A few years ago,I wrote an article in The New YorkTimes about “miracle schools” that weren’t. I called out Mayor Bloomberg, as well as Arne Duncan and President Obama for making grandiose claims about schools that allegedly graduated 100% of their students or saw dramatic test score gains. On closer inspection, none of the miracles was true. In the schools where the scores jumped by 50 points, they mysteriously fell in a year or two by fifty points. In the schools with amazing graduation rates, what was not disclosed was their high attrition rates, that is, the large number of kids who left before senior year. In my research, I was aided by the detective work of Gary Rubinstein in New York City and Noel Hammatt in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Gary subsequently created a wiki site to keep track of miracle schools. So far, he has not found one that holds up to close scrutiny.
But NPR just ran a story about one of the schools that I debunked in 2011. Noel Hammatt again tracked down the data and showed how many students drop out before graduation.
After NPR described Urban Prep as a charter school where 100% graduate and 100% are accepted into four-year colleges, Noel Hammatt wrote this comment:
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Noel Hammatt •
I wrote about Urban Prep years ago (see http://bit.ly/Noel9 for my article that appeared at Harvard’s Nieman Center.) and Dr. Diane Ravitch used some of my research in an Op-Ed in the New York Times ( http://bit.ly/Noel91 )to point out that the story of Urban Prep is a marketing story, not a balanced story or a “miracle school” by any means. In the year that I wrote about Urban Prep their graduation rate was nothing to brag about. It is not unusual for UP to start with 155 students in the 9th grade, and four years later graduates around 55 Seniors. What is so startling in the story line in this story was the set up… where the story line says “and barely half [of African-American males] will graduate from high school.” Then the story immediately goes into data about Urban Prep, where suddenly the focus is NOT on graduation rate at all, but on the % of graduating seniors who are accepted into a four year college. No other high school looks at these numbers, and Urban Prep does it because it is the easiest to focus on while ignoring more damaging data.
What of this less stellar data? Here is what I wrote about Urban Prep in the Harvard piece. “The use of anecdotal data to promote a certain ideological version of “school reform” is only effective when the media are too lazy to dig behind a “press release” version of the news. In fact, it reminds me of the hype over a Chicago charter school highlighted for achieving 100 percent acceptance of its graduates in colleges. In spite of news outlets across the country reporting that this all-male, all African-American charter high school had beaten the odds (I in no way minimize the importance of the students being accepted into college), not one noted that only 17.2 percent of the students had passed the Reading and Mathematics portion of the Prairie State Achievement Examination, a key high school test in Illinois. Out of 1139 schools in the state taking this exam, Urban Prep Charter High School ranked 1067.”
“A year after I reported the data above, ALL of the scores for Urban Prep had gone even lower. Their average passage rate on the Prairie State Achievement Examination went from 17.2% to 14.7%, making it again one of the lowest performing schools in the state. The average composite score on the ACT was a paltry 16.5, which is lower than the average score for ALL African American students in the country.
“To look at the achievement another way, not one student in the 2011 PSAE scored at a level 4 (the highest level) in either Mathematics or in Science in the entire school.
“In my article at the Nieman Center for Journalism I was basically asking journalists to dig a bit deeper into the data before creating a story based on self-reported “hype.” Apparently no one at NPR read or appreciated my work. It would be nice to think that NPR is capable of digging deeper than a headline or a schools marketing report.
“(The statement about barely half graduating from high school is misleading as well. According to the Schott Foundation the number of African American males graduating IN FOUR YEARS is 52%. This is quite different from suggesting they NEVER graduate high school. See http://thegrio.com/2012/09/20/… for more.”
Why does the media fall for these stories? Well, they are dramatic even if untrue. Then, to the simpleminded listener, they show that privately managed schools are better than public schools. And they satisfy a basic human longing to believe in miracles. Reading or hearing this story on NPR leads to the conclusion that there are simple solutions to difficult problems. There are not.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Perhaps Arne Duncan should be a data cruncher for journalists and journalism schools and a new position – Secretary of Journalism should be created just for him – “big
leader that he is. He clearly feels capable of leading at top levels in areas where he has no experience. Journalism is no longer about solid research. Seems as if every article on the tv news, on line and in print is based on blanket statements from PR releases! Thank you Noel Hammett for restoring my faith (a bit) that there are some journalists out there with integrity and understanding about what this field is supposed to be about.
There are no miracle schools. The problems in education are very complex and include stressful neighborhoods, bad nutrition, poor housing, dysfunctional families, overcrowded classrooms, emotional and social problems, drug and alcohol abuse, disempowerment of students, high teacher turnover, high administrative turnover, etc. It’s a long road that would take generations to turn around. The public wants a quick fix. We are putting bandaids on something that is bleeding out. We are asking the wrong questions. We are blaming one system in a multi-system organism.
