Here is a list of the school boards that have passed a resolution opposing “Question 2,” that would allow the state to open a dozen charter schools every year, with no limits. The school boards recognize that this would take money away from public schools and destroy public education in Massachusetts. Since Massachusetts is already the top-performing state in the nation on federal tests (National Assessment of Educational Progress), there is no good reason to open an unlimited number of privately managed charters. As the November 8 election grows closer, you can expect this list to grow longer. Currently, 112 school boards have voted to oppose Question 2. Zero (0) support the proposal. (Not all 112 may be on this list.)
A growing list of communities oppose lifting the charter cap
These communities have all gone on record against lifting the cap on charter schools. (Each community’s school committee has passed a resolution or issued a statement against a cap lift. The list also indicates communities in which another town body has gone on record against lifting the charter cap.) If your city or town is missing from this list, see if you can get them on board!
Adams-Cheshire
Agawam
Amesbury
Amherst
Andover
Arlington
Ashland
Barnstable
Belchertown
Bellingham
Berkshire Hills
Beverly
Boston City Council
Bourne
Brockton
Burlington
Cambridge School Committee,
Cambridge City Council
Chelsea
Chicopee
Clarksburg
Conway
Deerfield, Deerfield Selectmen
Dennis Selectmen
Douglas
Dudley-Charlton
Easthampton City Council
East Bridgewater
Everett
Fall River
Falmouth
Fitchburg
Framingham
Frontier Regional
Greenfield
Hampshire Regional
Haverhill
Hawlemont Regional
Holyoke
Kingston
Lee
Lenox
Lexington
Longmeadow
Lowell School Committee, City Council
Ludlow
Lynn City Council, Lynn School Committee
Malden
Mansfield
Marshfield
Medford
Melrose
Milton
Monomoy
Mohawk Regional
Narragansett Regional
New Bedford
Newburyport
North Adams
Northampton
Northbridge
North Middlesex
North Reading
Norton
Norwood
Orange
Oxford
Peabody
Pelham
Pioneer Valley Regional
Pittsfield
Quincy
Revere
Rowe
Saugus
Savoy
Silver Lake Regional
Southern Berkshire Regional
Somerville
South Hadley
Springfield
Stoneham
Taunton School Committee, Taunton
City Council
Tyngsborough
Upper Cape Cod Regional Tech
Wachusett
Wareham
Waltham
Westhampton
West Springfield
Whately
Whitman-Hanson
Williamstown
Winchendon
Winthrop
Worcester School Committee, Worcester City Council
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ed reformers should try offering something positive for public schools in addition to the incessant marketing efforts for charter schools.
They’re wrong when they say that the only people who value public schools are in “wealthy suburbs”
I recognize that saying that the only public schools with any value are in “wealthy suburbs” is a political tactic, but people know where they live. They’re not fooled by it because it isn’t true. Even if ed reformers don’t value existing public schools, they shouldn’t assume everyone agrees with them.
One would think the thousands of highly paid political professionals in ed reform lobbying groups would get this. You didn’t run on replacing public schools. You ran on improving them. Testing and funding cuts aren’t “improvements”.
Here’s a clue- I expect my state ed department to provide something of value to public schools other than 3 different testing and ranking schemes in 3 years and charter school promotions.
I get that ed reform is 1. choice and 2. accountability but they’re aware that leaves their single contribution to public schools as “testing”, right?
It’s kind of a shocking omission, public schools. One wonders how much of an echo chamber this “movement” is to have so many people working on “public education” yet no one is interested in public schools when public schools obviously serve a huge group of children in all income groups.
That’s nuts.
It’s up to concerned citizens to visit representatives in groups and pressure representatives to fund public education and tell them you expect support for public schools. This is even more effective if those citizens represent groups with clout like the NAACP or unions. If they refuse, work to get them out of office.
Has any researcher considered the possibility that Massachusetts has strong charter schools BECAUSE growth was limited?
Looking at the flip side- the states that went ga-ga over charter schools and opened as many as was humanely possible (OH, MI. FL, CA, AZ, PA) I can’t help but notice that ed reformers made some serious errors in a huge swathe of the country.
Maybe limiting growth is the REASON Massachusetts isn’t a cobbled-together, chaotic mess, like so many other states they run?
