In New York City, there is an effort to bring together teachers and principals in public schools to learn from high-performing charter schools. What are the secrets of their success?
Apparently the lessons from charter schools were taken to heart by the new principal of troubled Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. He has asked low-performing students, students who don’t have enough credits, to transfer out. Is this one of the secrets of charter success that should be used by public schools? In the few weeks that the new principal has been in charge, 30 students have been pushed out. One was a boy who had literally turned his life around and was elected junior class president:
Calvin Brown, Jr. enrolled at Boys and Girls High School midway through his sophomore year after falling behind at a nearby charter school. Though the Bedford-Stuyvesant high school is considered one of the city’s worst, Brown thrived there.
He became the junior class president last year and the captain of the debate team, which is set to travel to South Africa next month for a competition. He had entered the school with just seven credits, but as he started his senior year this September he had three times that amount — still half as many as he needs to graduate, but he was catching up.
Then, after the school’s outspoken principal resigned last month, the city installed a new leader to turn around the troubled school. Under new principal Michael Wiltshire, students who are missing many credits or otherwise unlikely to graduate this year have been encouraged to transfer out, according to Brown and staffers at the school. Brown was one of the students urged to leave.
“They made me transfer,” said Brown, 17. “They don’t want me on the Boys and Girls roster.”
The principal must have realized that the secret to having a high-performing school is to get rid of the low-performing students. Is this equality of educational opportunity? Is this public education?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If true, can’t the family sue for damages?
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Transfer out to where? When the charter school throws you out, and you go to the public school, and the public school throws you out, where to you go next? Do you get a GED? Do you go work at Walmart? Do you enroll in K-12 inc. online? Kahn Academy? Where do these unwanted students go?
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In New York City, there are many transfer high schools that serve overage students at risk of not graduating by age 21.
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So, Tim, you think it was ok for the principal to kick out this young man who had turned his life around and was elected president of the junior cclass?
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Why ask Tim and not Carmen Farina, the person who appointed this principal and who actually runs the NYC school system?
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Because Diane is resonding to Tim’s post on her blog. If CF chimes in here then maybe Diane will follow your ridiculous advice. Are you taking debate lessons from TE?
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I don’t think it would be ridiculous to ask Carmen Farina whether she approves of what this principal is doing. It certainly matters a lot more than whether Tim or I or you approve.
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Only my POV, but if you read the posting—
the last three sentences still stand. As written. No favorites played. No excuses made.
Thank you to the owner of this blog for making a lot more sense, and sticking to the point of this blog posting, than some of the commenters.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
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I’ve avoided commenting here recently due to the outrageous religious bigotry displayed by Joe Nathan, FLERP!, and TeachingEconomist.
After reading the headline of this post I decided to check out the comments to see if any of those 3 religious bigots defended the school and its outrageous decision to ‘counsel out’ the students who need the most help.
Sure enough! Here is religious bigot FLERP! defending the indefensible. And not only that, he has the audacity to insult the blog owner while attempting to highjack the comment thread. What a loser!
At least there is something that never changes: religious bigots and fools, like leopards, never change their spots, do they?
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One difference between this and charter school pushouts is that here the district still retains the statistic of the kid pushed out. The district may get the reward of turning around Boys & Girls, but it also takes on the risk that the struggling kid pushed out will fail at the next district school, and the risk that pushouts pose to the receiving school cultures. When charters push out, all the risk is transferred to the district, and the risk is not retained in any way by the charter. This is especially so when the charters have built in extremely high attrition rates, and when charter authorizers explicitly have no concern about such expected attrition rates.
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Chris,
What did I say that you think was bigoted?
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Well, Riker’s Island – for non-New Yorkers, that’s the city prison complex – has a school, and since this Principal seems to have been installed to increase the capacity of the school-to-prison pipeline, and since this student has been kicked in the teeth by the school system and told that his efforts are worthless, he’s being given the message that it might be where he belongs.
With our Reptilian Governor’s re-election, it is now a certainty that the so-called reformers will push to have the charter cap raised or eliminated altogether. Unfortunately, with the public schools increasingly parroting the vicious behavior of charters, maybe that’s not even necessary, since the public schools are being encouraged to destroy themselves.
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Ruby in Clinton Hill, that was an excellent reply. Thank you.
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Getting low performers and troublemakers out is indeed the key to success with charter schools, or with any private, parochial, or public magnet school. We see that here in DC with, eg, KIPP and BASIS as well as St Albans and Sidwell and Walls and Banneker.
