Gary Rubinstein has become a master at unmasking “miracle” claims, you know, the schools where 100% of the students in a poor neighborhood (formerly served by a public school) graduate or 100% go to college or some equally implausible miracle. None of these claims ever turn out to be true. Gary explains again and again that the “miracle” is made possible by attrition of the kids who were not on track to graduate.
He recently discovered a charter school in Indianapolis whose motto is “College or Die.”
The principal of this school just was put in charge of charter schools in Memphis.
Watch Gary analyze the data from the school in Indianapolis. How many went to college? How many “died”?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“College or Die??? Yikes! Are executions held annually or more often?
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I remember a professor at ECU who liked to tell his freshman 1st semester world history class on the first day that the mark of a good school was a high suicide rate. He cited Cornell as the best in the country for that reason.
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If it seems too good to be true, it probably is false. A good rule of thumb. Everything from the philosophy of Adam Smith to the claims of educators selling a magic method should be approached with this adage.
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Am currently reading Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”. I’m not so sure that what is purported to by his “philosophy” is what he really intended. Not to mention he was writing about colonial European nations and the writing should be viewed with this caveat in mind.
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I recently read portions of that as well. Some of it struck me as
Particularly utopian, especially the part where he assumes employers will treat people with humane motivation. It sort of reminded me of Marx in a way, assuming that the March of history would land solidly on its feet.
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The fundamental assumptions of economics are laughably false (perfect information, rational self interest, perfect competition, utility maximization, no fraud, etc) so it is no surprise that junk is the output.
The most laughable part is that economists actually believe that the world they have created is realer than the real one.
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Economists: The new high priests of a society enamored with Mammon, just like the high priest and bishops of the past who held sway over the populace with idiotic blatherings of utter nonsense. Now money = God and vice versa. (not that it never didn’t)
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According to Gary’s article, the school’s attrition rate is 57%. Again, “fityffingseven percent”. And this dragon of a woman comes here, to Memphis?! What will those 57% of youth will do here?
My car was broken into last night, and our violent crime rate is up by 25%.
http://www.localmemphis.com/news/local-news/violent-crime-on-the-rise-in-shelby-county/407871818
I suspect, we finally will be on the top of the US violent crime stats after two decades of being only bronz or silver medalist.
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That is completely and totally unacceptable. They are themselves cultivating the most destructive possible culture: “your life has no meaning except to compete…. to the death.” School is to gain invaluable education for the betterment of self and society, not for the promoting obedience or conformity.
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Now this is truly SICK.
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