Danielle Dreilinger, a reporter in New Orleans, describes the mechanisms used by three high-performing charter schools in New Orleans to separate the wheat from the chaff and get the students they want.
These three charters have figured out how to remain high-performing.
For example,
Each deploys a unique set of requirements so complicated that parents have made spreadsheets to keep track of the steps, which, as per the schools’ websites and extensive conversations with staff, include some combination of:
Parent attendance at a meeting
A questionnaire filled out by the parent showing they understand the school’s curriculum
An application hand-delivered to the school during business hours
A portfolio of the student’s work
The child’s school attendance record
Scores from a single sitting of a standardized exam, with no retests allowed
Within these details are more details. Lusher applicants, for example, must submit a profile detailing the student’s experience and interests in the arts, even if the student is only 4 years old. The school office will not accept applications from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., lunchtime for prospective parents with day jobs.
For kindergarten applicants, Lake Forest requires a hand-drawn self-portrait, a second piece of artwork and a handwriting sample. The artwork may not be three-dimensional or include food items such as macaroni, and it can’t be a sheet from a coloring book. Lake Forest also specifies a pocketed folder of a particular color, which changes each year; for 2016, it was red.
All these activities earn points on a scorecard, called a “matrix” by staff. If children don’t meet a minimum total, they are declared ineligible. Despite the extra pieces and activities, test scores make up the largest share of the possible point total. Lusher posted its scoring matrix online this year; Lake Forest did not.
Audubon has the same kind of point system for third grade and up. Below third grade, there’s no exam or scorecard. Operations manager Alisa Dupre emphasized that the school is not academically selective in the early grades.
But families are disqualified if they do not attend a curriculum meeting, to which they may not arrive late. Signup for these meetings is online; according to the Eventbrite website, parents were required to show their drivers license, auto insurance and auto registration if they wanted to park at one meeting location.
Further, this year Audubon had a double process for preschool admission. Getting in early is a big deal because those children automatically advance to elementary, where they typically fill about 60 percent of the kindergarten seats, Dupre said.
“School choice” does not mean that parents get to choose. It means that schools choose their students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
School choice plans vary.
True. But the basic sameness of ALL charter schools in “school choice” is that your success is based on how many unwanted kids you can keep out of your school. In New Orleans, the weeding is in the application process. In other places, the weeding is AFTER the lottery winners win a spot and methods are devised to discourage the kids who won’t achieve good scores without needing any expensive help or experienced teaching. That weeding can happen in the time between winning the lottery and enrolling, or it can happen in the first few years of school with frequent suspensions and humiliation tactics or simply failing a kid for the 4th time until their parents “get the message” he should be gone.
It’s the kind of thing that has never been allowed in the public schools that the charters are supposed to be offering a choice for. But somehow the charters forgot they were supposed to be offering a choice for failing public schools and decided they should offer a choice for the same kinds of kids you find in public magnet schools! Because it turns out the charters don’t actually want to teach most of the kids who were found in failing public schools because they are too tough. If charters just admitted it instead of used slimy practices to get rid of those kids while bashing the public schools who educate them, at least they could be complimented for their honesty. Although perhaps they don’t like to admit that there are so many kids who they don’t actually want to teach if they can help it. And that’s why they should be ashamed of their dishonesty because they can’t admit what they absolutely know is true. Which is why you barely hear a word when charters suspend high numbers of kids or their attrition rates are sky high despite their parents originally being so grateful for the spot.
But hey, let’s bash public magnet schools instead because that really helps the at-risk kids you pretend you want to help.
Charters, like district schools, vary widely. Some of the most terrific schools, district or charter, are those working with youngsters with whom traditional schools have not succeeded. Here’s a link to a newspaper column quoting a few essays from such youngsters, attending district & alternative schools focusing on them.
http://hometownsource.com/2016/04/27/joe-nathan-column-courageous-award-winning-student-speeches/
I think it is great that there are charters working with kids for whom traditional schools haven’t succeeded. What happens if they don’t succeed in charter schools either? Do they stay there despite “not succeeding” or do charters have 100% success rates with every single child who steps through the door? Or do they end up back in those “traditional” schools where they weren’t succeeding but whose administrators didn’t have the ability to say “hey, it’s not working so why don’t you go back to the public school so we can spend our resources on the kids who we can help?”