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I teach in a public magnet school and we have to follow the same rules as the regular school to have students transferred. I guess we could ask someone to leave, but we certainly can’t just kick them out.
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Reblogged this on jsheelmusic and commented:
The secret to looking good, in education, to hide the trash. The sad part is, that’s not the direction we should be heading down, nor is it an enlightened view of how we should ALL achieve prosperity.
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And where are the Bullionaires and the Lawyers with the Hearts of Gold to defend their Civil Rights?
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Ok, after actually reading the link to Boys and Girls High, I see they thrown out and told to go to a high needs specialty high school. But, this is about improving the numbers and “cooking the books” at B and G. I get it. What a shame to throw kids out like they are garbage.
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The new principal is a DOE veteran insider with 13 years’ worth of experience as a principal of an academically screened traditional district middle school. He was handpicked by Fariña, who not only gave him a big bonus to take over Boys and Girls, but even allowed him to remain as principal at his current school (he estimates he will spend 75% of his time at Boys and Girls).
If there is a connection here to charter schools, I am missing it.
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Throwing kids out to improve the school’s data is a common charter school practice
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Apparently it’s a common public school practice, too, according to the story you linked.
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Correction: charter schools are frequently accused of throwing kids out. In New York City, the evidence that it actually happens is scant.
If the counseled out kids wish to remain at Boys and Girls, they should certainly be allowed to do so.
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“the evidence that it actually happens is scant. “…Really? Well I work in NYC schools and receive many, many MANY phone calls from disenchanted parents whose youngsters have been “counseled out” of charters….up and through and including Success Academies. I don’t know where Tim gets his data from, but mine is from actual interaction with real, live, breathing, upset, discouraged and disenchanted parents who have said more than once…..”if I knew then what I know now”………..I never would have enrolled my son/daughter in THAT (fill in the blank with the name of the particular charter) school. So much for the “scant” part. I am am only referring to my school. So statistically speaking, since it is not a “scant” scenario in my building to get transfers into our public school from a charter, (happens all the time) it is not likely we are the only ones. That this principal was handpicked by the chancellor, means absolutely nothing. It is apparently his style to not address the actual problems with real solutions, but rather, to engage in a quick fix.
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Getting those disenchanted parents to go on the record would be a very useful thing to do!!! Please try to do so!!
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There are literally hundreds of NYC reporters across all forms of media, not just those who are focused on education, who would be thrilled to be connected with and to do a big piece on families whose children were actively counseled out of a network charter school–thrilled as in it could lead the six o’clock news tonight if you could produce a bunch of families willing to talk, even off the record, within the next hour or so.
I realize that going that route isn’t for everyone, but since you know so “many, many MANY” families that have had it happen to them, I’m guessing you could at least find just one or two who would be willing to talk to a reporter like Juan Gonzalez or Beth Fertig. It’s the right thing to do.
(I take it you are already guiding such families through the process of filing formal complaints with SUNY and/or NYSED–also the right thing to do.)
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there are no reporters who want to tell the truth about charters and ed reform because the “papers” are owned by the reformers … come on now Tim…even you know that
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Oh, I don’t know, Donna. The Daily News published a piece by Juan Gonzalez wherein he could scarcely contain his glee over the fact that no Success eighth graders tested into a specialized high school. Beth Fertig at WNYC has stated her desire to do a piece on counseling out. It would be an irresistible story for the many TV news outlets in a death struggle for ratings.
It simply doesn’t make sense that the media would suppress it. Connect the families with them.
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Tim
And because it doesn’t make sense to you, then it must be so? Your insistence on this issue (the well established fact, based on reality, that charters cull and counsel students out before testing) is simply eroding what little credibility you have here.
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It’s fascinating that the same people keep denying that there is any evidence of students being counseled out of charter schools when
Diane his posted several linked article excerpts here where researchers have shown quite clearly that the entering classes of supposed ‘high-performing’ charters consisted of X numbers of students and the same cohort of graduating classes at the same school were substantially smaller, with X – a large Y, clearly evidence that SOMETHING caused many students, who, coincidentally are always the ELL, Special Education, and Behavioral students, to leave the magical charters long before graduating.
Perhaps this is just proof that charters create a high drop-out rate or that these children lacked the amorphous reformist ‘grit’ to hang in there? If so, isn’t that a charter problem too?
Deny, obfuscate, confuse, distract, whine, accuse, throw a tantrum, and lie outright but you can’t turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse, as my beloved Grandmother used to say.
