One of the disturbing behaviors of charter chains is their boasting. All too often, when someone looks past the press release, they find data games, fudging of the numbers, or falsehoods.
Jonathan Pelto, a former legislator who follows Connecticut politics and concentrates on education, says that the boasts of a major charter chain in that state are hollow.
Achievement First, a much-touted charter chain, boasts of that 100% of its graduates are accepted into college.
But Pelto cites a new report showing that the number who graduate and enroll in college is far lower because of attrition.
Stefan Pryor, the state education commissioner, was a co-founder of Achievement First.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s easy to have 100% of your graduates accepted into college if college acceptance is a condition for graduating.
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What’s new about a charter chain lying?
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This is a popular reformer claim. It is always a manipulated statistic. Michael Johnston (former TFAer gone Colorado senator) has a school that boasts as much. And so does Dteve Perry. And KIPP boasts an “100% graduation rate.”
My high school senior class could boast that “100% of qualified seniors graduated.”
I realize that is not as impressive as “100% of graduates enrolled in college.”
But so what?
How many students made it from freshman to senior year?
How many seniors “enrolled in college” actually complete degree requirements?
Now there are some numbers that will not lie.
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I know I’m dating myself here, but these bogus claims – outright lies, to be precise – remind me of the tag line in the old Trident chewing gum ads: “Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend Trident for their patients who chew gum.”
The claims of charter privateers should be given the same credence.
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Thanks to Diane and Jonathan. I’ll be sharing this posting and the supporting newspaper article with the Washington State Charter Schools Commission at their next regular meeting.
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I know at least one charter school that has an excellent reputation and requires its students to be accepted to college in order to graduate. That allows them to claim that 100% of their graduates are accepted to college. I don’t know what happens to those who aren’t accepted or how many of those accepted actually attend college. It’s all a game to make the numbers look good.
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No surprise about spin and lies from a charter. It’s par for the course now.
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Community colleges take all comers, and there are even 4 year colleges that will take pretty much any applicant.
I saw these claims by a charter recently:
“Where 100% of graduates exceed the UC/CSU entrance requirements”
and
“An investment in XXX guarantees that regardless of a student’s prior preparation or background he/she will graduate from high school and be four-year college ready.” (from the donate page)
I laud their goals. I am sure they are doing good work with the kids they have. But they don’t have a representative sample of kids and they should stop pretending they do. At the very least, most public high schools have a students who are neurologically incapable of meeting the a-g requirements.
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