A high school in the Bronx has figured out how to be high performing.
It’s not hard.
It pushes out kids with low test scores.
It expels them.
It works!
107 students started as freshmen, but only 58 graduated.
The Bronx Health Sciences High School has a 95% graduation rate.
Studies will point to it as an example of how an inner city school can succeed.
Who knows, maybe a special on 60 Minutes or Fox News is not far behind.
I love the double standard. Charters do it all the time. No one hears. A public school does it and it’s news. Neither should do it, that would be news.
isn’t that in the charter school plan book?
if all schools followed their lead, all schools would be high performing.
Sheila, I think that is happening now in New Orleans. A few charters are high-performing. Most are not. Diane
Diane… I don’t know if you are aware of the current situation going on in IPS (Indianapolis Public Schools) but it is a shame. I taught for seventeen years and I was asked to stay at one of the four schools that were placed on their final year of probation and our school was taken over by the state. Charter Schools USA has come in and taken over our school and I opted out and was placed on a “displaced” list. I acted quickly and was very fortunate to receive an interview and job offer with an excellent school system. I got lucky that the only downfall of the job offer was a ten thousand dollar a year pay cut and I am extemely happy with the decision that I made, but I can’t help feeling sorry and having extreme compassion for the children that I have left behind that could eventually loose their educational rights and freedoms afforded to them. I wish I had a strong enough back bone and didn’t care so much that I could just walk away and make it their problem… I just can’t imagine doing that.
Have you heard about Indianapolis’s issues with the state taking them over and is there anything I can do?
This is SOP for the charter industry. Not only that, they keep the tax money they received from the state for educating the children they pushed out. They are truly evil.
The famous KIPP schools in New Orleans follow this model. One parent there told me they also impose extra fees here and there, thereby pushing out children in poverty whose parents can’t afford the fees.
My big question is where are all the children in New Orleans and elsewhere who get put of these wonderful charter schools. There are thousands of high school students who fall through the cracks. The charters don’t report or track them, and they disappear off the books. Maybe that is why New Orleans has such a high juvenile crime rate. Connect the dots. Make no mistake, we will pay for this fiasco, one way or another.
New Orleans has one of the highest crime rates in the nation. And here is where the other kids are: 79% of the charters in New Orleans were rated D or F.
Correction: who get put “out ” of these …
And yes, I forgot to mention that New Orleans Recovery School District, RSD charter school system, is ranked at the bottom of the LA Dept. of Ed’s own accountability list. Yet the LA DOE touts them as a success to the rest of the state and country. Go figure?
Smoke and mirrors, marketing, public relations, typical American hype with no substance and the population is so “somatized” by the idiot box that they have no ability to counteract it.
Maybe we, public educators, have failed this country.
As we speak and as we read BESE is discussing the scholarship rules that will be used in any additional schools that will receive taxpayer money.
95% = 58/107?????
What this serves to show is what is the definition of graduation rate, cohort graduation rate, percent dropout, etc. . . ? Depending on how one defines each one can come up with some quite different numbers.
My assumption in the above equation is that the 95% = the number of seniors starting the year minus the “dropouts and/or transfers, students moving etc. . . over the number of seniors stating the year.
The 58/107 is the cohort graduation rate = the number of students graduating out of the number of those that started together as freshman.
Even supposedly simple “data” can actually be very complex depending upon the definition of the variables of the “data”.
Does no one hear see the problem????
This certainly seems to be the modus operandi for many of the charters in CT. The public school equivalent is to exempt the lowest 10% from the standardized tests. Business as usual at “Campbell’s Law Academy.”
This is quite similar to the touted success of the University Park Campus School in Worcester, a school that effectively took down the schools around it by pushing low achievers and students with special needs back into neighborhood schools over many years in order to build a record of success with a selected group of students in order to toot its own horn. Now, the area of the city of Worcester, that it was supposed to save, is more needy than when it began and only a handful of children get a good education at the expense of all the others. Be very, very careful of the Trojan Horse that these “glory hogging” schools are. They do not lead to a better public school system. The public dollar should invest in all schools equally and should not allow so-called “university” partners to reap its own rewards while drawing resources away from the “public” good. Those involved in these projects are very selfish and self interested. This is not helping the typical public school student or the typical public school teacher.
Worcester is now trying, for the n-th time to replicate University Park at another school. Perhaps Clark University, which benefits more than it gives, should start paying some taxes in the city so that there is a means to develop more services for this impoverished area. Absentee landlords and college housing, that is all tax free, are not helping the city to flourish. The city needs tax dollars and they need it now. The children need playgrounds, libraries, and opportunities for activities. What they don’t need is Clark taking over yet another Worcester Public School to use it as a training camp for its students at the expense of the other students in the city of Worcester. When will the city stand up to the bully that has done nothing but harm.
“Be very, very careful of the Trojan Horse that these “glory hogging” schools are.”
In my eighteen years in public education I have definitely noticed that those who loudly “toot their own horn” are usually less than stellar performers when examined closely.
I just saw and add this morning on the St. Louis Post Dispatch (the local paper) website for a district needing a “marketing and public relations” position. Now I understand the need for public schools doing a better job or public relations, but “marketing”???
an add not and add
The secret of every “successful” charter school: the Pedagogy of Attrition. Make every school an elimination tournament.
I taught in both the Chicago Public School system and the Charter system. No one pushes out low achievers.
Students are not passed along due to social promotion in the Charter school system and that comes as a shock to individuals. If a student fails a class, they are required to make up the class in evening classes (classes directly after school) up to 2 per semester and over the summer (which they actually pay a fee to cover what is beyond the school budget). If they don’t pass those classes, they don’t pass that grade. When a student finds out that they are not going to get promoted, to which they were accustomed in the public school, they either leave the school on their own terms or they sucked it up and return to the retained grade level.
Our Charter school soon gained the reputation of attracting students who are concerned for their education. The others go to schools where they know it is easier and it lacks discipline. At least my students got a chance to learn instead of having to cater to the interruptions that were ever-present in the public school.
There are 5,000 plus charter schools. It is impossible to make a statement that is true or false about all charter schools. Some skim, some don’t. Some expel kids, some don’t.
You “taught”. Any reason why you aren’t teaching there now???
“Our Charter school soon gained the reputation of attracting students who are concerned for their education.”
Self selection?? In other words not the average run of the mill Joe Blow school, eh???
” At least my students got a chance to learn instead of having to cater to the interruptions that were ever-present in the public school”
So you’re saying that you couldn’t hack it as a true public school teacher who has to deal with those students you deem inferior????
We also had a reputation for having a very strong special needs program. No one was turned away.
Show us the “data”.