If no one HAS looked at that I would suggest the echo chamber is a real problem. It’s an ordinary question.
Chiara: “Has any researcher considered the possibility that Massachusetts has strong charter schools BECAUSE growth was limited?”
Yours is a plausible theory that I find appealing, though material like we find here starting at “Breaking down results by subgroup” doesn’t support it well via what limited research is currently available:
http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/lessons-and-directions-credo-urban-charter-school-study
And in specific respect to Massachusetts, here are a few details that may help further refine our speculation.
There is a cap throughout the state. In rich suburbs with excellent well-funded schools, although there is a cap, there’s little motivation by anyone, operator or authorizer, to open a charter school there so a cap is unlikely to be the limiting factor. When, rarely, a charter school is allowed to open in such a location, it has difficulty demonstrating success relative to the existing traditional public school.
Most cities/towns have a cap that limits public school districts’ spending to 9 percent of the district’s net school spending but, in locales where a combined score of achievement and growth puts the school district among those with the lowest such scores, the cap is higher, at 18%.
It is those latter districts with the higher cap that are considered to have the greatest need, and where most charter schools are being established and approved by our state authorizer, and also where the Q2 lifting of the cap would have the greatest impact. Those areas with the higher cap are where charter schools have proven most successful, which militates somewhat against your theory.
The Q2 ballot question itself provides:
“provided further, that in the event that the number of qualified applicants in any year exceeds 12, the board shall give priority among such qualified applicants to those seeking to establish or expand enrollment in commonwealth charter schools in districts where overall student performance on the statewide assessment system approved by the board is in the bottom 25% of all districts in the two years preceding the charter application and where the demonstrated parent demand for additional public school options is greatest; provided further that the board shall apply to all such applicants review and approval standards as rigorous as those applied to all other commonwealth charter applicants; provided further that the recruitment and retention and multilingual outreach provisions of paragraph (3) shall apply to any commonwealth charter school authorized under this paragraph”
Those priority locations are the ones where the Brookings study you cited indicated that charter schools are proving most valuable.
Stephen,
You assume that charters will not open in affluent suburbs but that is demonstrably false. Princeton, New Jersey, for example, has a charter which drains away high-performing students and resources from its excellent public schools. Los Altos in California, an affluent district, has a charter school that is attended by the children of wealthy families. I am sure there are many more examples.
Please tell me, Stephen, where the kids rejected or excluded by the charters will go? Will the remaining public schools be the dumping ground?
There is a naivete to your statements that reminds me of charter enthusiasts 20 years ago, when I was one of them.
Now we have learned that deregulation invites fraud and graft.
You unfortunately have learned nothing from the experience of other states that have lifted the cap.
There it is, the $64000 question always so blithely and conveniently ignored by politicians and reformers alike: WHERE WILL THE KIDS REJECTED OR EXCLUDED (or strategically pushed out) BY THE CHARTERS GO?
Diane: “You assume that charters will not open in affluent suburbs but that is demonstrably false.”
I indicated that it happens sometimes, rarely, but lifting the cap is not likely to have much impact on the incidence, as the current cap is not a constraining factor.
Diane: “There is a naivete to your statements that reminds me of charter enthusiasts 20 years ago, when I was one of them.”
Thanks, I’m flattered by any such comparison. I don’t know enough of your biography, should learn more. My, perhaps false, impression is that you were primarily a scholar, then primarily an administrator, now primarily an enormously skilled and influential community organizer.
My suggestion to you, and you have made a variety to me, is that you switch the balance back a bit from organizer to scholar. That might not make you more influential, but might help ensure that your influence is exerted in the best possible directions. Below you wrote: “Charter schools get high scores by not accepting English language learners and students with disabilities.” In the context of this discussion presumably you believe that to be true of charter schools here, and the research studies of Massachusetts charter schools effectively refute that as an adequate explanation for high scores.
As one example, the CREDO virtual control records made matches in respect to english proficiency, special ed status and starting test scores (together with gender, ethnicity, lunch status and grade level) and found Boston students progressing enormously rapidly relative to those matched on all those bases.
As another suggestive example, Elizabeth Setren’s 2015 study, also in respect to Boston, stated:
“The Massachusetts Teachers Association circulates materials ‘about how charters exclude English language learners [and] special needs students…’, citing overall enrollment statistics (2015).”
