Gary Rubinstein wondered: Where are the High School Regents’ exam scores for Success Academy students?
He writes:
“About a year ago I found myself in a snafu of red tape as I attempted to track down the high school test results for the famed Success Academy Charter School Network. Though Success Academy is known for its stellar 3-8 Math and ELA test scores in New York State, much less is known about how students perform after 8th grade.
“One reason for this is that most of the Success Academy schools only have younger students. Of the schools that do have the upper grades, the number of students in each grade is very small because of attrition and Success Academy’s refusal to ‘backfill’ student who leave with other eager students from their mythical waiting list.
“The oldest Success Academy students began the school known as Success Academy Harlem I in 2006 as first graders. At that time there were 73 students in the class of 2018. By 2015 those 73 first graders had dwindled to just 20 tenth graders, down from 26 ninth graders the year before. How many of those 20 students are currently 11th graders in Success Academy is unknown to the public, though that data does get released sometime next year. It’s a safe bet to say that the number of eleventh graders right now is somewhere in the teens.
“High School students in New York State take standardized final exams known as ‘The Regents.’ Students must take these Regents exams to graduate. The ‘college ready’ statistic is based on these Regents exams, and schools are judged on how well their students do on these tests.
“Last year I noticed that unlike the other charter schools, there was no data for the Regents scores at Success Academy on the New York State public data site. I emailed the data department of the state and they said they did not have the data, that Success Academy did not report any data, and that if I want to know those scores my best bet would be to simply call Success Academy and ask them for the scores — something I did not try, though it would have made for an amusing telephone conversation.”
Follow Gary as he searches for the missing test scores. He encounters one blind alley after another. Where are the scores? Is the highest scoring charter school in the state avoiding the tests?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m sure the dozen or so students who make it to Regents’ testing perform very well. Thus offering more “proof” that EVERY at-risk child who is lucky enough to win a lottery spot for a seat in Kindergarten can be turned into scholars if public schools would just follow the “Success Academy” way of teaching.
Because the kids that matter aren’t the ones who disappear. The kids that matter are the ones who remain.
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“I’m sure the dozen or so students who make it to Regents’ testing perform very well.”
I’m not so sure about that.
If the scores were good, Eva would eagerly report them.
They’re not reporting them because they bad to, at best, mediocre.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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But if they don’t backfill it’s not valid as a comparison to public schools anyway, is it?
If our local public school peeled off 3/4’s of the students between 1st grade and senior year and sent them elsewhere we’d have pretty impressive scores.
I don’t know why she insists on being compared to ordinary public schools. It seems like she would be content to take credit for what she actually achieves instead of exaggerating. It’s still an accomplishment for those kids who remain at Success Academy.
Duncan did the same thing. Instead of just congratulating kids who graduate charter high schools and go on to college he felt he had to exaggerate the success of the schools with those ridiculous and innumerate “100%!” claims.
Why not just say Success is a species of magnet schools and take credit for that? Cities have selective public schools. There’s no shame in it. Why the insistence on being something they’re not?
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Because promoting the Success Academy brand is more important than having a truthful discussion about charter schools in a way that would help at-risk students the most.
You are correct that there is no shame(or may be there is shame) in having a pyramid structure – like the old surgery residencies – where only the best make it through. But Success Academy’s results are used by privatizers to “prove” that charters are better, and its’ off the charts test scores are averaged in with more typically performing (and even lower performing) charter schools in NYC to “prove” that charters are better overall.
It’s as if the SAT test scores of the 900+ students at Stuyvesant High School were averaged with a bunch of regular public high schools in the same district of Manhattan and then compared to non-selective charter schools to “prove” that public schools were superior. The cheering on by organizations like Brookings Institute where the so-called academics are too ignorant or too corrupt to acknowledge this is embarrassing for Brookings and other think tanks and charter cheerleading organizations.
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Chiara,
While very annoying, it makes sense that Eva M. wants to put the best spin she can on her product .
What I find infuriating is the media’s lack of awareness, discussion and authentic reflection on the whole issue around student attrition, backfilling, and the real implications of the fact that the best charters segregate out the most functional students and throw the challenging ones back.
How can these guys keep missing the most significant failing of school reform?
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Truthful advertising is oxymoronic. That’s why we have democratically run, public institutions instead of commercial enterprises running our governments.
Those scores are out there in the data cloud somewhere. Keep searching, Gary and Diane. And thank you.
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I’m looking for a piece on Betsy DeVos that mentions public schools.
Incredibly, I cannot find one. It’s as if public schools don’t exist in the United States:
https://edexcellence.net/articles/betsy-devoss-real-record-in-michigan
If anyone finds one let me know. There has to be one person in the vast lobbying/policy universe of ed reform who considers that important enough to mention, right? One?
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Here’s Peter Greene’s tongue in cheek version of DeVos’ big first speech. If nothing else, it will make you smile. http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/12/devos-speaks-sort-of.html
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Well if the Regents exams are required by NYS for graduation, how many children graduated out of Success Academy? If there are no test scores and students were graduated, that must mean that NYS doesn’t really care about the BS test and the OPT OUT Movement has been correct all along.
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The NYSED motto regarding Regents test score data:
“We torture our data until it tells us exactly what we want to hear.”
Regents Exams required for graduation in NYS:
Grade 9: Living Environment (Biology) and CC Algebra I
Grade 10: Global Studies (a 2 year course)
Grade 11: CC ELA and American History
Some random notes regarding Regents test score data:
1) Because NYS requires all but the most severely disabled students to pass these tests,
they provide astonishingly low cut scores for passing. For example, CC Algebra I students must earn a minimum raw score of 26/85 (30%) in order for a scaled passing score of 65%.
2) Students are allowed multiple re-takes. NYSED data provides the highest scores and does not indicate the re-take number (if needed).
3) Public high school Regents teachers are not permitted to grade their own students exams. We should wonder if SA adheres to this policy.
4) Common Core pass rates in grades 3 to 8 in both math and ELA has been approximately 33%. When the cohorts reach HS, the pass rate turn-round is, in the words of former DC schools chancellor (SWMNBN), “miraculous”. Fortunately NYSED protects our brains from the cognitive dissonance produced by the pass rate disparity by conveniently ignoring it.
With only 20 (out of 73) SA, test prep warriors left standing, you’d think that Eva would be bragging about her Regents results. Or maybe she fears that the super-small sample size would have too many people asking too many questions.
Good Luck Gary! Maybe someone else can make that phone call.
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In 2018, will we read that 100% of SA 12th graders are attending college?
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All three of them!
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