The problem is that in the days before school choice, the school system was responsible for every child. Now, the jury is out. A charter school can absolve themselves of responsibility by pushing them into a public school. A public school can absolve themselves of responsibility by pushing them into a charter. In the end, the toughest to educate will end up in whatever system has less ability to push out the unwanted kids, and that system will always be at a disadvantage.
Or you can have the New Orleans system where those kids just don’t get served at all and disappear into the air.
One reason I don’t like reform is because the reformers have proven to be far less interested in how to serve all the students, and far more interested in doing whatever it takes to “prove” that their system is superior. Dishonesty wins, and any real effort to help the kids who can’t easily be served gets diminished.
I’d have more faith in reformers if they were seriously looking at attrition rates and suspension rates and methods like what we see in New Orleans to make charter schools the “magnet schools” without actually being up front about being a magnet school to serve only the best and easiest to teach. Instead, they have empowered the schools that use those tactics, and diminished the few charters that actually care about the students who will always score in the bottom 25%. Remember, there will ALWAYS be one quarter of the students who score in the lowest 25% of students. The question will always be whether the schools that teach them are bashed (if they are public) or admired (if they are charters).
Districts all over the country have pushed or kept out students they did want to work with. In New York state, some districts set up separate schools through Board of Cooperative Services. Suburban districts made clear they did not want to work with ALL students – just those who lived within their boundaries.
Well before the charter movementA variety of groups including the Childrens Defense Fund issue reports critical of the number of students suspended and ultimately excluded from traditional districts. Organizations like the Urban League set up “street academies” to serve some of these excluded student..
Affluent families have always had options. Fortunately, some great district educators more than 30 years ago in NYC began creating options in places like East Harlem. The same thing happened in a number of cities. Educators who wanted to create options within districts faced some of the same opposition 35-40 years ago.
Fortunately, growing # of educators are seeing the value of having options.
“Districts all over the country have pushed or kept out students they did (NOT) want to work with.”
Joe Nathan, this is so misleading but it is truly typical of the pro-charter folks like yourself to basically say anything and hope no one looks closely at it.
It is ILLEGAL for public schools to absolve themselves of responsibility for the kids who live in their district. But it is perfectly legal for charter schools to do so if the kid doesn’t fit. THAT is the bottom line and the one difference that every “successful” charter takes advantage of.
They can dump the kids they don’t want. And they DO! That’s why the billionaires who underwrite the reform movement give the MOST money to the charter schools with the HIGHEST suspension and attrition rate. What do you think “no excuses” is all about? High attrition rates is what it is all about. And once those kids are gone, the charter is off scot-free. Your lie that public schools absolve themselves of responsibility the same way is truly appalling. Aren’t you ashamed? You know that public schools PAY for those kids to get schooling elsewhere. Charter schools get to reap the savings and pay their administrators nice high salaries as a reward for getting rid of the most expensive kids without drawing attention to their outrageous practices. And when they are finally publicized — it is always an “anomaly”. Shame on you, Joe. Your misleading statement proves my point about how low the folks like you have gone to pretend you are “just like public schools” except you care about those kids who aren’t being served. You don’t. You care about cherry picking the ones who CAN be taught by your charters and are more than happy to look the other way while charters throw out the rest of the kids like garbage. Shameful.
The fact that you would grab on the most ridiculous fact: Scarsdale High School isn’t open to kids from the Bronx who live outside their city so Joe has decided he needs to open a charter school to serve the top kids in Scarsdale! Or, Great Neck High School won’t accept kids from East New York so it’s fine to open a charter school in Brooklyn that suspends all but the top 1% of the kids in East New York while claiming they have a “special sauce” to teach all kids with LESS money so cut funding to those public schools in East New York! Sure Joe, you are really in it for the kids, right? Or maybe for the very few kids who will get good enough scores so charter schools administrators can reap the benefits of their false claims.