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The numbers of children eliminated by charter schools can be evidenced by tracking cohorts. The freshman class may start with 200; by the time they’re seniors that same class cohort may number half that because those who were poor performing are forced out. Closing large schools was a strategy Bloomberg employed to help make his initiatives look like solutions. If a school has been identified as a closing school, its stats are no longer used. The better students are counseled to go to the preferred small school start-ups lured by the promise of fresh funding and facilities; others are sent to other large schools even if it means challenging commutes so that the schools the disenfranchised students end up at will suffer declining performance. I saw students from Cypress Hills, east New York and Brownsville I knew at F.K. Lane at William Cullen Bryant in far West Queens the year after I was excessed from the closing Lane. I don’t think it an accident that these students were made to travel east switching from the A to the J to Jamaica Center so they could transfer to go west on the E nearly all the way across Queens back to 48th Street. I believe it was by design that their already poor attendance suffered.
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Lawrence Zajac, charters have another advantage: they don’t have to accept new students after the first year. That is why their numbers shrink each year. Those who leave are not replaced.
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Dr. Ravitch,
I think you will find that qualified admission magnet schools have the same practice.
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What research shows that throwing students out because of their potential for, or actual low test scores, “is a common practice for district, magnet or charter public schools?”
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Ah, yes, the beauty of “choice”. Wait, you didn’t think that meant that students or parents would get to do the choosing, did you?
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“. . . the beauty of ‘choice’.”
Will that be the guillotine or the noose today maam????
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This principal will continue to work part-time at a selective admissions school where he has raised grad rates and so on.
That school also has a lot fewer special ed students.
The school he is moving to is in do-or-die mode with state officials. Metrics have to go up or it will close.
Students are expendable if they don’t have the right stuff to make this high profile principal continue to look good. He is getting a $25, 000 bonus for taking on the troubled school. He remains in a key role at his other school, and can return there if his new “challenge” does not work out.
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Gosh, kind of like what hedge fund managers do. Why does this not surprise me? The principal is hedging his bets. No risk to him. Only the students.
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This makes me nauseous. I think I am in an educational twilight zone. What planet is this administrator on? How many students need to be shuffled and coerced into leaving? If that is what charters are about, then we should really do a new educational bill in congress called “ALL children left behind except those who are perfect”…………I would have never let my child leave. I would have planted myself on the chancellor’s doorstep until I got an appointment. So easy to intimidate students and parents who don’t know the system. They don’t know how to advocate for themselves. I am incensed at this.
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I attended a selective admissions public high school in Philadelphia many years ago. When we reached the sophomore class, we realized we were the survivors. Lots of former freshmen class members had returned to their neighborhood schools..I think America should be about second chances. I once met a young man from England whose family had moved here because he missed his A levels by one point so his family moved here so he could attend college. Perhaps if the young man had been guided better and the school had some flexible options for him, the outcome would have been better.
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“The Key to $ucce$$”
The lesson of the charter
The key to their $ucce$$
Is focus on the smarter
Eliminate the rest
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This sounds familiar to something I see happening in my school.
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There’s the phrase again. . .”turn around.” I’m telling you, the words we choose in policy determine a lot. That phrase needs to go. They need to find other adjectives to describe actions to improve a school, other than “turn it around.” Like “21st Century Skills,” it really doesn’t mean much if you think about it.
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It fits in terms of the life of the youth mentioned here. “He turned his life around.” But for a school? No. It doesn’t make sense.
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“turn around” is a reform euphemism. You can bet whatever terms they are using, the mean the opposite.
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This is the world we live in:
=> We measure what’s easy and inexpensive to measure
=> We sort and select— schools AND students— based on those metrics
=> We seek remedies for failing students and schools that are quick, easy and inexpensive
=> If we are editors in the NYTimes, we chastise anyone who offers remedies that are slow, complicated, and costly (See the Times reaction to DiBlasio’s plan in today’s newspaper)
=> If we’re running a school district as complicated and underfunded as NYC like Dr. Farina, we need to make progress by hook or by crook despite the lack of time and insufficient resources.
I am willing to give Farina and DiBlasio some slack on this… They aren’t blaming teachers and they aren’t instituting “no excuses” discipline plans and they appear to be trying to find an appropriate school for the students who are struggling at Boys and Girls HS. I’m also sympathetic to the Principal. I don’t imagine there are too many middle school principals in NYC who are willing to leave a magnet middle school where they are experiencing success to take on a high profile “failing” high school with a bright spotlight. My 35 years as an administrator may bias my thinking on this… but, given the world we live in, I hope folks will be patient and supportive of what the Mayor and Superintendent are trying to accomplish.