“This paper debunks these perceptions. It documents that special needs students are now proportionally represented in charter lotteries. Even those with the highest need are close to proportional representation in charter lotteries. Furthermore, charters remove special needs classifications at a higher rate than traditional public schools and move special education students to more inclusive classrooms.
These differences in classification practices make the proportion of special needs students in charters appear smaller.”
You could perhaps try to debunk own Setren’s study. Mark Weber and colleague certainly gave finding its weaknesses a highly capable strong effort, but with limited success.
They ruminate about whether charter school students might have differently motivated parents. But steer clear of explicitly recognizing the possibility that a 6th grader with ambitious, highly motivated parents who sign him/her up for a charter school may not be as smart and self-motivated as a 6th grader with matching scores whose parents don’t.
They observe that ELL and special ed enrollment seems highly variable across different schools. Well, yes. As is true in the BPS system also. Relying on the oft-cited most extreme example for the local charter sector, Tito Jackson stated in his first debate response: “Let’s take for example Edward M. Brooke charter school — they actually have less than one percent English Language Learners in their school. Boston public schools actually has over 30%.”
Anyone curious to learn more might take an interest in these materials produced by Brooke for an application to open a High School: http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/docs/fy2016/2016-02/item3-tabA1-1.docx
Specifically,
pp 22-27: Special Education Access
pp 27-32: ELL Identification and persistence.
pp 32-34: Attrition and Suspensions
Thone only having a few seconds to spare, might just take a look at the graphs on pp 32-33, under this explanation:
“Attrition and Suspension
“As highlighted in the CHART data, student attrition rates at Brooke are among the lowest in the city among district and charter schools alike, and are essentially no different for high-needs students than for others. Furthermore, even the small numbers of students who do leave Brooke each year are just as likely to be performing well academically as their peers who persist, as demonstrated in the graphs below.”
Stephen,
This is not the place to argue for privatization of public funds intended to support public schools. Charter schools are NOT public schools. They are privately managed, privately controlled, and not subject to the same laws as public schools.
You could have looked me up. I am a historian of American education. I earned my Ph.D. in that field at Columbia University in 1975. I have written many books. I was Assistant Secretary of Education in the administration of resident George HW Bush from 1991-93. I supported charters, testing, accountability, standards. In 2010, I wrote a book saying that I was wrong, that all of these policies were deeply flawed and would harm children and American education. Read it: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. A new edition was published this year. You might learn something from my journey. I was in the belly of the beast. I survived. You could too.
It’s nonsense that it’s based on quality anyway. It wasn’t based on quality in CA, FL, MI, OH or PA. They sold the exact same agenda in those states.
There are a lot of great op-ed’s opposing Question 2:
Check out this one from Wareham, MA:
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20160901/OPINION/160909953
BRUCE DITATA:
“The well-heeled forces behind the effort to lift the cap on charter schools have more gold than Zeus, more treasure than a fleet of Spanish galleons.
“Yet they have the chutzpah to claim it’s not about the money. More charter schools, they say, only means greater numbers of students lucky enough to partake in their alleged “innovations.”
“The nationwide charter school propaganda machine, oiled, operated and lavishly funded by the likes of Eli Broad, Bill Gates and Sam Walton, the so-called Billionaire Boys Club, and a legion of education private equity funds promising enormous rates of return to investors, is seeking to overturn the traditional American system of education, replacing it with charter schools.
“So follow the money to the final frontier of public funding — public education — where the Club and its minions can fatten their wallets.”
And this one from Worcester, MA:
http://www.telegram.com/news/20160914/clive-mcfarlane-corporations-seeing-green-in-growing-charter-school-industry
Clive McFarlane: Corporations seeing green in growing charter school industry
CLIVE McFARLANE:
“f Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the news cycle choked the life out of our reporter Scott O’Connell’s story on the millions of out-of-state dollars backing the 2016 ballot initiative that would mandate the limitless expansion of charter schools in Massachusetts, let me try to revive it.
“State campaign finance records reveal that fronting the local groups championing Question 2 – Great Schools Massachusetts, Expanding Educational Opportunities, Yes on 2, and the Campaign for Fair Access to Quality Public Schools – are a bevy of corporate entities bent on privatizing public schools.
