The Pennsylvania Secretary of Education changed the state testing rules, without federal approval, to boost the scores of charters. The change involved treating charter schools as if they are districts, not schools. This reduced the number of charters that failed to make adequate yearly progress.
The chief legal counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association said “the change might give the Legislature the false impression that charter schools outperform traditional public schools as they consider bills supported by Corbett to expand the number of charter schools and change how they are authorized in Pennsylvania.”
PSBA pointed out that the new formula overstates the performance of charters. Because of the formula, “…44 of the 77 charter schools that PDE has recently classified as having made AYP for 2011-12 in fact fell short of the targets for academic performance that other public schools had to meet, some even declining in proficiency percentages rather than making gains.”
This is the intersection of politics and education, where the data are adjusted for political ends.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And to whom shall we formally complain to? Looks a little like fraud to me.
tell it to the Marines.
Better yet, file a lawsuit.
Yes, as Susan comments below, the former school superintendent of El Paso was sentenced to three-and-a-half years! Call in the lawyers.
Cross posted to Democratic Underground.com:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101644114
My comment posted on this story at Democraticunderground.com:
More than half of charter schools in the state fail by the very yardstick corporate “reformers” demand be used to judge real public schools, so the state Secretary of Education tweaks the reporting rules to make it look less bad.
This is the kind of rigging of the game you get when government services are contracted out to for profit businesses that can afford to take some of their profits to pay politicians to put their thumb on the scale.
This would be an embarrassment simply to the state of Pennsylvania if this wasn’t the bipartisan federal policy that OUR PRESIDENT reaffirmed his commitment to as recently as the first debate.
When are enough of these stories going to add up to shame at least Democratic politicians into admitting this is a corrupt, costly mistake?
Our current K-12 education policy is like finding a malnourished, neglected kid, and instead of nursing him back to health, smothering him with a pillow so you can sell his organs.
send a link to your article about Pa. charters. love the metaphor!
Citizens and journalists are catching on to “reform” fraud and that’s a good thing.
What will be more disconcerting, and telling, is if the USDoE actually approves PA’s change.
On a somewhat different note–this is what I call real investigative reporting, and something we’ve been sorely lacking these many years.
Investigative reporting seems to be a lost art in our state’s capital city newspaper. Thank goodness we have some bloggers who help get the truth out. I keep hoping for the investigative light switch to be turned on and stay lit. The light flickers, sometimes. We need it to stay on in Louisiana.
Diane,
I have attached a link to Pro Act Search, the search firm responsible for Mike Myers being placed in Dallas ISD. The search team members are listed on the page. Do you have any background on these people? Are the TFA, Broad, or other by chance?
http://www.proactsearch.com/management-team/
Talk about cheating.
Louisiana’s White probably already called to get the info on how to do this here and hide it better.
We will never succeed in changing rheeform if the Powers That Be keep changing the rules to benefit themselves, which is, of course, their objective. We are playing “Calvin Ball” with our public schools.
Actually, John White and Louisiana have already perfected several of these techniques and added a few twists of their own. I’ve documented some of the tricks being used here:
Basically they are defining schools they take over and/or turn over to charter operators as “Turnaround” schools for two years and don;t report any data on them. If the scores don’t improve they plan to reassign them to a new charter. Only schools that do well will ever get reported. Additionally, all of the recovery school district in New Orleans is defined as a small school district, less than 1000 students. Even though taken together they easily exceed that coun. Several of the sub-districts like Algiers have multiple sites and exceed that number, but for purposes of reporting the data for these districts LDE has decided to count the schools as their own district. I’m pretty sure even then we have one or two schools with more than 1000 students, but this has been reported by our departing accountabilty folks to USDOE with no apparent effect.
PA’s only mistake is not reporting what they were doing, USDOE doesn’t care if you cook the numbers, as long as you tell them you are I guess.
What I want to know is how New York State changed the cut scores after state exams had been administered last year? What? Did too many children pass, so they moved the goal post after the game?
Let’s see…a Texas superintendent gets jail time for cheating, yet somehow a Pennsylvania secretary of ed doesn’t? Double standards, I say.
I will say it until I am blue in the face: charter schools need to be shut down.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
When will PA teachers get mad enough to stop this madness? Governor Corbett is audacious in his purpose to berate teachers at every turn, even to accuse all of us of cheating on the tests. I have never seen such blatant manipulation of facts and antagonism of a group of workers as there has been in PA.