After all, Joe Nathan, isn’t the mantra of charter schools “if you can’t find the kids who you love, suspend them and make them miserable until you can find other ones who fit the bill better?” Why teach when you can suspend?
Public schools take the kids who live in their neighborhood. Period. And if they can’t be served, the public school doesn’t say “I’ll send them to a charter where I can get them off my books”. But if you are saying that charter schools should be forced to accept any public school rejects and never have a way of getting rid of them except for paying for special schools where they cost 10 times as much out of their budgets, I will support you.
Again, I suspect you avoided my question on purpose. What happens to the kids those charters teach who DON’T do well? Somehow I bet even the ones you admire because they actually KEEP most of the at-risk kids instead of suspending them either cull out the undesirables or are shut down.
As numerous newspaper columns and work years of work demonstrate and 40 years of work , I’m pro helping many more students succeed. I’m also pro helping more educators use their ideas, which is why a group of us (teacher union activists, classroom teachers and others) joined to help convince the Mn legislature to allocate startup funds for new district options: http://bit.ly/1ONQ3gd
It would be interesting to learn more about what you are doing, other than posting in a variety of forums, to help more students succeed.
One of the values of Diane Ravitch’s forum is that information is shared about what people are doing. This is a great day to thank those who’ve helped make it possible for us to enjoy our freedoms.
Happy Memorial Day to you and all others who read (and sometimes post) here, as well as to Diane, for making this forum available.
Joe Nathan,
First, I apologize for my last comment. I know you are trying to do some good and I recognize it.
But one reason I overreacted is that you do seem to be a person working to change things. And so it astonishes me when I read some of your replies which are full of misleading statements right out of the reformer playbook. And I wonder why. Is it really impossible for you to work to make public (or charter) schools better without using misleading facts to justify the most reprehensible practices of charter schools? Why defend those practices instead of saying “yes, we need to demand better oversight because the authorizers have failed”?
Here is what you despise:
1. any magnet school that is completely up front about giving a test with the highest scoring kids passing.
2. Scarsdale and any middle class suburb which doesn’t turn over half their space to low income kids and pay for them to be bused in from elsewhere to attend their school.
3. Public schools who see kids with severe special needs and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars from their public school budgets to have them educated in very expensive private schools.
Here is what you condone:
1. charter schools that “take anyone” and end up losing 50% or more of their starting cohort not because those kids have moved away, but because the charter school had made them feel unwelcome through whatever means necessary to get them out of their school and off their books forever.
2. charter schools that do the above and have the chutzpah to claim that they are “better” and teaching at-risk kids for “less money” and providing justification for budget cuts for public schools. Research studies paid for those charters which “prove” that they were still getting better results “even if they kept those kids”, so that you are basically trying to argue that the only reason those charters would treat those kids like garbage was not for bragging rights to high scores but because they simply get their jollies from targeting at-risk kids who struggle academically. As if THAT is actually something to support.
On the one hand, you write things that seem to say you actually recognize how to help public schools. And at the same time, you post on here the same misleading statements that are designed to convince people that public schools do the same reprehensible things I just mentioned above that charter schools do so we should not try to stop charters from getting rid of expensive kids because Joe Nathan says that public schools do that all the time.
Why? Are you ignorant of what you are posting, or are you intentionally posting those misleading things? The fact that you may be doing some good does not give you license to lie or purposely mislead. If you are really doing good, you should be able to be HONEST. If that isn’t what the soldiers fought for — a country where people debate the issues HONESTLY — then what the heck were they fighting for? Your philosophy that if pretending public schools get rid of kids just like charter schools do helps just one “acceptable” poor kid who gets a charter school education, it’s fine to keep spouting it as long as you want because the other kids aren’t worthy of your concern?
Having attended (district ) alternative school conferences, as well as visiting district alternatives all over the country for more than 3 decades, I can affirm that district public schools all over the nation do push kids out. Some of those kids re-enroll in alternatives, some of them drop out (we have millions of drop outs in the country.
I’m opposed to any school, district or charter, pushing kids out.
I’ve also strongly criticized some charters for a number of things that some do – including the corruption that is frequently cited on this list serve.
Some district schools,especially in affluent suburbs, advertised well before the charter movement.