“I will let you decide what New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s company group, Billionaire Michael Bloomberg and two Walmart heirs have in mind with their support of the ballot question — perhaps they are only interested in creating a better education product and in handsomely rewarding good teachers.
“I will only say that corporate billionaires are not getting into the education business to improve students’ performance. They are in it for the bottom line.
“And while such a blueprint might be good for corporate America, it is decidedly a disaster for America public education.
“We have a better line on the agenda of New York-based Families For Excellent Schools Advocacy Inc., which has poured in a significant chunk of the spending ($5.2 million, so far) local advocates are enjoying.
“We know the group’s founders included a number of Wall Street money men, among them Paul Appelbaum, who is board member of Rock Ventures LLC, a business and real estate investment entity founded by Dan Gilbert, who is founder and chairman of Quicken Loans Inc., the nation’s second largest mortgage lender.
“We know the group is supported by charter-school friendly foundations, such as the Walton Family Foundation, a creation of the founders of Walmart.
“We know the group has been fighting to strip control of New York City Public schools from Mayor Bill de Blasio and was successful in getting Republicans in the state Senate to pass provisions that would allow one of the city’s two charter granting agencies to create its own governance, structure and operations regulations.
“According to a New York Times article, Families of Excellent Schools has interpreted this provision to mean that charter schools would be able to waive current requirements that limit the number of uncertified teachers that charter schools can employ.
“This corporate-funded attack on traditional public schools is ongoing throughout the nation. It comes with a promise to provide a better education for our young people, but at the core of their message is an explicit attempt to brand our publicly controlled education system as a socialist practice unbecoming of our democracy.
“Indeed, in places like Kansas, Republicans have taken to labeling public schools as ‘government schools.’
“In this context, we can see this is not about creating a number of charter schools to stimulate innovative growth in traditional public schools. This is about replacing our traditional public education system.
“This is what Question 2, the charter school ballot question, is teeing up; 12 additional charter schools annually without a cap on how many can be created.
“Fortunately, Massachusetts residents do not have to wait to see how such uncontrolled expansion of charter schools in the state will play out down the road.
“Earlier this year, a New York Times article reported on charter schools in Detroit, where ‘national charter school companies were setting up shop within blocks of each other, making it easier to find a charter school than to buy a carton of milk.’
“Detroit, the article noted, ‘has a bigger share of students in charters than any American city, except New Orleans, which turned almost all its school into charter schools after Hurricane Katrina.’
“Yet half the schools perform only as well, or worse than Detroit’s traditional public schools, known to be the worst urban district in the country.
“Leaders of charter and traditional schools alike say they are being cannibalized, fighting so hard over students and the limited public dollars that follow them that no one thrives,” the article said.
“Is this what we want in Massachusetts, the cradle of compulsory public education and among the top, if not the top state, in public education success today?
“I say no. You should, too, to Question 2.”
“To preview the results: Charter schools in the urban areas in Massachusetts have large, positive effects on educational outcomes, far better than those of the traditional public schools that charter students would otherwise attend. The effects are particularly large and positive for disadvantaged students, English learners, special education students, and children who enter charters with low test scores.
By contrast, the effects outside the urban areas (where the current cap does not constrain charter expansion) are zero to negative. This pattern of results accords with research at the national level, which finds positive impacts in urban areas and among disadvantaged students.[i]”
The charter schools are worse in areas without the cap. Therefore they want to lift the cap?
What if the cap is one reason the charter schools in urban areas are better?
https://www.brookings.edu/research/massachusetts-charter-cap-holds-back-disadvantaged-students/
Below is a communication I sent last April along with an attachment to some school committee reps. encouraging correction of false information being distribute to Mass. school committees. No such corrections ensued…
Dear school committee representatives,
I had sent the message below, together with the attachment that is on
this email, to Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC)
staff in December. I had hoped that it might prompt a review and
retraction of incorrect student attrition data for Massachusetts
charter schools that had been prominently highlighted in the MASC
report: “Who is Being Served by Massachusetts Commonwealth Charter
Schools?”, prepared by Dr. Kathleen Skinner.
