Mike Klonsky reports that Chicago’s open enrollment public high schools are driving the city’s improving graduation rate. You know, the public schools that accept everybody.
“Well, it’s that time of year when the media spotlight in all the privately-run charters schools that supposedly enroll 100% of their students in a college program. Of course they fail to mention they mean 100% of the 25% or fewer that make it from freshman year to the graduation ceremony.
“I wonder how many of those 100%-ers actually show up for college classes, can afford skyrocketing tuition, or graduate some time down the road. Urban Prep, for example, continually boasts about it’s college-acceptance rate for the few that graduate, but rarely about reading and math scores which are among the lowest in the city. This year only 24% of students at this school are considered proficient in math and/or reading.”
“Check out the number of Urban Prep Charter Academy (Englewood) 9th-graders in 2014, compared with the number that make it to senior year.
“Or the high-flying Noble St. charters which lost about half their students by senior year.”
What’s driving the rising graduation rates? Not the charters, with their exclusion of kids with disabilities and ELLs. The open enrollment public high schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I recently found out from a teacher who taught at a charter chain (Summit Prep in the SF Bay Area) for several years that the teachers there regularly fill out the students’ college applications themselves in order to achieve a 100% college acceptance rate. The students might not have anything to do with the application nor have any intention of enrolling. The teachers don’t want to make waves by refusing to comply with the administrative mandate of college apps and they don’t go public when they leave because they have friends and family members who still work there.
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I’d heard that once, but thought I didn’t hear it correctly. Wow. Charter fraud for sure.
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Shows how much confidence the rheephormsters have in their “products”—the students.
☹️
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Governor Rauner declares public schools “crumbling prisons”:
“The simple fact is that when you look objectively at the state of Chicago Public Schools, many of them are inadequate,” he said. “Many of them are woeful, and some are just tragic. Many of them are basically almost crumbling prisons. They’re not a place a young person should be educated.”
A skeptic might argue the governor is using such loaded language not to shine a light on the conditions of the chronically underfunded district, but to make the nation’s third-largest school system seem beyond repair and in dire need of privatization.”
He’s very “objective”. PURE science. Not at all a political hack with an agenda 🙂
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/stevens/ct-rauner-cps-crumbling-prisons-balancing-0607-20160606-column.html
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Rauner sounds like a casual observer rather than governor. As leader he should know the state of Chicago’s schools reflects on his incompetent leadership. In the fall students in some of these “crumbling prisons” will get to be guinea pigs for Bill Gates’ “Personalized Money Maker.”
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Reblogged this on Dern's Discourse and commented:
Science Academies, Montessori programs, students with exceptionalities, military settings, and areas that can’t support a full public schooll. Charter schools started off with the idea of helping students whose parents wanted a non traditional school for their child, but now they have become a money making institution with one goal in mind- make a profit.
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“the media spotlight in all the privately-run charters schools that supposedly enroll 100% of their students in a college program. Of course they fail to mention they mean 100% of the 25% or fewer that make it from freshman year to the graduation ceremony….”
That’s because the charter school supporters have convinced the media that the students that disappear should be treated as if they don’t exist. They are unworthy. Their lives most certainly do NOT matter — especially if they prevent charter school leaders and operators from getting quite rich by pretending they are all worthless and might as well be in jail. When a charter school operator goes on national television to explain that over 20% of the 5 and 6 year olds – Kindergarten children!! — in her school are doing violent things and needed to be suspended over and over again, they are certain it is the gospel truth. Even though every single one of those kids came from homes with a parent dedicated enough to try to seek out a great education for their kid. Doesn’t matter. They are kids of color and when a white person says they are violent at age 6, that white person should always be believed. No need to offer proof — it’s true because a white person said those kids were violent and she must be believed.
See the anger by the white reformers directed toward any person in the charter school movement who mentions the Black Lives Matter movement. How dare they? We all know that only some lives matter — the lives of the strivers who will get good test scores in no excuses charters. The rest — well, they are violent thugs, even at age 6, and to a charter operator, they don’t just “not matter”, they just don’t exist!
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Graduation rates don’t mean anything on their own. If I wanted to graduate ya’ll from my made-up school of education detectivery, I could set the graduation rate by setting the difficulty level. I could graduate zero of you, all of you, or with some careful planning, anything in between. I could even exclude specific people from graduating if I didn’t like them. What is that principle which says the more we value tests as measures, the less validity they have? Same with graduation rates. If they were ever valid measures (I don’t believe so), they are definitely not when our livelihoods rest on them.
I’m not arguing for public schools or charter schools, I’m arguing that “graduation rate” is a meaningless statistic. And not only meaningless, but a distraction from a better discussion. “Graduation rate” shows nothing about who actually learned what, who is more prepared for their indeterminable futures, or who is a better citizen in a democratic society.
As charter schools have most clearly shown, GR is a mirage, an illusion, a red herring. Let’s talk instead about content and context.
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Ed Detective:
Campbell’s Law
The more a measure is used for consequences, the less valuable or trustworthy it will be as a measure. (Paraphrase) Google it
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That’s it. Thanks Diane.
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