Charter schools that boast high test scores should reveal their attrition rates as well.

[madfloridian]

That would only be fair, I think.

If a school is going to be honored for having higher test scores than public schools, then they should have to reveal how many students were dismissed back to public schools.

There is a price to pay for the high stakes' test scores that are the goal of the school "reformers." That price will be paid by the traditional public schools in our country. High test scores appear to have become the main goal of education under this administration, and the public schools will suffer for it. They will have to take and keep all students, while the schools of "choice" can pick and choose.

An obvious question.

Is Charter School Attrition Good for Test Scores?

The article mentions how the charter school movement is growing under Obama's policies.

But the charter school movement isn't without controversy. Recent research casts a shadow over the otherwise impressive statistics of high performing charters. Even charter supporters are wondering: What’s really going on?

Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School (WCCS), a member of the wildly successful Uncommon Schools charter network, has a clear mission: to prepare each student for college.

WCCS fits the mold associated with high performing urban charters: most students are African American and Hispanic (99 percent); the majority are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches (83 percent); students wear uniforms; classes are highly structured; and learning time is extended.

The article mentions that WCCS has among the highest test scores in NYC. Then it points out some research.

Sure enough, 11 out of the 13 charter schools showed significant shrinkage in the size of their testing cohorts. And the more the cohorts shrank over time, the higher the percentage of students achieving proficiency rose.

At Williamsburg, this trend was dramatic. Seventy-two 5th graders took the ELA test in 2006 with just under 60 percent achieving proficiency. Three years later, proficiency for that same cohort had skyrocketed to just below 95 percent, but only 44 students remained in the 8th grade cohort. That’s an attrition rate of 39 percent.

More from the researcher.

Vanishing Students, Rising Scores

Middle School Charters Show Alarming Student Attrition Over Time

As it turns out, high-performing charter middle schools in the New York City also have extremely high rates of attrition in their testing cohorts :

* Eight of the thirteen schools have enough data to allow us to examine cohort size between 5th grade, when students enter, and 8th grade, when they graduate.<2> In four of these schools, more than 25% of the students vanished from the cohort. Of these four schools, three saw cohort declines of 30%, and one lost nearly 40%. All of these charters have been nationally or locally acclaimed as great schools that are in high demand. The average attrition for this group of eight is 23%. (charts follow.)

..."Information is not made public regarding the academic proficiency of students who vanish from the cohort. What I do know is that dramatic rises in the percent proficient seem to parallel the rates of attrition in the testing cohorts . I have charted these in the latter part of this post.

Perhaps the information should be made public if these schools are going to be publicly lauded and honored at the expense of public schools and their teachers.

Another study from Boston:

Charter schools see more attrition

Fewer than half of the students who enrolled in Boston charter high schools as freshmen over the past five years made it through to graduation, usually departing for other schools, according to a new study that will be officially released tomorrow at a legislative hearing on charter school expansions.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, which conducted the study, said the exodus reinforces its longtime assertion that charter schools systematically push out academically weak students in an effort to boost their college acceptance rates and MCAS scores.

“This is outrageous,’’ said Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, who had been briefed by the union this week on the findings. “You are not bringing kids to their full potential if you are cutting them loose.’’

Most charter school leaders did not dispute the numbers yesterday, but disagreed with the union’s conclusions about what they meant. Many students, charter leaders said, choose to leave to dodge high academic standards, returning to city-run schools where getting a diploma is often easier. Only in rare circumstances, they said, did a charter student quit school without subsequently earning a diploma.

Charter leaders don't deny the numbers but say the children chose to leave? A possibility, but not likely. So many consider it so much of an honor to be at a charter, I doubt that many would pick up and leave.

Another example of high attrition.

2 views of KIPP's numbers

By the numbers, KIPP Tech Valley Charter School is Albany's best public school. Virtually every eighth-grader passed the 2009 English and math exams. The fifth-through-eighth-grade school sends graduates on full scholarships to some of the nation's top boarding schools, as well as to the advanced classes at Albany High School. The minimum passing grade on an assignment is 70 percent.

