EduShyster reports on a new study of college completion rates in Boston. It includes a comparison of Boston public schools vs. charter schools. http://edushyster.com/?p=6326
Students who attended public schools were more likely to get a college degree than their peers who attended charter schools.
“The report compared members of the respective classes of 2007 from the city’s high schools and five of our local academies of excellence. Fifty percent of the BPS students had scored a college degree within six years vs. 42% of their charter peers. Now I know what you’re thinking. That equals a difference of eight percent, and eight rhymes with *hate* and also *overstate.* Which is why it’s time to look at the numbers behind those numbers. The 2007 class of Boston high school grads consisted of 1700 students, of whom some 850 have now attained their post-secondary attainment. The 2007 class of Boston charter high school grads, from a total of five charter high schools, consisted of 80 students, of whom 33 have scored their sheepskin.”
Wow.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ouch. No need to belittle the students who went on to get their degrees. It is also dangerous to draw any conclusions; albeit BPS has an amazing system that fully integrates parents into the teaching team. That is, it could easily be equated to increased probability in shear numbers. To draw reference to one out performing the other would lend fire to the hire number of home schooled students, taught by people with literally no teaching experience, that are currently out performing both public school and charter student in both grade point average and completion. We keep worrying about the money we are losing to the the charters but given that almost 50% of America’s students are home schooled they stand to be the largest threat to public school funding should they start lobbying for equal funding.
Instead we should be applauding BPS and looking to see what we can adopt to raise the bar at all public schools.
“…given that almost 50% of America’s students are home schooled….”
Source?
That is a totally false statistic about homeschooling.
73% of statistics are completely made up.
Parents are generally an asset in programs that serve an under represented group. I think charters often miss the boat in this regard. Education is not a button that is pushed by a school for X numbers of hours a day; many times successful programs that serve poor students reach out to the community and parents in a collaborative way. Local boards of education are responsive to the needs of the local community, families and children in a way that corporate leadership cannot duplicate. They are stakeholders in the school district and have been elected by the citizens. Problems can addressed and solved more efficiently and effectively with local leadership that understands the issues.
Q lives in a numbers fantasy land. Q says ” given that almost 50% of America’s students are home schooled…….
According to proponents of home schooling, there are about 2.2 million home-educated students in the United States (as of January 2015.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 49.8 million students attended public elementary and secondary schools 2014-2015.
See also Dienne and Diane below.
Troll, be gone. That percentage and a ‘token’, if still extant, would get ‘Q’ a ride on the MTA. … And never return.
Q –
“…albeit BPS has an amazing system that fully integrates parents into the teaching team…”
Whatever are you talking about? No, it doesn’t.
Stop providing misinformation for distortion. It’s totally disingenuous.
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
Well isn’t this interesting…
One would think this would have been discussed in yesterday’s Senate hearing on “innovation”.
What are Boston Public Schools doing to get better? Surely Senators Murray and Alexander would be open to the IDEA of public schools that aren’t failing, right? They haven’t completely abandoned public schools, I hope.
Meanwhile, DC is focusing on charter schools yet again this week. Just like last week, and the week before, and the 6 years prior:
https://twitter.com/GOPHELP
They should rename that Congressional committee. “Education” is WAY too broad a description for a charter school promotion team.
A bill in Utah that will cut $60 million in public school funding and give a bunch more local property taxes to charter schools. This while Utah is sitting on a $638 million dollar surplus. http://www.sltrib.com/news/2140447-155/committee-approves-60m-cut-to-utah
Stephenson sure hates public education and loves his charter schools and his kickbacks, doesn’t he?
Utah public education: Stack them deep and teach them cheap, work teachers to the bone.
Utah charter education: Segregated education “choice”, drain funds from public school districts.
Yep. Stephenson is one evil dude. The word about this needs to be spread far and wide in Utah. We need to protest! We need to go to the media! We can’t let them get away with this.