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no more youthful indiscretion for you young man….what a travesty. Everyone, especially someone so young, deserves a second chance, and if not in public school then where?
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I hope this young man has good parents who can continue to lead him in the right direction. I hope he does not get discouraged and give up. He will make it, no matter how long it takes. This is the cruelest and craziest thing I’ve ever heard of. Yes, I’m sure the charter schools have figured out that the only way to get higher scores than the public schools is to get rid of the kids with learning problems.
Parents are going to have to rise up and fight. I mean fight!!! They need to fight for their kids!!! Parents have power!!! If parents do not begin to get informed, our educational system is going to go back to the very dark days where only the rich children were educated. It is already happening to our middle class college kids.
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We need to start pushing—demanding!—in ALL the states that permit charters, new legislation that will PROHIBIT the expulsion of charter students for anything other than the most egregious offenses, i.e. the same standards that are used at public schools.
It’s an outrage that these businesses posing as “schools” take our tax dollars away from us, use them to pay their “CEO” and executives exorbitant salaries—sometimes as much as a half million annually!—and then get to arbitrarily pick and choose their students, drop the ones they don’t like at any point, for any reasons, or no reasons, and THEN fraudulently claim to the world that they have a “100% Graduation and College Acceptance Rate”.
Let’s start by lobbying our state legislatures and visiting with education reporters, each one of us, all over the country. NO MORE EXPULSIONS OF STUDENTS FROM CHARTERS FOR REASONS OTHER THAN THE ONES THAT ARE USED BY PUBLIC SCHOOLS!”
This is a winning issue; or at least one that will raise public awareness and educate the public, win or lose. Let’s go make it happen!
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What are the reasons for expulsion used by public schools?
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Er, the traditional district NYC DOE high school that is the subject of this post, is kicking low performing kids out. You want to extend that privilege to charter schools?
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Also, the students mentioned in this story weren’t expelled. They weren’t even subjected to “involuntary transfers.” They were told they should transfer and they agreed to it — i.e., they were counseled out. It would be interesting to see how many students are counseled out of DOE district schools each year. That’s assuming the DOE tracks that data, which it may not. Audit!
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The reason this student was behind was because he originally attended a charter school:
“Calvin Brown, Jr. enrolled at Boys and Girls High School midway through his sophomore year after falling behind at a nearby charter school….He had entered the school with just seven credits, but as he started his senior year this September he had three times that amount — still half as many as he needs to graduate, but he was catching up.”
So he thrived at his public school, found his niche and took on leadership positions. But the principal wants him gone because Calvin makes his numbers look bad. So, since charter schools are now to provide examples of successful schooling to public schools,
“You don’t want kids like that in the school,” Schwartz said. “It makes it hard to change the culture.”
Hence, the title of this post.
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Arizona has many Charters; the top performing Basis was started in Tucson. Here’s the their playbook. Require all students to take 9 AP courses in High School. Give placement exams and tell students they will have to go back a grade if they don’t score high enough. Encourage struggling students to find a school that is a “better fit” for them. And, of course, if the student leaves mid year, keep the $ and not be held accountable for the State tests in the Spring. That is the question I tried to get Joe Nathan to answer in an earlier thread. If Public schools are supposed to learn from Charters, should they be able to do the same thing? And how about that wonderful “lack of transparency” for how tax money is spent. We all “know” that the best schools are the ones that pay their CEOs the most and overpay rent to their buddies/relative’s management company.
I have read quotes from Indianapolis to LA about this mid-year practice and I have personal experience as well. Please, Charter Supporters, tell us we should do this innovative practice. Then the question will be, “Where will they go?”
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You may be interested in this.
Arizona charter schools do worse than Arizona public schools.
“That said, the two papers put charter schools’ failures so far clearly on display. One, a study of charter schools in Arizona, found that students who attended a charter typically learned less in math, reading and science than students who attended a traditional public school.”
You have to read past the ridiculous amount of spin to get to that basic fact, but persevere! Texas too, apparently.