..."Despite solid test results, critics point to a different number -- an attrition rate of more than 50 percent -- that they say is evidence the school hasn't changed public education but is instead cherry-picking the best students and sending the rest back to the Albany district. Eleven KIPP students have returned to Albany schools since the end of the last school year, and the school does not enroll new seventh and eighth graders.

The school year is only beginning, and 11 have been returned to public schools since the end of last year?

This statement really stood out to me. It really shows the difference in child-centered education goals and goals that are set with zero tolerance in mind.

"It's a lot like an entrepreneurial business where you focus on the outcome," KIPP Tech Valley board chairman John Reilly said. "Our mission is not egalitarianism; it's about getting kids where they need to be."

Egalitarian: A person who believes in the equality of all people. Odd thing for him to say...that it is not his mission.

Getting kids where they need to be...not all can meet those goals.

Diane Ravitch recently posted a letter she received from the principal of a traditional public middle school in Los Angeles.

I received an email from Dr. DeWayne Davis, the principal of Audubon Middle School in Los Angeles, which was sent to several public officials. Dr. Davis said that local charter schools were sending their low-performing students to his school in the middle of the year. He wrote: "Since school began, we enrolled 159 new students (grades 7 and 8). Of the 159 new students, 147 of them are far below basic (FBB)!!! Of the 147 students who are FBB, 142 are from charter schools. It is ridiculous that they can pick and choose kids and pretend that they are raising scores when, in fact, they are purging nonperforming students at an alarming rate—that is how they are raising their scores, not by improving the performance of students. Such a large number of FBB students will handicap the growth that the Audubon staff initiated this year, and further, will negatively impact the school's overall scores as we continue to receive a recurring tide of low-performing students."

One of the most blatant and obvious cases occurred in Florida. The charter school which gets public taxpayer money actually sent a letter telling the parents the child did not qualify for their school.

FL school board member demands that charters account for kids sent back to public schools.

School Board member Frank O’Reilly wants district official to start tracking how many students are transferred from charter schools to public schools as a result of their grades, social economic status or behavioral issues. During a work session this morning, O’Reilly read a letter sent by Harold Maready, superintendent of McKeel charter schools, to a parent about their third grader who flunked the FCAT.

“Your child does not meet the criteria to be a McKeel student,” O’Reilly read.

If public schools were to reject students based on their academic performance, then they could be A schools, too, O’Reilly said.

“We must take every child that comes through that door whether we like it or not,” O’Reilly said. ‘‘That is a public school paid by taxpayers’ dollars, and I like to remind Mr. Maready of that.”

[mbperrin]

1. Keep posting on this racket.

Same story here locally. Charter school had 50 K students, and only 39 became 1st graders.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

3. "Racket" --

That is exactly what it is. :mad:

[Dappleganger]

2. Not just attrition rates

but where did they go? Were they held back, did they transfer within the district to another school or did they leave the district altogether?

Remember that the public schools get the ones who are castoff, the ones whose scores the charters don't want to count in their totals each year. The public schools also get all the special ed kids that so many conveniently forget.

[madfloridian]

4. Yes, tell where they went.

Keep records, keep all those numbers just like public schools must do.

[Recursion]

12. Charters have to take special ed students

Though how they get funded for that varies greatly by state.

[donco6]

14. They don't here.

We have one. They only take speech-language students. They contract with us to provide service, so I see the invoices. They get about 1 hour per week of service. They have 4 to 6 kids out of 500.

[Recursion]

17. Well, CO has a weird system

If your district isn't a chartering authority itself, CSIC does the chartering and by law has to be the EA in charge of special education, with the result that the charters tend to have to send kids to public schools (and pay the public schools) for special ed.

I never said all chartering systems were good, or even sane.

[MedicalAdmin]

15. So does the requirement to take spec ed students.

Frankly charters are like the wild west in entirely too many places.

[Recursion]

22. OK, you'll have to back that one up

I'm looking through the state programs and I don't see a single one that lets a charter turn down special needs students (or any student, for that matter, except for certain specific magnet charter programs in a couple of states).