Click to access 20151013_MASC_Charter-Schools_Who-Is-Being-Served_opt.pdf
Perhaps I should have been less subtle, more explicit… I didn’t
receive any reply and see that, in February, this was published on the
MASC web site: “Fact Sheet: The #TruthAboutCharters”
Click to access MASC_Charter-Schools_Who-is-Being-Served_Auditors-Report_slides.pdf
That document intersperses quotes from State Auditor Suzanne Bump with
MASC materials, including that same erroneous MASC data regarding the
rate at which students are, supposedly, withdrawn from charter schools
at startlingly high rates.
Disseminating such a document would seem inadvisable for reasons
including State Auditor Bump’s reaction to the unveiling by
pro-charter advocates of the Fact Check site:
http://www.charterfactsma.org/
According to MASC, “State auditor Suzanne Bump released a statement
harshly criticizing the site shortly after the launch, noting, ‘When
incomplete information is presented as fact, as is the case by this
campaign, policymakers are not afforded the ability to make unbiased
decisions and the public is misled'”.
Ironically, MASC itself attempts to critique the Fact Check site by
promoting a link to John Lerner’s blog:
http://www.masc.org/publications-3/charter-schools/718-fact-check-massachusetts-charter-school-website-john-lerner-2016-02-16
http://ihadthreechairs.blogspot.com/2016/02/fact-check-of-charlie-bakers-charter.html
MASC states: “Lerner takes issue with the [“Fact Check”] site’s claim
that MA charters are the highest performing schools in the state,
using BPS data to illustrate his point.”
“Using BPS data” is a bit of a stretch… Lerner disdains what he
terms “the strange DESE attrition” data and substitutes his own,
sharing the same flawed methodology as Skinner’s studies for MTA and
MASC — which might be reasonable if one were to assume that no
student repeats 9th grade and graduates in five years instead of four,
when in fact grade-level retention is common in high performing
charter schools that do not practice social promotion.
Where the MASC study states: “Parents of five out of ten students are
choosing to withdraw their child from urban charter high schools” (pg
43), in fact careful attention to DESE’s compilation of stability and
attrition rates, and a comparison of 4-year and 5-year graduation
rates reveals that a substantial number of those Skinner/MASC cite as
being prematurely withdrawn from schools are actually being kept there
for an additional year!
The attached document doesn’t really add much essential detail
regarding this error to the above two paragraphs, but starting at the
bottom of page one and continuing to page four expands on this same
issue in an attempt to clarify, at the risk of redundancy. (In a
second version of the attached document dated Dec 28, I added Boston
Prep’s stability rate of 92.4% near top of page 2, thanks to helpful
input by Mr. Lerner). I’d be glad to provide additional detail if that
might be helpful.
I’ve cc:d Senators Spilka and Jehlen as I know their illustrious
histories include school committee service. And Senators Chang-Diaz
and Wolf for good measure.
Best wishes,
Sincerely,
Stephen Ronan
Stephen,
Charter schools get high scores by not accepting English language learners and students with disabilities. Public schools make room for everyone, regardless of language skills or disabilities.
If public schools copied charters, where would those children go?
One of our regular commenters asked if you considered that the “success” of Boston charters may be directly attributable to the limit on the number. Open wide the doors to privatization, and MASS will have the same scandals as Ohio, Michigan, California, andArizona.
If the fraudulent, inferior and repeatedly lying, billionaire funded, corporate driven education industry’s efforts to replace community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent, non profit, traditional education with an abusive, authoritarian, publicly funded, private sector, segregating, competitive, market-based education industry succeeds in Massachusetts, with the best public school in the country and in the world, that will make it easier for the crooks to succeed in every state.
By chopping down the cherry tree that produces the most cherries annually by convincing ignorant people easy to fool that it doesn’t produce any cherries makes it easier to chop all the cherry trees down.
The battle in Massachusetts is the battle we have to win.
Alabamians really need to be paying attention to this since our State school Board recently selected Mr. Michael Sentance to be our State Superintendent of Education. He is the man who really got the ball rolling for charter schools in Massachusetts.
The Dennis Yarmouth School Committee came on board last night.
Thank you, Dennis Yarmouth!
Update: Now 120 school committees!
Ronan and his ilk assert that we need charters in our cities because the city schools are one-size fits all failures where parents have no choice but to submit to sub-standard education because they are too poor to move to a wealthy district with better public schools. Shiny charters are the solution!