Some schools, both district & charter, now use funds to advertise. As mentioned in a previous post, I think there are better ways to communicate with families.
In terms of honesty – you have my name and more than 1,000 published newspaper columns, and an extensive record of work with both district and charter.
One of the purposes of this list serve seems to be to allow anonymous people to vigorous criticize the work of others. It’s Diane’s list serve and she gets to run it as she wants.
That’s one of the freedoms that people fought and died for.
I will be spending the rest of the day with family.
Joe Nathan,
Children do NOT “drop out” in elementary school. At least, they don’t “drop out” of public schools and the school system can save the money to educate them. Why would you absolutely LIE about that?
And I challenge you do tell me one method that public schools use to get a 6 year old off their books and onto the street?
Shame on you. Your words speak for themselves.
But I appreciate that you (sort of) changed from claiming that districts school spent lots of money “advertising for students” before charter schools to at least acknowledging that if they do, it is because they are forced to by charter schools who spend even more marketing themselves and it is all a competition to you.
No I did not change the assertion the some districts advertised well before charters came into being.
I’m curious. Does making it difficult and exclusive make people want to be part of it even more? In addition to selecting enrollment does this process actually create more demand as done in the business world? It’ s manipulation no matter how you look at it and in today’s world it’s business as usual.
That seems to be the case where I live, anyway. They call it “accepted” to a charter school, even if every kid who applies gets in. It makes it sound like they’re smarter, or that they’ve won some kind of prize. Most of the charters around here are about the same or worse than the public schools. The one charter that does really well, test score-wise, is an early college high school. Students at my public junior high school are always so excited to be “accepted” to this charter. However, when it comes time the next fall to actually begin, maybe 1/3 of the group “accepted” actually show up. This is, in part, because a math placement test is required. If the student doesn’t get a “high enough” score to go on to 10th grade math, they have to repeat 9th grade math. That drives away a lot of kids right there. They also have almost no extracurricular activities or any music program, which also discourages kids from enrolling.
Then, the school can praise their high test scores (usually in the top 5 in the state). But they don’t tell everyone what is happening behind the scenes.
So sad to hear about not having music! Grrrr. I’m a music teacher and know it’s a great motivator and if integration is done correctly, it can bolster academics too.
Music has been essential for both of my boys, and I totally agree with you, Deb. If the kids work it right AND have transportation, they can take courses like music at their feeder high school, but it’s a tall order.
Ironically, all of the public high schools also offer early college tracks AND have all of the extracurriculars and music and theater and everything. But the early college charter advertises like crazy, which, of course, the public high schools can’t do.
Public school can’t do? Humm, our Superintendent has specifically asked teachers to Tweet good news because there is so much bad news spread about public schools. Isn’t that a form of advertising? Social Media can and will get news out. Sadly there is so much of it that understanding it all is a challenge for most citizens.
Are you sure district schools in the west don’t advertise? I’ve seen plenty of advertising by some suburban districts all over country. Can’t say LA specifically, but plenty of suburban districts do advertise.
Here’s a link to ads by district, charter & private schools in the Minneapolis metro area:
http://www.minnesotaparent.com/education
I’d rather see $ going to the classroom.
In Utah, public schools’ budgets are so stretched that advertising is not done by public schools. There IS social media, but a lot of that is undone by regular media’s continuous praising of only test scores, and only charter schools. There is very little negative press about charters and very little positive press about public schools here. There are exceptions on both sides, of course.
If district schools are now starting to advertise, isn’t it BECAUSE they are being forced to by charter schools who are trying to pick off the cheapest kids while leaving the most expensive behind for the publics to educate?
Did any public school “advertise” before the advent of charter school choice?
And, fyi, in NYC there is middle and high school choice, and while those schools send representatives out, they aren’t spending lots of money on bus stops, direct mailings, and the kind of expensive marketing campaigns that is brought to you thanks to the “reformers” who refuse to look at what their reforms have wrought.
DIstrict suburban schools in some metro areas have advertised for decades, well before charters.
Why would a district suburban school “advertise” when it was the school that served the students in the district? And “for decades”?