Exactly Denise…and after Obama/Duncan their billionaire puppet masters cleanse all schools of all “ineffective teachers” and impose charters in every American community, all taught by TFA kids, and test scores hit the bottom with a resounding thud….will these legislators and their monied bosses then decide they must cleanse all failing students of color to keep America pure?
Adolf…stike up the band!
Diane, did you see this?: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2014/07/arne_duncan_unveils_fifty_stat.html
I’m curious about the much touted “No Excuses” school Los Pen in San Diego, California. When working in a charter school that embraced this philosophy, the great progress of Los Pen was used as an example to us as something to emulate. If they could have great success, so could we! Looking at their latest test scores, they are indeed higher than the average for California; however, they’re NOT terribly different than the school district… suggesting that once again, the socio-economic status of the families in the district play a large role in the success of the children in the schools. When our school failed to make those miraculous gains, we were once again pushed to work harder. Something was amiss. I suspect it’s one more “miracle” that’s not really a miracle.
There appear to be two choices facing young people today: get into college or be regarded as an abject failure. As though college were some sort of magic door. It isn’t. How about a realistic effort to create alternative education for craft and trade careers?
Look, for instance, at the “Currents” column in July/August Wooden Boat (on the newsstand now). They showcase more than a dozen youth boatbuilding programs, some of which are focused on at-risk teenagers, or STEAM objectives.
The classroom and computer are not the only places to learn.
…and you know what? With a couple thousand dollars, one could buy a pushcart hotdog “truck” and set up in a high foot traffic area, and if one had a quality product, make a good, sustaining buck. The only skill required, know how to cook a mean hotdog. According to Duncan, would that make one a loser?
It also requires an incredible work ethic and, often, good management skills. And depending on the town, a little more than a couple thousand dollars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/nyregion/the-six-figure-price-tag-for-selling-a-two-dollar-hot-dog.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
According to Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post, that whole “get into college” thing is going to go up in smoke. The outcome of tests, designed to fail 3/4 of the students, is the end of public universities.
Solution, wooden boats and……..?
violins?
… immigrant to Finland. Take lots of warm clothing.
What we are missing sight of is the fact that simple-minded people do not vote in the same numbers when compared to people who earn more and are better educated.
And, of course, elected representatives at the state and federal level know this, so we should be asking why these elected officials, who probably know the real facts, are making decisions based on lies that they know are lies while the corporate owned media pushes these lies to fool as many of the simple minded as possible.
The answer of course is that the majority of elected representative are either simple minded themselves or corrupt because they are in the pay of a few extremely wealthy billionaire oligarchs, who go by names like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, etc.
If this continues and there is no refusal at the elected leadership level, then the so called democracy in the US is totally dead, and the U.S. is no longer the land of the free. But then, has the U.S. every really been the land of the free?
That’s pretty much what I have been saying here for almost two years, Lloyd. And it is what Diane’s 2010 book focuses on….The Death and Life of the Great american School System.
It is the now…not the future.
And NPR receives funding from benefactors who invest in and profit from lucrative, simple solutions to difficult educational problems.
Sounds like the LEAP Academy Charter School in Camden County, New Jersey. This year 100% of their students graduated and 100% were accepted to colleges, including many Ivy League schools. If this is true, then their methods are worthy of emulation. However, I have read many of this misleading claims before.
Rahm cried at Urban Prep’s graduation a couple of years ago. I don’t think he cries when public school students graduate.
“The use of anecdotal data to promote a certain ideological version of “school reform” is only effective when the media are too lazy to dig behind a “press release” version of the news.”
According to the Harper’s index, the ratio of PR specialists to journalists working in the US is 4.6 to exactly 1. May, 2014, Harper’s magazine p.11, sources on p.98.
NPR is short on journalists with even a minimal impulse to investigate sources and consider which are the most trustworthy.
Yes…precisely why the public, which is basically ignorant and lazy, knows so little about the theft of public education. As said above, many voters are too lazy to read about and understand the issues. With the advent of paid poitical sound bites on TV decades ago, the voting process changed for the worse. Most voters rely on propaganda, not facts.
Yes, democracy is an idea that has passed us by. Money is everything. Free market capitalism rules.
NPR = FOX , subjective reporting.
“In the schools where the scores jumped by 50 points, they mysteriously fell in a year or two by fifty points.”