[laughingliberal]

62. I have seen systems where the charters must take special needs students but the district must pay...

or provide the resources to accommodate those students.

The playing field is not level.

[Recursion]

66. Only in states where the charter school is part of "the district"

Basically in some states the charters are part of the district, in other states each charter is its own "district" (and in a few, there is a "district" comprising the charter schools and nothing else).

In the states where the charter is part of its district then, yes, like any other public school, it gets its money from the district, including its money for special education.

The playing field is not level.

How is that not level? In the system you're describing, all public schools, both traditional and charter, get their sped money from the district based on the needs of their students. When charters have to send kids to other public (or private, for that matter) schools to get their needs met, they have to pay the school to which the kid is sent.

[laughingliberal]

71. Deny all you want that the Charters are gaming the system.

I saw all the same kind of crap when the push for privatization of our health care system was going on. Now, decades later when all the problems many of warned of back then and more are a reality, we're scrambling trying to 'reform' a system that is too unwieldy to imagine. It's much easier to keep the horse in the barn and work on the problems it has than to try and get the horse back in the barn afterwards and then have the same problems we started with compounded by a profit driven system that then won't want to relinquish their control of our money.

I predict 'education reform' will be a hot topic in the 2040's elections after costs are exponentially up and quality is worse than ever.

[Recursion]

72. How is a charter's need for money any different from any other school's?

Every school in the world wishes it had more money and uses every tool and trick at its disposal to get and keep money. Why does the fact that the district doesn't have operational control over education make the charter's need for money somehow more exploitative?

[laughingliberal]

73. How was the privatized health care system's need for money different from the former system?

Support them if you wish but I've seen the results of 'privatization' of formerly public systems and I've yet to see one case where it did not result in exponentially higher costs and crappy quality in the end. Still, the gullible public keeps buying into it, every time. And the privatizers laugh all the way to the bank.

:rofl:

[Recursion]

77. If charter schools were private schools, I'd get that

Since they're public schools, I'm not sure why you brought it up.

[laughingliberal]

78. All in good time, my dear. Like lambs to the slaughter go the American people with no ability...

to look back and generalize information from previous situations to current situations.

[Dappleganger]

28. Not locally.

Not at all (FL).

[Recursion]

32. That's simply not true

In Florida, the public school district provides state and district special ed funding to the charter (minus a 5% "administrative" cut), and the charters are then responsible for meeting the student's educational needs.

Here is Florida's charter school law:

http://www.flsenate.gov/statutes/index.cfm?mode=View%20Statutes&SubMenu=1&App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=charter+schools&URL=1000-1099/1002/Sections/1002.33.html

(16)(a) 3-4 specifically states that charter schools are not exempt from

3.

Those statutes pertaining to the provision of services to students with disabilities.
4.

Those statutes pertaining to civil rights, including s. 1000.05, relating to discrimination.

(All this said, Florida seems to be a place where charters are being handled very poorly.)

[donco6]

40. It's far more complicated than that.

Florida law, like most states, assigns responsibility for Free Appropriate Public Education to the LEA (school district). The buck always stops at the district. That's why individual charters can dump kids out and now get into trouble with FAPE - they're not ULTIMATELY responsible for FAPE.

Likewise, the requirement to provide special education depends on the school's specific status, No Link, Total Link or Partial Link (most common). Under partial, the charter takes those special ed kids it believes it can provide services for and doesn't accept those kids that it can't. This is very common all over the country. And it creates a huge burden for the LEA.

http://www.floridacharterschools.org/public/startingacharterschool.asp


How does a charter school's LEA status impact its operations?
The major effect of a charter school's LEA status is the type of linkage that is mandated or voluntarily established between that charter school and a traditional LEA. In other words, a charter school's legal status is reflected in the way it relates to other LEAs. There are three types of linkage:

* NO LINK: a charter school that is its own LEA has full responsibility for special education and usually has No-Link to another LEA (although a charter could negotiate some working relationship with an LEA if it chooses to do so);

* TOTAL LINK: the charter is considered a part of an LEA and the LEA is responsible for the students with disabilities; and

* PARTIAL LINK: the connection between a charter school and an LEA when there is a required or negotiated connection, e.g., the charter school has responsibility for services, but the child's home LEA carries out evaluation team tasks, or the charter school is responsible for only those services that can be delivered in the school and the LEA resumes responsibility when the child needs more specialized day or residential placement.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Charter schools have become another "privatization" scam. One can only hope that

the public wakes up before it is too late......

[Recursion]

11. What's "privatized" about them? I understand a lot of the criticisms...

...but that one flummuxes me.

[MedicalAdmin]

19. As I say in less polite company - RTFF.

Ahem.

Having said that Mad and others have posted numerous times about how many charters are either being run by private foundations / organizations or are actually private or religious schools in all but funding. It's a mess and it is getting worse.

Type in google and do a boolian search for KIPP +charter +criticism +TFA + (fill in the blank). Do some of the heavy lifting and you will see that the public is being scammed over and over and over again. Education should be a sacred trust, not a way to line the pockets of BS middle men.

[Recursion]

21. Yeah, I've said myself I'm leery of KIPP

But you're talking like the charters managed by companies are a growing majority of charters rather than a shrinking minority of charters. (And, incidentally, they are a majority of schools that get shut down, which probably doesn't surprise either of us.)

[woo me with science]

6. Yes.

This is a fair request.

[Hannah Bell]

7. knr

[callous taoboy]

8. Keep the heat turned up, madfloridian!

I am an elementary public school teacher (regular ed). We are now ALL special ed teachers since the state is being very controlling about the numbers of kids, and the number from each subpop., that can be in the true special ed programs.

[blondeatlast]

9. Absolutely! k/r

[donco6]

10. Good STATISTICS, Mad.

But I guess we're just "swarming" now.

[Recursion]

13. Yes, we need to take a closer look at attrition

That's a good point, though attrition as a problem is not limited to charters.

[madfloridian]

16. Public schools might expel for behavior, NOT for academic performance.

You keep saying that, and it is not true. Public schools do not have the ability to let students go if they do not perform.

That is not true at all. There is nowhere else to send them, the buck stops at the public school.

They can expel for behavior, but you need to tell me names of those public schools who let children go for academic performance.

[Recursion]

23. Yes, yes, the low-scoring students are expelled "for behavior"

*nudge nudge*

And I'll be happy to find those stories about the districts; hell, they were posted on DU at one point.

[madfloridian]

25. Then please find the ones where public schools expelled students for low scores.

I will wait for your answer, because I have never heard of it.

You can not just say they expelled them for low grades and pretended it was behavior. There are procedures in place for expulsion, and they would not be able to do that.

[Recursion]

26. Oh, you want the literal word "expelled" somewhere rather than the students...

...being nudged to drop out?

Here's a good summary of how public schools (apparently mostly in the South) get students to disappear:

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/whatsnu_miracles-2.html

Note the district that also runs a GED factory which received a remarkable number of students who "withdrew" from the public school due to "lack of interest"

[madfloridian]

27. The "Houston Miracle" under Rod Paige was pure and simple fraud.

Of course they could not disappear kids, it was illegal.

But now you say charter schools can do so?

Not a good example.

[Recursion]

29. Of course it was a fraud. And it still happens

But now you say charter schools can do so?

This is the third time you've said I'm saying that. I still haven't said it.

I said the Houston school district is not some isolated outlier. Public schools do this. Mine did, even before NCLB. NCLB just raised the incentives for doing it. I don't like it when charter schools do it, either, though again I can't think of another way to protect the kids who actually do care from the kids who don't (it would probably involve raising the incentives for traditional publics and charters to keep student retention rates up -- it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do, in principle).

[madfloridian]

31. No, public schools can not tell a child to leave for poor performance.

You do not seem to understand what Houston involved.

You should not keep twisting and turning everything into an argument with no basis.