I would like to know what district schools were spending money to advertise their school to the neighborhood residents in the 1980s and 1990s? I just find that hard to believe.
The echo chamber in ed reform were all repeating last week how Michelle Rhee had been vindicated in DC, quoting a study.
Incredibly, none of them compared DC’s score increase to other cities over the same period.
“Let’s start with education reform. In this recent New York Magazine post, Chait hails Michelle Rhee’ for her successful tenure as chancellor of the DC Public Schools.
We’ll focus on Grade 8 math. According to the study which Chait affirms, DC’s changing demographics would have predicted a four-point gain in Grade 8 math scores during that eight-year period. But good lord!
Under Rhee, the DCPS actually recorded a 17-point gain in average scores! Chait uncritically accepts the idea that this much larger gain shows that Rhee’s reforms were effective.
We decided to compare DC’s score gains during that period to those recorded in other big cities. Our decision to run this simple check required almost no IQ points.
In what you see below, we’re including every city school system which took part in the NAEP in 2005 and 2013. As you can probably see, the score gain in DCPS was remarkably average:
Growth in average scores, Grade 8 math
2005-2013, NAEP, black students only
Atlanta 19.78
Los Angeles 16.72
Boston 15.17
Chicago 14.29
Houston 13.23
DCPS 11.48
Charlotte: 7.83
San Diego: 7.39
New York City 5.82
Cleveland: 5.34
Austin 4.85
This is how the ed reform echo chamber works. Cherry-picking and omitting context.
They should be celebrating Los Angeles or Atlanta if they’re after test score gains, but that wouldn’t prove Michelle Rhee “right”, so they didn’t.
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2016/05/chait-speech-education-reform-plus-rise.html
I’ll save the nonsense of the rise in Los Angeles test scores for another post.
This is not a free public school “choice”. It is elitist and akin to private school selectivism. It is hardly dealing with a typical community school setting. But, we know that zip code often helps segregate schools, too. If someone can’t afford to live in a community that has certain advantages, they often have less successful classroon experiences. Heck, realtors advertise homes with school excellence being a big factor in the mix.
We Americans truly don’t live our lives as pure as we try to claim we do.
In the uptown area from which most of these students are drawn there is a strong “Keeping Up With the Joneses” mentality about everything. The old and new money wealthy are ranked by which private school their children attend. Some of the administrators from these charters are graduates of those schools. So they impose theses standards to convince some parents that charters are just as elite as the pricey, well-connected private schools. This is New Orleans’ Ivy League.
And besides, that whole “right to a public education” thing is so blasé.
This has been evident from the Get Go. If charter schools were actually public schools and had to admit all children, they would not perform as well as community public schools. The evidence has been overwhelming. When a school can control admittance and “council out” students that are undesirable, then of course they have better educational ‘outcomes’.
In other words… duh (palm to forehead):
A parent can apply to every charter school in New York City in a manner of minutes using a very mobile-friendly common application website. Each school conducts its own blind lottery to determine admissions.
The admissions process at these three New Orleans schools doesn’t apply to all charters. And speaking of schools choosing their students, I find it puzzling that there’s been no discussion here of Kate Taylor’s excellent coverage of Central Park East:
“Others, including Ms. Smith, the principal of Central Park East II, see discriminatory forces at work.
“She and a mother at her school, who asked to be identified only by her given name, Diana, to protect her privacy, said Diana’s daughter was turned away from Central Park East I last spring, despite having won a spot in the lottery.
“Diana said that on the last day of registration, she called the school and was told she needed to show up by the end of the school day with her daughter and the girl’s birth certificate — not a copy, but an original — that she would need to get from the health department in Lower Manhattan.
“She said she eventually spoke to Ms. Uehling and told her that she could not get the document and her daughter in time. Ms. Uehling told her there was nothing she could do to help.
“Diana went to the school to plead her case, but Ms. Uehling dismissed her, telling her if she could not meet the deadline, “my seat was given up,” Diana recalled.”
So glad to see so many people opposed to admissions tests for public schools. I’m hoping your opposition applies to district as well as charter public schools.
