In this graphic, the BadAss Teachers Association reveals a very important secret: How to get nearly 100% passing on state tests.
The secret is a word new to many of us: Backfill. The secret is NOT to backfill.
Public schools cannot take advantage of this secret because they have to admit new students as other students leave. They must “backfill,” the term used to describe the process of admitting new students in every grade as they move into the neighborhood or enroll to take empty seats. Charter schools have the luxury of not “backfilling,” which is why many charters have smaller numbers with each passing year.
In this interview with Eva Moskowitz, she acknowledges (around 11:55-12:44) that she does not backfill. Many start, few finish. That improves outcomes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This depends on the state. In South Carolina, the grade size is set in the school charter. Schools do not have to and actually are not allowed to exceed that limit. However, if space is available they must “backfill” with any student who applies. They cannot screen or pick and choose.
So they can limit how many seats are available, but often get hit later in the year by kids “counseled out” of traditional schools.
Would be interesting to see SC numbers on students you describe as “counseled out of traditional schools” cf acceptance mid-year by charter schools.
Book lady, those would be hard to get. These are kids either in danger of expulsion or academic issues who are made to understand their best option is to leave. Their destinations don’t have to be charters.
I’d like to see an analysis go the other way- look at whether the “choice” school results in a higher concentration of students who need the most intervention and resources in the public schools.
That’s where one would find the “costs”- who bears them-which students and which schools. You’ll never find the cost just looking at the entity that enjoys the upside of a given system. It’s invisible-it won’t show up unless you look at the school(s) picking up the risk.
What!!! You mean some charter schools do not backfill because they do not want to disrupt the gains that other students have made – *. You mean these charter schools actually care about achievement of its students? I thought they were all in it for the money, why would they turn away warm bodies and the extra funding that comes with it?
* – Just like the many district gifted, magnet, and AP\IB programs that do not allow backfilling.
Cynthia, I don’t know of any public schools that boast about test scores, but it seems to be not just common among charters but a necessary part of their claim to fame: We have a 100% graduation rate (if you forget about the 65% of the kids who dropped out and never reached senior year)! The education wars will end when charter schools stop pretending that they have solved the problems of educating low-income children and admit that they have the same problems as public schools—and have been hiding their predicament by not “backfilling,” not accepting new students after their entry class.
Ms. Ravitch,
So you and BATS are not arguing that charters should be required to backfill, just that charters and other policy makers should make apples to apples comparisons. Sounds like a legitimate complaint.
Could you point to the some charters and policy makers who claim that charters that do not backfill have, “solved the problems of educating low-income children”
Two words, Cynthia: Success Academy
The schools are fully enrolled. The attrition is planed. The charter is for, lets say, 200 students. 100 ninth graders, 50 tenth graders, 30 eleventh graders and 20 twelfth graders. Full enrollment. Full funding. And…. 100% graduates to college! All twenty of them!
Man, certain people running schools get high percentages. The March 10 Bob Braun’s Ledger article “Newark schools attain perfect attendance” described the NJ DoE school report cards. An analysis delivered to NJ legislative committee showed that for 2013-14 school year 31 Newark schools had 100% attendance; 8 schools had 99% attendance.
Read Bob’s article to appreciate the scenario.
That sounds like “fuzzy math” to me.
Although there are weird attendance policies – such as a child must be marked present in a class even if they are tardy and arrive to school after that class has met. Or that students in prison are not to be marked absent.
Ellen
#osmosis-learning?
I must confess that I must have misread the title of that failed rheephorm movie: could it rheeally have said WON’T BACK FILL? *Don’t expect standard spelling from folks that tout CCSS closet-reading and forget to add in the cost of all those extra flashlight batteries.*
I believe I begin to see how all that innovative disruption and creative destruction works in the business plan that masquerades as an education model aka “education reform.”
Two giant contributions that charters have made to practice and terminology:
MIDYEAR DUMP & NO BACKFILL.
Always keeping in mind, dontcha know, charters are just like public schools. Exactly. Except that they’re mucho much lots betterer. So they’re the same and they’re different—at exactly the same time! That’s why you always have to add the proviso that they aren’t to be called “big government schools” aka “government monopoly schools” aka “factories of failure” aka “dropout factories.” Because that’s where they’re different.
Plus they are different in that the very definition of “charter” in Rheephormish [thank you, Bob Shepherd!] means best practices in every way, shape and form.
After all, if those miserable public schools can backfill and midyear dump to their hearts delight, why can’t charters? Tit for tat, even steven, what sauce for the goose is…
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I beg your pardon? Those zoned monstrosities of abject failure that take on all comers and have to keep them can’t backfill at will and midyear dump as they please? Another myth propagated by those that think we have to put up with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “uneducables” and Michael J Petrilli’s “non-strivers.” The “new civil rights movement of our time” won’t stand for such nonsense, not when 100% graduation rates in charters are in jeopardy…
As always, the education status quo aka “education reformers” stand firm on their Marxist principles:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
And they hug Groucho close, very close, to their collective chest and never let him go.
😎
P.S. For those that think they can eviscerate the above by using their handy set of Raj Chetty outliers—remember, boys and girls, that there’s the homophone “outliars.” And you don’t want to be caught in public, or private for that matter, with your pants on fire…
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KrazyTA – my principal used to say that if he got rid of one student who was a nuisance, the District would just send the school someone even worse.
Ellen
#the-devil-you-know
Shouldn’t the graduation rate be low since the cohort is much higher than the number of kids actually graduating from the original group? For example, If 50 students start in 9th grade, but only 30 graduate in 12th (if all 30 actually graduate on time) then that’s only a 60% graduate rate.
Ellen
#double standards?
Graduation rates for schools are calculated based on the senior class size and not the size of the original cohort. It is an abuse of statistics. Statistics can be made to prove anything you want it to prove.
In Buffalo, graduation rates are based on the cohort. Unfortunately, tracking down the missing students who move away, transfer, or disappear for various reasons, is sometimes impossible, so they cannot be removed from the roles and thus count against the school. That’s one of the reasons the graduation rate is so low.
Doesn’t seem fair if Charter schools are using a different system to determine their graduation rates. No wonder they seem so much higher.
Ellen #not-surprised
Can you spell SCAM… c-h-a-r-t-e-r s-c-h-o-o-l