I tried to understand, but I don't. Bye for now. Not worth it.

[Recursion]

33. OK, what about Birmingham, on that same page?

And where do you get the notion that because something is forbidden, it doesn't happen?

[callous taoboy]

41. The district I teach in does not want anyone to drop out. It greatly hinders

our district's ability to maintain or rise up on the accountability rating. Our H.S. would have made exemplary last year but they neede the test score of ONE STUDENT, one student who decided last minute to drop out and not take the test. That one drop out cost that campus big-time.

[madfloridian]

57. That's true. In FL they get money according to those in attendance.

[Recursion]

59. That's a bit simplifying but yes

FL is screwed, public, private, and charter, sadly

[donco6]

37. Are you saying schools expel for academic performance?

BWA-ha-ha!

I've not seen it in 15 years I've been here. We only expel when we HAVE to. Mandatory for weapons or drugs. Mandatory for habitually disruptive (and then only for a short period of time.) We can't get away with it - the Office of Civil Rights would be on our ass so fast it'd make your head spin.

[Recursion]

38. I'm saying low-performing students are "encouraged" to drop out

I've seen it myself, and I posted a link to descriptions of it happening in a lot of districts. Though from that it would seem to be a southern thing.

[donco6]

49. I suppose that could be.

But here, our dropout rate is so critical in our accreditation, we can't afford that kind of thing.

[Recursion]

51. Short-term vs. long-term

(Edit: make sure I'm replying to the correct post next time...)

I've heard it put as short-term vs. long-term payoff: pushing kids out hurts you down the road, but having them take the tests would hurt you right now (thank you, NCLB...)

[Lyric]

18. Charter schools are like corporate welfare.

Where the money is given to the people who already HAVE money, but withheld from the people who need it the most. They should be serving the students who have the greatest NEED for special help--not the ones who are already good students. How does that make any sense at all?

[Recursion]

24. In what sense?

How many charter schools, in your opinion, are run or managed by for-profit corporations?

[Lyric]

36. It was an analogy.

Both charter schools and corporate welfare are about giving extra resources to the people who have the least need for it.

[Recursion]

39. Are middle-class kids from non-dysfunctional districts flocking to charters?

Who are the people in the least need that you see getting resources through charters?

[donco6]

43. They do here.

Here in Colorado, charters are very easy to form. So easy, in fact, that developers of housing developments would work with new homeowners to create charter schools just for their developments. This was to reassure the homeowners that their kids wouldn't have to go to that school down the road that was filled with . . . kids who were a bit darker. So you have these white flight charters in new developments, and minority-filled public schools in town.

[Recursion]

45. Weird. That's so opposite DC

White parents avoid charters like the plague, because the darker parents get listened to there.

How do the developments keep the "undesirable" kids out of "their" charters? There's not even a way to do that in DC.

[donco6]

48. They don't provide transportation.

The great inequalizer.

[Recursion]

52. *facepalm* Of course. It's not an issue in cities so I tend to forget about it.

"Transportation costs" just consist of buying all the kids a WMATA pass.

[Recursion]

53. Meanwhile, DCP's transportation costs are appalling

Because a court case requires them to bus hundreds of special needs kids to private schools in Maryland.

[Lyric]

46. Are charter schools teaching the kids who need the most help?

Or are they sending the "undesirables" back to public schools and saving the cream of the crop for themselves? Because if that's the case, then the schools are misusing public resources. We don't need the smart, capable kids to go to charter schools. We need the kids with learning disabilities, missing chunks of foundational knowledge, and kids with home-based learning obstacles (poverty, bad/unprepared parents, rough neighborhood, etc.). Those are the ones who would benefit most from the targeted learning programs, small class sizes, innovative teaching methods, and extra attention that students at charter schools get. Charters should be taking the kids who'd be at risk of either failing or dropping out without that extra bit of help--not the ones who are able to graduate without it.

If you have a nutritious meal to give away every single day, who should you give it to? Someone who's eating regularly (even if not "ideally"), or someone who's going to starve to death without it?

There is no ethical excuse for picking out the "prize" kids--the ones who don't truly NEED a charter to make it through school--and tossing the ones who have the greatest NEED back into public schools.

However, I'm also perfectly open to the idea of just closing down the charters COMPLETELY and re-routing that money back into public schools where ALL students can benefit from it--not just a special "few".

[Recursion]

47. I can't speak for all of them, but the ones I've dealt with, yes

We don't need the smart, capable kids to go to charter schools. We need the kids with learning disabilities, missing chunks of foundational knowledge, and kids with home-based learning obstacles (poverty, bad/unprepared parents, rough neighborhood, etc.). Those are the ones who would benefit most from the targeted learning programs, small class sizes, innovative teaching methods, and extra attention that students at charter schools get.

Or, we need to save the lifeboats for the people who won't try to tip them over.

If you have a nutritious meal to give away every single day, who should you give it to? Someone who's eating regularly (even if not "ideally"), or someone who's going to starve to death without it?

The one who's eating regularly.

Now, if you have a nutritious meal to give away every single day, would you give it to someone who is hungry and will eat it and live, or someone who is so starved he's going to die anyways whether you give him this meal or not?

The problem is we don't know which analogy (if either) is actually applicable here.

There is no ethical excuse for picking out the "prize" kids--the ones who don't truly NEED a charter to make it through school--and tossing the ones who have the greatest NEED back into public schools.

OK, how much does this happen outside of the KIPP/corporate model of charter (which, again, is a shrinking minority of charters)? I have no idea. Do you?

My public school system, way back in the 90s, could kick out disruptive or very badly-performing kids (generally two sets with a large union) to an "alternative school". What ever happened to those?

[erodriguez]

61. You know corporations do not have to be for-profit in order for people to profit from them

There are plenty of non-for-profits in which its owners or leaders are making a killing by paying themselves a huge salary.

[izzybeans]

20. This cuts both ways, too. Schools in high poverty areas that see high turnover

of high performing students will be disadvantaged even further. In some areas goals are set on last year's student population and in these cases the goals will be too high to reach.

If we have to have testing be used as a proxy for performance than the performance goals should be adjusted based on the negative or positive impact of attrition.

Schools and teachers can unfairly be labeled as failing if attrition leads to significantly lowering the average test scores of the school. My wife's school sets its goals on the previous year's performance. Last year's summer attrition lowered their school average nearly 5 points (meaning the remaining students scored 5 points less on average), almost all of it in the lower grades. This meant that every student would have to grow five points in addition to the typical student growth in their percentile in order to meet the goals set for the school. I think this may be a bigger problem then is realized. That school's performance and its teachers are judged on a student growth model.

[Tatiana]

30. One of the highly-praised Harlem Zone charters kicked out a whole class of students!

In the tiny high school of the zone’s Promise Academy I, which teaches 66 sophomores and 65 juniors (it grows by one grade per year), the average class size is under 15, generally with two licensed teachers in every room. There are three student advocates to provide guidance and advice, as well as a social worker, a guidance counselor and a college counselor, and one-on-one tutoring after school.

The school, which opened in 2004 in a gleaming new building on 125th Street, should have had a senior class by now, but the batch of students that started then, as sixth graders, was dismissed by the board en masse before reaching the ninth grade after it judged the students’ performance too weak to found a high school on. Mr. Canada called the dismissal “a tragedy.”

And yet, even with such manipulation of their student population and demographics:

But most of the seventh graders, now starting their third year in the school, are still struggling. Just 15 percent passed the 2010 state English test, a number that Mr. Canada said was “unacceptably low” but not out of line with the school’s experience in lifting student performance over time. Several teachers have been fired as a result of the low scores, and others were reassigned, he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/education/13harlem.html?pagewanted=print

So in spite of the fact that they claimed their teaching staff was the best, Canada's charter is firing them because lo and behold... the scores are not blowing away comparable public school standardized scores.