Most state charter laws explicitly prohibit admissions tests. Unfortunately Louisiana’s does not. And some charters put other barriers up for people who want to enroll kids. That’s bad.
Meanwhile, many cities have elite, quasi private “magnet” schools that explicitly screen out all but the few who score the highest on standardized tests, or other forms of performance.
Then there are districts that refuse to allow students from outside the district to enroll. Some affluent suburban districts hire detectives to check on “questionable” students, and have taken families to court if they tried to get their kids into the district schools.
As noted numerous times here, some of us are opposed to all forms of admissions tests. I hope others included many who have posted here, will join in opposition to such barriers.
Joe,
Overall I agree about admission criteria, especially based on test scores for any school receiving tax dollars whether a community public school (usually a magnet type), a community public charter school run by a district, however, private schools and private charter (doesn’t matter whether profit or non) schools should not be receiving public tax monies. I grew up in K-12 Catholic schools and they were selective even though as kids we didn’t know any better other than what the nuns told us about public non-catholic kids going to hell and all that.
Selective admission is anathema to the fundamental purpose of public education: “The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.” (my “hybrid” statement from reviewing the 50 state constitution authorizations of public education-see Ch. 1 upcoming book).
Anything that contradicts said purpose, such as rewarding some students (with admission) and castigating others (denial of admission) to a public school can only be considered unjust, unethical and a malpractice.
Duane, I agree with what you wrote re admission tests.
I always find it interesting that Joe Nathan is so opposed to admissions exams for MAGNET schools. And he could care less if a charter school just takes “any” child while then maintaining a structure in which survival of the fittest means that the lowest scoring kids are made to feel misery until they leave (suspend them as many times as you want — charter school oversight agencies don’t care at all!). To Joe Nathan, it’s fine to make the kids feel it is THEIR fault for being the unwanted stupid kids who should be ashamed of their lack of “effort” that has led to the charter school failing them and suspending them until they leave. That’s fine and dandy for him and he would never question it.
Somehow he believes the 20,000 kids who take the SHSAT and don’t get into a specialized high school is terrible, but the 50% of the kids who win a lottery and disappear from the school over the years after years of harassing their parents trying to convince them their child is so violent or mentally disabled that the charter just can’t teach him despite their “best efforts” — well that’s no problem for Joe.
It astonishes me, but then again, some people value honesty and some people value whatever will get charter schools what they want.
Do you think Joe Nathan and Tim will approve if the magnet schools start taking “everyone” and just make the kids who can’t do the work feel complete misery until they leave? Will that meet with their approval?
Tim, I absolutely agree that every charter school that is hugely popular should be examined and public records should be made of how many lottery winners don’t end up enrolled in the school and why.
I also agree that Kate Taylor’s article about how the lottery works at Central Park East had brilliant information. Remember when she pointed out that MOST of the kids who ended up in the class didn’t even live in the district? So there was no big waiting list of in-diestrict names and it would have been completely misleading for Central Park East to demand more schools based on long wait lists that didn’t really exist.
That’s the kind of reporting that we never see about charters like Success Academy, which has a similar enrollment policy to Central Park East and somehow many kids who win the lottery don’t enroll. How many? Do you think you can skip all the required pre-enrollment meetings and just show up the first day at Success? Do you know how many out of district kids ALSO got spots despite claims that there were hundreds of kids on wait lists that somehow weren’t being serveed and should have had spots before out of district kids.
Remember the article about how Success Academy gave a TEST to kids coming in for 1st grade and they were told they had failed to meet the standards to enter 1st grade? Do you think THAT is a way to keep kids out? Give a test — with who knows what? — and tell the kids who don’t seem up to snuff they have to repeat a year or two if they want to enter the school? With absolutely no oversight by anyone to see if the standards the kids are being forced to meet are reasonable for a child who just finished Kindergarten?
I wonder if you think THAT is just as slimy as what those “exclusive” New Orleans charter schools do? Or maybe you think those charters should adopt those kind of methods to keep their schools “exclusive”?
Interesting how the headline screams “How 3 top New Orleans public schools keep student out.”
The casual reader might not catch the fact that these are charter schools.
“Charter schola esse delendum!” Did I get that one right?
