EduShyster has written another fabulous post, this one on a theme that readers of this blog know well: What are the “best practices” that turn charter schools into media sensations?
Wherever you live, send this post to whoever covers education. The journalists should pay attention. EduShyster is a terrific teacher.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’ll send it to Jay Matthews and Valerie Strauss at the WaPo.
The post called for readers to list their favorite “best practices” — You know, those nifty (but rigorous) techniques that make charter schools such awesome places to learn. How about good school counselors that will advise the parents of children with physical or cognitive disabilities that the public schools would be a better fit for their kids. It is soooooo much less expensive to run a school if you don’t have to pay for special ed teachers (unless TFA can produce some really cheap ones). You also won’t have to worry about the standardized test scores for that “subgroup”. I know it might be a teensy bit embarrassing if you don’t have any students with IEPs, so maybe you can let in someone with a little bit of a lisp or a hearing aid or something. Be real careful to “counsel out” kids with autism, ADHD, Down syndrome and stuff like that because they can like totally be a problem when you’re trying to do a “turnaround”.
Darn! I was hoping to learn some of the finger waving tricks. I watched a video on best practices; all of sudden half the class started waving their fingers in front of their faces. I thought, “This charter must be an amazing place with all of these autistic kids in their classes.”
Also, it takes the place of physical education, particularly for the mouse-clicking and keyboard- pecking of the “21st Century Learner.”
I wonder what the faculty meetings are like in that finger-waving schoo?
2old2tch – wicked!
Did send!
Best Practice 189. When adminstrators come to evaluate you, prep your students. If they know the answers raise their right hand, if they don’t, raise the left hand. Your class looks very engaging. (secret: you really got them to all to participate).
Testing trick 62:
Make all students eligible for free and reduced lunch, even those that do not qualify, and watch the sub group scores soar. It is all a shell game folks. It is easier to game the system than it is to develop a quality program.
And whwn accused of juking the stats, the Special Mastee who did this gets to say “free lunch for everyone! I am a river to my people! I did it for the kids.”
We are so privileged here in CT to have the master of juking the stats, moving the shells…an illusionist….I wonder what a female “Special Master” is called…hmmmm?
But the flier circulating at the Aug. 22 meeting suggests that these claims are not entirely credible. Regarding the graduation rate, the flier claims that Adamowski “imposed a minimum failing grade of 55 for all students, whether or not they attended classes.” This resulted in a “system in which many students attended for only one quarter of the year, yet they passed.” Regarding improved test scores, the flier claims that “Adamowski achieved an approximate 10-percent increase in CMT scores by identifying those students who couldn’t pass the test and moving 9.8 percent to the MAS Modified Connecticut Test in lieu of making real gains.”
“That no one has conducted an investigation into this problem leads us to the problem,” countered one urban teacher, who wished to remain anonymous. “It appears to many teachers that fraud is being perpetrated against the state, the schools, and the students, and the state doesn’t seem to care.”
“It is a simple matter for the state to look into student grades during the Adamowski reign in Hartford,” he continued, “checking to see how many students failed to complete any work over three marking periods, and yet received grades of 55 instead of zero for those periods. Then, these same students were able to earn a sufficiently high enough grade during the fourth marking period to ‘earn’ an overall course grade of 60. Then, balance those grades of 55 against the attendance for those marking periods. Invariably, the state would determine that such students attended only one marking period yet passed the entire course under Adamowski’s policies.”
Anne DeGraff, a retired counselor from Hartford’s Bulkeley High School upper school (grades 11-12), provided further evidence that students were leaving Hartford public schools ill-equipped under Adamowski. “During Mr. Adamowski’s tenure in the Hartford school system, we were working diligently at BHS upper school to make sure the transcripts reflected rigor and college-ready courses,” said DeGraff. “Much to our chagrin, the transcripts we received from the lower school (grades 9-10) were anything but. Despite complaints to administrators and the board, the lower school continued to produce transcripts reflecting students taking the same course over and over again, despite having passed it. I can’t help thinking that this did not help our students enter college.”
http://www.remindernews.com/article/2012/08/26/parents-teachers-oppose-special-master-methods
She’s called a mastress, a neologism combining the words, master, mistress, and mattress.
Sent the article to Mary Pasciak, education writer fitThe Buffalo News, Buffalo, New York.
Sorry for the typo: should read for The Buffalo News.
From the U.S. Department of Education website:
“The U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program (CSP) has invested more than $255 million in charter schools this year. The purpose of the program is to increase financial support for the startup and expansion of these public schools, build a better national understanding of the public charter school model, and increase the number of high-quality public charter schools across the nation. More information about the Charter Schools Program is available from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement here.”
Nowhere in the above paragraph does it specify that this program offers any support for non-charter public schools. I love how the wording appears ambiguous: “to increase financial support for the startup and expansion of these public schools”…but those who can read between the lines know better. It’s obvious that “these public schools” are charters–you don’t “startup” a traditional public school.