Again, I don't want to knock what Canada is doing. I like the idea of a cradle-to-adulthood community approach to education. But the scapegoating of teachers for poor standardized test scores needs to end. As Canada himself is finding out, students come to school with many problems and obstacles that even the best teachers have a hard time overcoming. Let's address those true barriers to learning and academic achievement instead of blaming everything on teachers.

[madfloridian]

34. Good point. And his schools are getting 200 million fed money to expand

And that is what makes me so angry.

Our taxpayer money is going to his charter schools with the blessing of this administration.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6770

[erodriguez]

65. Geoff Canada just went to the UK and touted his schools lack of unions for its supposed success

It's not his cradle to adulthood concept that he considers his crowning achievement. It's his non-unionized schools!

I used to have some respect for this man because of his vision of tying essential support for children and families with educational outcomes.
But no longer does he get my benefit of doubt. He is just trying to break the union and getting lots of money for his effort. He is a carpetbagger.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/05/geoffrey-canada-education-unions

As an aside, check out this quote:

"When we started our school, in Harlem, I said to our mayor … and I said to my board of trustees, I said – if I don't have a better school in five years than all the other private schools, I'm going to fire myself. And then I got my staff in and said 'but you all know I'll be the last one leaving'."

You know its been more than 5 years.

[Tatiana]

68. Amen. I've lost all respect for the man. He sees $$$$$$$$$.

He, of all people, knows that teachers unions are not the problem. He never explains why his non-union teaching staff still produces below-standard student test scores.

As Mad pointed out, it is sickening that $200 million in federal education funding is going towards these schools that do not produce better academic achievement than the public schools. The public schools are outperforming charters and the Canada-run charters actually spend more per pupil than the public school system does.

[madfloridian]

70. That's right. He actually bragged about being non-union.

.

[Fire1]

35. I don't even believe there are "high test scores." From 'charters,'

that is. Data can be manipulated to say anything!

[yurbud]

50. even with these kind of shenanigans, only 17% of them do better than regular schools

[madfloridian]

54. Right, not very good percentage considering harm done to public schools.

:hi:

[Hannah Bell]

74. and 37% do worse.

[Starry Messenger]

42. k & r

[yurbud]

44. wow!

[Angry Dragon]

55. It only makes sense to send

under-achieving students back to public schools.
They are running charters like factories, factories get
to send back poor material. The same should hold for charter schools.


In case it is needed :sarcasm:

[TBF]

56. K&R nt

[Jefferson23]

58. The orchestrated scam continues for now..bookmarked and K&R. n/t

[chervilant]

60. Wow,

mad, I see your naysayers (dkf,kossackrealitycheck, etc.) have been absent or silent over the last two (three?) threads you've started. Could it be that they have seen the light? Or, are they trolls?

I can hope that they've seen the light, can't I?

[laughingliberal]

63. They seem to have carte blanch to game the system in a number of ways. As long as they're helping...

to advance the neo-lib, World Bank agenda, it's all good. No?

[w8liftinglady]

64. i forwarded this to my partner,a teacher in a high-risk public school.

Thank you for posting this essential research.

[patty2828]

67. Application Process

I would even take it a step further. My opinion is that any school who has an application process is acting as a private entity. When you can accept or deny students you are no longer a public school.

From what I have read, Charter Schools generally do not out perform public traditional schools in test taking.

Personally I believe we invest too much time and money into standardized testing. We teach our students to think and act as individuals and then we lump them into one group to take a test. McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflen are making a fortune since testing became the rage. ETS loves it as well. We need to swing the pendulum back the othe direction and once again education the whole child. Elementary schools no longer have recess; we are missing the value of play and excercise. I could go on and on, but am finding myself getting off topic.

Again, attendance or lack there of along with application processes should be publicly revealed.

[Recursion]

69. I don't know of any states where charters can turn students down

If they have more students requesting to attend than they have slots, in every state I know of they have to have a lottery.

We teach our students to think and act as individuals and then we lump them into one group to take a test.