No matter! Let’s build more, and close more public schools!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/07/two-new-studies-show-charter-schools-work-if-you-give-them-time/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
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I forgot to add this: If you want real examples of this “counseling out”, you need look no further than this blog. Search for Basis School here. You’ll see comments from Basis parents justifying this . One even admitted that they can’t be upfront about t his “Principals have to walk a fine line because Basis is publicly funded” (not an exact quote) I know some School Districts have selective enrollment schools, but they are also REQUIRED to provide services for Speech, Learning Disabilities, and Emotional Disabilities, etc. Please, all I ask is that we be honest about what is happening in this country. We are re-segregating our schools while pretending it’s just Parental Choice. Never forget, the angry White parents in Little Rock wanted Parental Choice too. And I’ll end with this hypocrisy. I read , not long ago, that a Charter School was being opened in Phoenix for Autistic kids. I went to elementary school before the Special Ed laws were passed (least restrictive environment) and I remember the warehousing of SPED kids. We had a building next door and we only saw those kids on our annual “Halloween Parade” through their building. I was afraid those kids because I didn’t know them. Now, with Charters, we are starting this practice again.
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We have limited open enrollment in Ohio and districts refuse certain kids. They don’t admit to refusing them, but one of the big reasons students want to transfer is they aren’t doing well at their home school. The new district doesn’t want to take kids who aren’t doing well.
I think it could be truly horrible in a 100% “choice” environment. They’d be bouncing kids all over the place, It hasn’t happened to that extent here because it’s limited open enrollment. Most people don’t switch schools.
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There are two charter schools for Autism in Utah already.
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Threatened,
One of the oldest charters in the country is devoted to educating the deaf. Is that a problem?
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Peter Greene hits charter school v public school comparison out of the park:
So Tim, Joe, FLERP, TE, et. al. please S-T-O-P the bogus comparisons. Just admit any success are a direct result of the huge advantages listed here:
1) Charters have NO financial transparency
2) Charters are NOT accountable to voters
3) Charters do NOT play by the same rules
4) Charters do NOT serve all students
Its an excellent read:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-public-charter-school-test.html
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NY Teacher,
Here are the annual reports for the Community Roots Charter School: http://www.communityroots.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=279704&type=d&pREC_ID=632382
The Walton Rural Center Charter school is chartered by the local school board.
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Community Roots Charter School seems to keep the same 50 kids. It is not suspending up to 20% of its 1st and 2nd graders. It is certainly possible for a charter school to keep all its students instead of “hinting” to them they might be happier elsewhere, by giving them out of school suspensions.
As someone pointed out, when other charter schools get rid of their low-performing students, they are off the books of their charter school. When a DOE school gets rid of its low-performing students, they are still in the DOE system.
Why doesn’t SUNY charter schools designed to teach these kinds of kids? Oh yes, that’s right, the charter schools won’t touch them. I would gladly support any charter school willing to take the kids “counseled out” of Boys and Girls High school. But of course, no charter operator has offered such a school.
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Isn’t this the same school that is making their teachers reapply for positions? And isn’t this the same school the NYTimes wants closed and bring back the Bloomberg “Let’s close it!!” era???
You know if this public school can do it, then we should be able to do that with all public schools. And we should because that’s the basic formula of the charter miracle. Not just throw out those falling behind (so much for NCLB) but also the discipline problems. If you never saw the series “The Wire” when they did a season about public schools, try to get it.
My question is what will happen when all schools eventually turn into charters. Do the investors sell off their shares while the profit is still high because there will be no magic formula to save them from the realities of public school? And in the end, they will all have the same problems until some billionaire comes up with another plan to make money.
.
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My grade partner in my urban school came to us from a Mastery charter school. She had been a dean of students there and told us flat out how they were able to score so well. One of the reasons was that they only teach 37 standards necessary to pass the standardized test in whatever subject. That is, They are only teaching to the questions that are most prevalent on the test. If you have looked at standards you’ll notice many more than 37 n Math and Reading. They ignore all the other standards and view anything not tested as not necessary to teach.
They also give out detentions at the drop of a hat and make errant students and those scoring low, show up for Saturday school. She described setting up appointments parents of students not doing well academically or behaviorally to pressure them into transferring out. She said they’d present hem with a very distasteful condition of they stayed and explained how much better off they’d be in a public school, since they didn’t seem to “fit” into the “culture of the school.” Low achieving students had to stay for tutoring every day for hours and also attend Saturday School.
Kids who had been given a certain number of detentions or had neglected to come for Saturday school for behavior issues were threatened with being transferred into a discipline school for infractions such as not wearing a uniform, rolling their eyes at a teacher, chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, etc. Offenses hardly considered reasons for transfer to a discipline school. Given that choice, most parents opted to then put their behaviorally challenged students into the local public schools. None of this occurred until count day, when the students’ funds would go to the charter school and not the public school, even though they were being educated most of the year in the public school. This usually occurred after Thanksgiving but before Valentine’s Day.