When this happened in Philadelphia, teachers and administrators lost their jobs…some were arrested and will stand trial. Unusually high jumps in scores as well as erasure patterns are ‘obvious signs’ of cheating…so say the ‘Bubble’ police.
There is a high school in Las Cruces, New Mexico that graduated 100% of the freshman that started with the school. The school is the Early College High School on the campus of New Mexico State University. This is a high school of 500 students. The graduation class was the first for this school. The students are run of the mill average students many whose parents never finished high school and the majority of the parent never attended college. The students were not selected because they are the best and the brightest. The students chose the school. The students and parents fully understood that the courses and challenges would be demanding. The school curriculum is rigorous. Heavy in math and science. There is nothing special about these students other than the fact they worked hard and had the total support of their families, the staff, and their peers. The majority of the students also graduated with an Associate Degree from Dona Ana Community College using the Dual Enrollment program set up by the State. When one student was asked how it was possible for all the students who started the school as Freshman to graduate four years later, his comment was simply that we as students were not going to allow a fellow student to fail or drop out. Maybe Duncan, Gates, and all the others who think they know so much about education should visit this high school to find out why it is so successful. The School District is now adding another wing to the campus. This wing will focus on the medical fields. We have no doubt that students who attend classes in this wing will also be successful.
After quickly perusing the school website, I noticed students must apply to this school. Although the application is offered in English and Spanish, it has to be accessed online. I taught at a school with an 80% Hispanic population. Only 5% of our families had internet access and many were illiterate in Spanish let alone English. Even though the students may be “run of the mill,” they still have advantages over the neediest families. Duncan, Gates and Rhee don’t need to visit this school; the reason for its success is the application process.
It is too bad you could not just recognize the school as being successful instead of putting it down for having an on-line application. And, apparently you do not know the demography of the area in which the students live — one of the poorest counties in the United States. Be proud of your school but don’t put down other schools that successful and don’t follow your model.
Nice to know about this school. Thanks for sharing.
Millions of dollars of Gates Foundation money has been going to NPR:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/k=NPR
Chicago City Colleges accept all high school graduates. A Chicago high school having a 100% college acceptance rate is meaningless.
Cherry picking data to prove a point is a favorite device for politicians. AND this is going to help “educate” our children?
Here’s a miracle: the Overclass and its hunting dogs have a revelation about the tremendous damage they have caused, spontaneously desist from their smash and grab policies, and decide to subsidize housing, health care, adequate nutrition, pre-school untainted by Common Core and data mining, enrichment for K-12 and 100% funding for public universities.
This is very much like Eva Moskowitz’s Harlem Prep where all the kids who were retained di tremendously on state exams. Things were wonderful until those amazing kids sat for the admission exam for NYC’s highly selective schools. Not one of the miracle school students got into the competitive settings. Makes you wonder if Eva is really earning her $500K salary for running schools with about 2% of the enrollment overseen by Chancellor Farina (salary $212K). Interesting how Governor Cuomo makes such a big deal about public school Superintendents earning a salary higher than his–but never comments about Eva’s not for profit charter paying her $500K of public money! Remember Eva is paying herself with public money!
‘It would be nice to think that NPR is capable of digging deeper than a headline or a schools marketing report.”
while that would benice, it ain’t gonna happen.
NPR is made up of stenographers, not journalists.
They simply repeat what the folks at just a few think tanks (usually Brookings and American Enterprise Institute) dictate to them and then make a ‘he said she said” story based on the two opinions.
It’s all about faux “balance’. Reality and facts don’t even enter into it.
the idea of “Investigative reporting” is totally foreign to the folks at NPR because as far as they are concerned, there is no underlying reality, just opinions.
A few years ago, Urban Prep was one of the schools named as not making AYP in The Chicago Tribune editorial, “New Trier’s F.” But then, again, I have to repeat my mantra that Pear$on test scores mean zip anyway–not valid, not reliable, NOT standardized, just co$$$tly and u$ele$$. However, that having been said, while low test scores/not making AYP were used to close &/or turnaround Chicago Public Schools, this was not the case with Urban Prep or New Trier (or any of the other suburban/charter schools that did not make AYP). Bottom line, this is now the reason that other excuses are being used to close down Chicago Public Schools–“underutilization” being the word of the day (never mind that numerous charter schools are also “underutilized.”
Any port in a storm will do…
During the Georgie Porgie years NPR = National Pentagon Radio.
During the Obomber years NPR = National Paid* Radio or National Propaganda Radio, take your pick.
*for by those plutocratic oligarchs who would not allow real journalism to take place that might cast dispersions on the oligarchic plutocracy.
Bizarre statistics and strange incentives around graduation rates…http://tinyurl.com/lszac4l