Eh. I'm ambivalent about this. On the one hand, of course we want well-rounded freethinkers. On the other hand, there is a certain mastery of basic facts and skills (simple enough, even, to be tested pretty easily) that has to underlie that, and we aren't achieving that fact. It's like we're so intent on getting past Bloom level 1 that we forgot you have to get to it first.

Elementary schools no longer have recess; we are missing the value of play and excercise.

100% agreement there.

Welcome to DU!
:hi:

[Hannah Bell]

75. they can turn down disabled & ell kids simply by not providing those services.

[laughingliberal]

76. They can also kick out kids who aren't performing well-send them back to the public system...

and keep the kids who make their scores look good.

[Recursion]

80. First off, the kids are already "in the public system"

Secondly, if a kid gets kicked out of a school, he has to go to another school. This might be a charter, a traditional public, an alternative school (whatever happened to those?) or a private school, or they might just drop out completely. Just like when they get kicked out of a normal public school (for "bad behavior"... yeah... nothing at all to do with raising the school's test scores...)

[laughingliberal]

81. Nope. There have been recent stories of charters kicking out kids who aren't performing well...

on tests. Back to the traditional public school they go to lower that schools test scores and the Charter keeps the high scorers and games the system showing everyone their 'proof' of their superior 'results.'

No wonder so many con artists in America are successful. Our people are suckers for their methods.

:rofl:

[Phentex]

90. Where do they go if the charter is the only public available?

Does the family move? What if there is no other public school to get sent back to?

:shrug:

[LWolf]

91. They go to a real public school, of course.

Charter schools are only "public" in that they receive public money. Their buildings are within public districts that have public schools.

[Phentex]

92. Where is that school?

Seriously. What if the powers that be decided the only high school in your district should be a charter school. Your choices if you live in that area are: private school, home school, the charter school, or move. Some people cannot afford to move or send their kids to private school or home school if they have to work.

We can speak out against becoming a charter school but some entire counties are trying to become charter systems. This leaves plenty of people with no choice.

I don't care if the charter is labeled public or private. What I care about is having no choice. Like the special needs kids when their programs are dropped from the charter schools.

[LWolf]

93. The powers that be aren't going to decide that until

every school board has been taken over by privatizers and the effort to privatize public education is complete. The powers that be, in this case, are the local elected school board, and they LOSE if everything goes charter, because their jurisdiction over charters is very limited.

[Hannah Bell]

82. kids kicked out of kipp don't go back to kipp schools. i believe this is the point of the post

you responded to.

whereas kids kicked out of a public school go back to another public school. by law, the public schools must provide an education to *every* child in their catchment area -- even incarcerated children. so those kids show up in public school stats *somewhere*.

you're being disingenuous.

[Recursion]

85. Lots of buried assumptions there

whereas kids kicked out of a public school go back to another public school.

Yes, for example they might go to another traditional public school, or to a charter. Or they might get into a private school. And in some cities you don't even have to expel the kid formally, you can just magically not have a seat for him next year.

[Hannah Bell]

86. kipp doesn't admit new kids after the first year of intake, e.g. they admit kids in grade 6, but not

in grades 7-9.

their classes get smaller every year.

public schools admit kids year-round. they have to.

your defense is entirely disingenuous & full of fail.

when a kid is kicked out of kipp, he doesn't come back to kipp. and no kids like him take his place.

it's completely different than the public schools.

of which kipp ain't one.

[Recursion]

79. And then they get shut down or sued

Just like any other public school.

[Hannah Bell]

88. no, they don't. charter schools aren't required to provide those services. you seem not to be up

to speed on this issue.

[Gabi Hayes]

95. surprised? did you see the 'profile?'

[laughingliberal]

83. Right. The application process at a traditional public school is...what? Show up? nt

[Recursion]

84. Try getting into one of the better "open" publics in DC

X% of the seats are reserved for neighborhood kids, the rest are "open", only there's not the transparency of a lottery, just who you know.

[laughingliberal]

87. OK, show up with proof of your address. nt

[maryf]

89. worth a kick...

[madfloridian]

94. And shamelessly giving it another.

Because they really need to stop bragging until they announce attrition rates.