My grade partner came to my school because she wanted to have a family and the hours that she had to work at the charter didn’t lend themselves to raising kids. She believed in to extremely strict discipline procedures of the charter, but realized early on that there was no place for the recalcitrant kids to go other than where they were. She tried to apply the discipline procedures on our 5th to 8th grade floor and all it did was create chaos. Everything was punish, punish, punish and once a month they were rewarded with 2 hours of “free time.” Student misbehavior actually increased during the time she tried her agenda.
Seeing that her methods didn’t work at our school, she went back to the charter industry as a principal. Last I heard there was a movement to get her removed. Amazing.
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Anne,
In Newark charter rejects arrive after October 15th, which is the date of record for federal funding purposes.
A daughter of a friend of mine was suspended from a charter school for rolling her eyes at a teacher. If students at my school were suspended for this level of offenses, we would have almost nobody left in school.
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Hey welcome to the consent FAPE and civil rights violations that disabled students that enroll in charter schools receives. Parents and children of the disabled and more specifically the low incident , but well behaved populations, are literally, frustrated out of charter schools due to lack of services, providing the correct education , and skewed documentation that favors the school and not the students needs. Something needs to happen soon to cut short funding to corporate charter school that fail to meet all students needs. It not fair to the regular public school system and students that intervention programs are flimsy to non existent in charter schools , when public schools are forced to supply services which they then have to cut back and curtail due to a growing mediocre charter school system. Charters simply pocket profits over children. Foreign owned and operated charters operating in the United States are also a security threat to our national and culture interest. It time to make charter schools more accountable in all areas with well developed plan of action as to what needs they must meet in a community to stay open.
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Bernard,
If you are reading this, I just want to let you know that you made an enormous impression upon me when i interviewed you this summer for my project on school leadership. You really took your time and thought deeply before you answered each of my questions. There was no hurried tone or superficiality in your answers or demeanor. I could feel through my bones how genuine you were when you spoke about education.
You are an honorable man, and you brought tremendous heart and soul to Boys and Girls High School. You and the children and families you served do not deserve the horrendous treatment perpetrated upon you by the DOE, NYSED, and the Obama administration.
Please know and celebrate all the lives you have touched and improved. You took in the most difficult kids and never turned anyone away.
You are a shining example of leadership and civil servitude.
You will always have the truth on your side, Bernard. Please know that.
-Robert Rendo
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Chris in Florida, of course you are allowed to support Catholic views. However, my criticizing the Catholic church for spending millions to oppose marriage equity, for tolerating predator priests, trying to eliminate the option for women to decide whether they want an abortion and rejecting birth control does not mean I’m a bigot.
The Catholic church has a lot to answer for – and it uses Catholic schools to promote its views. While there are some wonderful individuals who have taught in Catholic schools, the Catholic leaders make clear that they want their schools to promote their views.
As to what can be learned from outstanding charters, there are many things. Same is true about learning from outstanding district public schools that are open to all.
In St. Paul, district & charters have learned from each other about creating new opportunities for students to earn college credit while still in high school; about how to teach Chinese to elementary students, and about encouraging inner city youngsters to become teachers. Some of those were lessons district schools shared, some were lessons charters shared.
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The thing about being a bigot is that YOU don’t get to decide if you are or if your aren’t. I say you are bigoted toward Roman Catholicism and your hateful posts of the previous weekend prove that beyond a doubt.
If it walks like a bigot, talks like a bigot, and acts like a bigot, it’s a bigot.
It’s also a hypocrite when it constantly calls for charter schools to be judged individually and loudly laments the unfairness of lumping all charter schools together then turns around and speaks of the Roman Catholic Church as a monolithic entity where all and sundry are accountable for every bad thing ever done by any member.
HYPOCRISY FAIL AGAIN, JOE NATHAN:
Charter schools = individual entities with no accountability for what other charter schools do and should not be judged by the failure of other charter schools
Roman Catholic Church = one monolithic entity that is condemned for the horrific actions of a few of its members over a long period of time
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Progress from the pope Fortunately some criticisms of the Catholic church are being heard and acted on. Would you say that the pope’s actions to remove power from a man who has make him a bigot? I think the Pope is a great man who is trying to move the Church ahead: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/08/cardinal-burke-vatican-_n_6125750.html
In somewhat the same way, many involved in creating public school choices (including but not limited to charters) are trying to help public education ahead.
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