationships with politicians, as here, it's because of an ideology that says money and private profit entering the education system is good, and excluding some kids from schools is just fine.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/02/1228511/-Bennett-closed-two-public-schools-rather-than-give-them-the-break-he-gave-donor-s-charter

[DirkGently]

1. Yep. Just a flat-out scheme to steal tax dollars for private schools.

[liberal_at_heart]

4. These people are scum bags. How can anyone do this to children?

[reusrename]

2. It's obvious why our criminal governor hired this guy.

It's organized crime.

[Igel]

3. I think Slate's a bit better.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/do_the_math/2013/08/tony_bennett_education_an_astonishing_act_of_statistical_chutzpah_in_the.html

Christel House had low 9th and 10th grade scores (esp. algebra, apparently). It was screwy to drop the high school numbers entirely, but it's a bit different from the IPS case. Sort of the flip, actually.

CH didn't have high school graduation rates and college/career readiness scores, and neither did 10+ other schools.That means there's no room for error. You get one chance to not screw up and if you screw up, you're sunk. There's always error. It's why the formula includes four different scores. Mess up one, the other two can pull you up. Slate asks what happens if you're missing two scores. Their solution is to average the two remaining ones. I think that's also screwy. The system is there for the typical school, not the atypical school.

Consider middle + high school as one school and you're still dinged with two 0s to compensate for. Even then, CH would have gotten a B.

IPS has high school graduation rates and college/career readiness scores. They could average them in. They screwed up two grades and that pulled their average down, so their average wasn't all that great to begin with. Separating out the middle school might have saved the high school at the expense of the middle school.

Personally, first year or two a school's open its test scores should just be ignored in all cases. They usually do better the second year, after all the policies and procedures are in place. And kids typically cue in a bit better.

[LWolf]

5. School test scores

should be extinct, period. In my professional opinion.