They seem to be testing the intelligence and grit of the parents. Diamonds in, diamonds out.
J. H. Underhill
Harlan Underhill: much said in few words.
IMHO, makes hash of the idea that “out-of-school” factors like what sort of parents you have doesn’t matter much if at all (“poverty is not destiny!”) if the school is essentially during an initial weeding of STUDENTS based on their PARENTS.
Thank you for your comment.
😎
This is what was discussed at board meetings and amongst parents at the charter school my children attended. They knew they were not allowed to evaluate essays or artwork or parents’ understanding of the pedadogy to select students, but many thought just requiring the information in the application would discourage those who would not make the cut from applying in the first place.
I thought New Orleans had “common enrollment”. I’m interested in a discussion of that because it is what the reformsters are pushing in Los Angeles now.
I suspect that when they try to eliminate low functioning students, this is code for minority students. What are the racial make ups of these schools? If they don’t reflect the make up of the community, isn’t that grounds for a descrimination complaint? I’m not a lawyer but since the charters hold out attendance at theit schools gurantees academic competentcy, attendance at their schools has monetary value. Therefore students who tried to apply to the school but couldn’t because of deliberate efforts to keep them out, have suffered damages. Could they sue? Class action law suits might prove a deterrent. Can there be a regulation that a school’s test scores are invalidated if the school’s population doesn’t approximate the community’s racial, and economic makeup? Could the regulation include invalidating scores if the charter school’s population doesn’t match the public school in the community proportion of students with mild, moderate and severe disabilities? No more taking kids with speech and language only to count as your disability quota. The same questions as above about discrimination complaints and law suits. The invalidating test scores is not interfering with the running of the school only invalidating scores that do not test the same population as the public schools, a good psychometric practice.
“. . . a good psychometric practice. . . ”
There is no such thing, at least not on the planet Earth!
I truly don’t think it is as much about race as it is about ability and to some degree, class. Most charters that use these methods don’t really care what race a child is — they care about whether he will learn easily and never cause a problem in class.
However, it is true that if you are college educated and middle class (regardless of race), you can purchase for your child some of the extras that will make him more likely for him to be a “successful” charter school student.
There’s comes a time in the life of every TA, no matter how Krazy, that one must take stock.
I started following the ed debates years before this blog started in April 2012. Online discussions have been particularly helpful to me because they give one, over the long haul, a better perspective on what different POVs are and how fairly, honestly, logically and CONSISTENTLY people argue/discuss/share their ideas and experiences.
This posting and others on this blog today—along with their threads—for some reason made me think of the Sherlock Holmes tale entitled “Silver Blaze” with this thought-provoking passage:
[start]
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”
[end]
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Silver_Blaze
The casual acceptance of the substance of the posting by those fiercely committed to corporate education reform would have, in the not so distant past, provoked their ire at the “shrill” and “strident” “Ravitchbots” that invented ridiculous lies directed against charters and other marvels of rheephorm’s disruptive innovation, because as everyone knows “studies show” that charters and privatization and such are inherently superior and the best “choice” for any and every one.
That didn’t happen. Not one bark. Not even a yelp.
Now nothing but the yawning if reflexive sneer, jeer and smear directed against public schools.
Pair this with Mr. Peter Cunningham’s call for “civil conversation” which in practice looks a lot more like a swarming beatdown of rheephorm’s critics.
With recent setbacks to those hauling in $tudent $ucce$$ [e.g., think CC and test industry], the “thought leaders” and defenders of corporate education reform seem to care less and less about even pretending to be fair, civil, honest and consistent.
And true to form, they look for blame in all the wrong places. They promote, defend and mandate worst pedagogical and management practices so the only surprise is that they are surprised that people pin THEIR failures on THEM.
A little perspective:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” [Mahatma Gandhi]
We’re in stage 3.
😎
P.S. I realize I am in the majority of people that comment on this blog that are not “sane” but if so…
Then my moniker is most appropriate.
