The New York Daily News found another of those “miracle” schools that, on examination, isn’t.
Gary Rubinstein is a master debunker of miracle schools, and his antennae went up when he read about a charter school in the South Bronx where almost every student graduates. The Daily News wrote: “Of the 66 12th graders at Hyde Leadership Charter School, 62 graduated — a 95% rate that crushes the citywide average of 64.7%.”
Time for mathematics. Gary knew that the citywide rate was the “cohort rate,” the percentage who made it through high school to graduation. The 95% rate represents those who made it to 12th grade and graduated.
When the data were made comparable, the graduation rate at the “miracle school” was lower than the citywide average.
As Gary concludes, the Daily News could really use a fact-checker.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Most EduExcellent Dr. Steve Perry: “Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t” [from rapper Jay-Z]. And $tudent $ucce$$ is all about the numbers…
The accountabully underling who came up with the graduation figure cited by Gary Rubinstein is a mere amateur at Charterite Creative Math. Not long ago Achievement First Hartford boasted of a mindboggling 100% [!] graduation rate at its Amistad outlet but neglected to mention:
“Amistad’s claim of 100 percent college acceptance actually means a 43 percent attrition rate from the students who started in 9th grade four years earlier.”
Link: http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/ctnj.php/archives/entry/a_window_into_the_bill_and_melinda_gates_foundation_dystopia/
Adding to the cagebusting luster of Achievement First is a singularly noteworthy feat: “We’ve also learned that Achievement First is indisputably ranked first in Connecticut by a huge margin in the suspension students of kindergarten age.” [click on above link] I can just hear the chants now of “We’re #1! We’re #1!”
😦
Evidently this is what the edufrauds really mean when they say they are crushing the achievement gap from K to 12. [New mantra: “We are ‘no excuses’ when it comes to immature behavior by five and six year olds!”]
They seem to have missed the point of Andrew Lang’s admonitory observation: “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts —for support rather than for illumination.”
🙂
So basically, one hundred percent of their graduates graduated. Great. That’s some real informative data they provide there.
I don’t think the reporter probably meant to mislead. Many of them simply are math illiterates who wouldn’t know the difference between the cohort rate and the 12th grade graduation rate. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by ignorance.
is it that they are innumerate, or are they stenographers for the powerful first, and reporters second?
Michael Fiorillio: while I wouldn’t underestimate the power of innumeracy, I have very gradually [but reluctantly] come to the conclusion that very often editors pick reporters who are studiously ignorant of education matters.
This comes from almost five years of closely following the ed debates as well as watching what happens to folks like Michael Winerip of the NYTimes, who to all appearances was too good at understanding ed issues and was —promoted? demoted? shamed? challenged?—by being switched practically in mid-sentence to covering the burning and even more critically important issue to our democracy of “the baby-boom generation.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
And then we wonder why supposedly educated people like reporters can marvel at another ‘miracle school’?
“Ignorance is the mother of admiration.” [George Chapman]
🙂
Since the Daily News finds it lucrative to bash teachers, maybe we should all cancel our subscriptions!
When I hear or read that charters are MIRACLE schools, I laugh out loud,,,LOL!
The fact is that the reporters are told that if they write those stories they will not get printed and they risk never working as a reporter again. Thank you Bill Clinton for signing the 1996 Telecommunication Act which wiped out the “Free Press.” They have said it to me in private and I have seen some get toasted for that reason. Just ask “Who Owns those Media and Who Funds those organizations and groups. Try Urban League, NAACP or for that matter any right wing group and you will see. They list their donors. This is why it is this way now. They also make sure that there is no historical perspective as you used to have with real beat reporters who knew the past and everyone.