Boston Public Schools have specialized school settings for the following groups of kids:
Sober school – for kids in recovery from drugs and/or alcohol
K-12 inclusion school – where kids with disabilities such as Down Syndrome are fully integrated with kids without such issues
School for the deaf and hard of hearing
School for kids who are court involved, or returning to school after jail
School for kids with significant developmental delays such as cerebal palsy
School for kids with significant behavior issues, in many cases due to early trauma
School for recent immigrants
School for the performing and visual arts
School for academically gifted
Not one-size fits all, in the least. Rather, education tailored to fit and support all of its learners, with teachers trained by years of education and experience to reach our most high needs students effectively. Which of the above groups of students would charters recruit – perhaps the last?
Of course, such specialized settings are available because it is a school system, not a one-school system. The BPS, by serving all of these kids, must naturally have a lower average ranking on the BS tests. If your teen is recovering from drug abuse, keeping him alive is more important to you as a parent than a “proficient” score on the PARCC, isn’t it? If your child has significant developmental delays and is learning how to communicate by indicating a symbol on a tray, you’re not exactly worried about if she is “college and career ready”, are you? If your child’s passion and natural ability is for music should his “success” be a function of his math score on a flawed assessment?
The suburban schools we are compared with when it comes to ranking us at the bottom 25% don’t provide these learning environments because it isn’t cost effective for them. They tuition such students out to private or regional schools – and these students’ scores are not factored into their ranked averages.
In Massachusetts, a single charter school maybe considered to be a school district (memorably, a Boston principal who was notorious for flagrantly violating teachers’ contractual rights took a job running City on A Hill charter – a small high school with an enormous rate of suspensions and a tiny number of black male graduates – and thereafter proclaimed on his resume that he had been “superintendent” of a school system), or may choose to combine scores across various campuses. The later strategy allows the Brooke charters to claim they serve the same numbers of ELL kids as BPS when actually they have one school serving that population while the other campuses are below 10%.
Charters – one size fits all. Public schools – all sizes fit.
“Ronan and his ilk assert that we need charters in our cities because the city schools are one-size fits all failures where parents have no choice but to submit to sub-standard education because they are too poor to move to a wealthy district with better public schools. ”
Would you kindly provide the best evidence that underlies your contention that that is what I assert?
I would note that within the past several days on a small thread on another blog in which you actively participated I had mentioned that I have assisted parents in: “finding and securing admission for their children to excellent schools that are a good match for the individual, both charter and traditional public schools (e.g., the Nathan Hale in Roxbury, which Councillor Jackson alluded to in his first debate response).”
As I have indicated before, I applaud the good motives of most of those fighting charter schools, but the commitment to accuracy occasionally falls short of ideal. And unless you can provide strong evidence to support your statement above, it should be clear to all that you have again illustrated that. As the Mass Association of School Committees continues to do in the materials it disseminates (see my previous message on the subject).
Speaking of sober schools: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/opioid-epidemic-encourages-states-to-open-recovery-high-schools/2016/09/19/62ef220c-79cd-11e6-beac-57a4a412e93a_story.html
I’m just curious why the vote no on question 2 commercials don’t mention that these charter schools are on a lottery. Just because you want more for your child doesn’t mean you’re going to get in. Also if charter schools are so much better than our Public Schools why don’t we accept that type of curriculum in all schools. Then we can truly have equal education for all children.
AGAIN, CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE ON A LOTTERY.
If you’re the same as me, bet if it wasn’t for bad luck I would have no luck at all and I didn’t win the lottery to go to a charter school that could change my entire life.
Again let’s mirror the charter schools and all public schools and we would all be better off and have all that money to educate every child at the best level!
Proud to see Agawam on this list. People live/move here for the good schools. We don’t need any politically correct “charter schools” to ruin it. If that makes me racist, so be it..
Im not paying huge taxes for lazy parents who dont work and live off of government handouts for there kids to go to charter schools. This is already a huge problem. Why are most charter schools filled with mostly black and spanish kids who live nowhere near these schools? Charter school Lottery? What a joke! Get a job and pay for your own kids ti go ti the best schools. Dont expect everyine else to.