😏
With so much money being spent to buy politician’s compliance with reform ideology, or to oppose those who refuse to support it by running candidates who will, it was only a matter of time before the reformers realized that they could take a page from the world of politics and create a full blown system of school Gerrymandering, openly turning the original lie of choice on its head by enabling and encouraging schools to choose their students just as Gerrymandered politicians choose their voters rather than having voters choose who represents them. The corruption is complete, not a shred of merit or fairness remains. The level playing field has been converted into a mined battlefield. This is a new low in the criminogenic world of reform. Gresham’s Dynamic has been forced down to the individual family level, rewarding those most capable of and willing to engage in unethical practices. I shudder to think that these schools will now produce unethical, amoral citizens out of their students in much the same manner.
One last point re some suburban districts advertising…this is a long standing practice in which some suburban districts work with local real estate agents to convince local residents and potential residents that the high local taxes which go to schools are justified.
As others have noted, the ability in many states of some suburban district to spend thousands more per pupil than inner districts is unfair, unwise and unjust.
Some states have been able to successfully combat that. Minnesota is one of those places. I hope others successfully challenge, and change, this injustice.
Joe Nathan,
In Michigan, all districts have been forced by “school choice” to advertise for students. With district lines wiped out, the district’s revenue depends on head count. Superintendents there told me that their districts must “poach” students from other districts to keep their budgets intact. This is nuts. They say so. Each district wastes $100,000 advertising for students. Multiply that by every district and that is a gigantic waste of scarce dollars.
Diane,
We agree that there are much better ways to spend $ than on advertising.
However, district revenue in most states depends in part on “head count.” And of course, affluent families always have had options about where they live.
Wise districts and schools find ways to help families know what’s going on without spending a lot of money. Students can (and in many cases do) perform for local service groups, in senior citizen homes, and in local malls or shopping centers. Athletic groups have for decades posted information in various stores and restaurants about what’s happening with their fall, winter and spring sports programs. Now some school arts groups are doing the same.
Student/community service brings students together with various community groups to help students both learn and serve. What kids can do provides hundreds of examples:
http://www.whatkidscando.org
Social media provides new opportunities for students and educators to share info about what’s happening in schools.
We agree that there are much better ways to spend $ than on advertising.
Joe Nathan claimed that districts schools have spent money advertising “for decades”. He claimed it had nothing to do with charter schools since they have done so before the advent of charters. According to Joe Nathan, public schools have been wasting money “advertising” for decades and decades. Right, Joe?
Of course, if he were to admit that public schools only advertise in response to some of that “competition” they get from charter schools, he would have to condemn charter school marketing budgets. So instead he posted that public schools advertised long before charters.
He hasn’t actually admitted he was wrong. But now Joe seems to be trying to pretend that all he meant was that maybe a public school helped a campaign to convince residents to vote for a higher school tax to help fund the school and that’s exactly like charter schools spending millions to market to parents that their kid will have all the bells and whistles if they attend.
See, no difference! Just like there’s no difference between charter schools pushing out huge cohorts of undesirable kids – especially those with special needs — and a public school paying $100,000 tuition so that a special needs child can attend an expensive private school. According to Joe, no difference at all!
Talk about dishonesty. Why can’t reformers have an honest debate just for once?
Because they’re only beating one drum – we want the money, we want the money. They use the students and they use the families to further that end.
As for Joe feeling attacked, he made himself a public figure, and one that many would say is on the wrong side of history. His Twitter acct. is especially revealing, with him crowing about alleged “declining public school enrollment”, while his charters “grow”. Kudzu grows too, Joe, it doesn’t mean we need more of it, and charters were supposed to help public schools, not impoverish and replace them.
It’s not surprising that they’re still telling the same tired lies, and daring people to parse them out.
Despite continued repackaging, there’s nothing new and improved there after all.
Lots on twitter.
IN the last 60 days this includes praise for a graduation process at a St. Paul district high school, praise for alternative schools, district & charter, where student are making progress; praise for coalition of district teachers and others that convinced Mn legislators to create start-up funds for new district, teacher led schools, praise for St Paul board members who want to cut admin funds and put more dollars into district schools as proposed by teachers, parents & students throughout the city, etc.
Paz, you picked out one tweet of hundreds. Why did you ignore the tweets praising district school efforts?