New Orleans charters see reading, math scores rise faster than traditional schools

[Sgent]

Roughly half of the New Orleans charter schools that have produced enough test scores to measure are improving student performance in reading or math at a significantly faster rate than competing traditional schools, according to an analysis by Stanford University researchers. Another 12 of the 52 charter schools included in the latest analysis performed no better than their traditional peers, and 12 schools lagged significantly behind. The figures come from Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO, which has been drafted by the nonprofit New Schools for New Orleans to help decide which charter schools should receive grant money to expand with additional campuses.

New Schools for New Orleans, in conjunction with the state's Recovery School District, is doling out $33.6 million in grants and matching funds as part of the federal government's Investing in Innovation program.

To qualify for money to expand, charter schools have to show they are improving test scores in reading, math or both at a statistically faster pace than the traditional schools that they compete with for students.

So ultimately, the number-crunching by Stanford will play a role in shaping what the New Orleans school system ends up looking like.

http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2011/09/new_orleans_charters_see_readi.html

[mfcorey1]

1. Remember, New Orleans had some of the worst schools in the country. They can only go up

with the changes that have happened to their educational system since Katrina.

[iamtechus]

2. Those kinds of tests are easy to prepare little soldiers for:

Much drilling and memorization will raise scores dramatically.

[SoCalDem]

3. and 10 yrs later when they take the SATs..

look for results similar to what we saw this week..

remember too, that charter schools have a lot more latitude when it comes to "removing troublesome students".. They can claim to be pure-as-the-driven-snow-"public" schools when they start up, but as they start to weed out the ones they do not want, they get control over their "scores".

they are public, in the sense that they leach money from the true public system, and "take-over" facilities that were paid for by tax dollars, retain taxpayer supported maintenance etc, and then pay their NON UNION teachers less, so they can skim off a lot of money for the CEOS of the for-profit charter companies..

[Broderick]

8. Speaking of SAT's

They set a record in futility this year, on the reading portion.

We are doomed.

[leveymg]

4. Schools & test scores aren't in a vacuum. NOLA has been "gentrified", fewer kids, particularly poor

children.

"From 2000 to 2010, the number of children in New Orleans has decreased by 56,193, or 43 percent." This depopulation occurred particularly in NOLA's poorer, blacker neighborhoods. See, http://www.gnocdc.org/LossOfChildrenInNewOrleansNeighborhoods/index.html

Income rise almost always correlates with higher educational test scores. This has little to do with charter schools.

[Fumesucker]

5. I have a feeling that in the long run it's the kids who are gonna get crunched..

Not so much the numbers, unless you're talking "cha-ching" type numbers.

[jmowreader]

6. I see...

I'm going to assume the charters whose scores are going up faster are teaching to the test and they've gotten very proficient at kicking low-achieving students back to the traditional public schools.

[Sgent]

16. There are no "traditional" public schools

the only public schools in NOLA post Katrina are a very few, restrictive entry magnet schools and less than a handful of higher performing public schools (I think there are 5 non-magnet public schools in the entire system).

[The Genealogist]

7. It is pretty easy to get the kind of test scores you want

when you get to pick who is enrolled and taking the tests.

[KamaAina]

9. That's what I'm hearing

in particular, kids with disabilities are either not recruited to charters in the first place or "counseled out" once their disabilities become apparent. Most of them end up in the state-run Recovery School District, which ends up taking a hit on its own scores while the charters' get an artificial boost, andm one of dubiousm legality at that.

[bluedigger]

10. So how much extra money are the public schools being given to compete? n/t

[madfloridian]

11. Some articles about how they do it. They get rid of poor performers.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/10/06/new-orleans-accused-of-failing-disabled-students.html

"But is this supposed revolution really helping the most-disadvantaged students in New Orleans, those with special needs such as physical, behavioral, or mental disabilities? In July, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed a legal complaint against the Louisiana Department of Education alleging that schools have been turning away parents with disabled children and shirking their responsibilities to ensure that the special-needs students they do serve actually benefit from academic instruction. The complaint asserts that New Orleans schools are in violation of the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), particularly in terms of excessive punishment of children with emotional and behavioral problems.

The data further suggest that when not suspended, disabled students aren’t getting the education they deserve, either because teachers aren’t working the IEPs or because they’re not identifying children who may suffer from learning disabilities. Perhaps as a consequence, only 6.4 percent of students with disabilities in the Recovery School District graduated in the 2008–09 school year, while 37 percent of them performed “well below grade level” and 50 percent failed to complete school altogether. In Baltimore, public schools graduated 24.2 percent of their special-ed students with a diploma, while 33.5 percent dropped out in 2007–08. St. Louis, another city with a similar student profile, graduated 29.5 percent of its disabled population, while 31.5 percent dropped out in 2008–09.

Which raises the question: does the much-touted academic progress of New Orleans’s post-Katrina charters come in part because special-needs students are being weeded out? "

More:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/7901

"As the state official, Folwell Dunbar, recalled in a memo to department colleagues, Akpinar flattered him with "a number of compliments" before getting to the point: "I have twenty-five thousand dollars to fix this problem: twenty thousand for you and five for me."

At the time, Dunbar was investigating numerous complaints against Abramson Science & Technology Charter School in eastern New Orleans, which shares apparent ties to Akpinar's firm as well as charter schools in other states run by Turkish immigrants.

In fact, state auditors had already turned up startling deficiencies at Abramson. The records they kept of unannounced visits to the campus, as well as interviews with former teachers, paint a chaotic scene: classrooms without instructors for weeks and even months at a time, students who claimed their science fair projects had been done by teachers, a single special-needs instructor for a school of nearly 600."

[LWolf]

12. Thanks for putting that claim into perspective. nt

[madfloridian]

13. I have just been getting together a post about NO charters.

So I couldn't resist. Sounds like they are on a propaganda mission.

[LWolf]

14. They need one, if they want to keep reality under wraps, don't they? nt

[Viking12]

15. As usual, madfloridian exposes the charter school BS

Thanks!:toast: