Angie Sullivan teaches first grade in a Title 1 school in Clark County (Las Vegas) with large numbers of English learners.
She sends her missives to legislators and journalists in Nevada.
ASD is the all-charter district modeled on Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District. A complete and total failure that Nevada copies.
Angie writes:
We want MAGNETS – not disfunctional white flight charters.
Get away ASD.
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ASD Rebecca holds her annual school grab.
She does not know what she is doing. Do not allow her or Jana to take your school.
Parents may have say in future of Clark County’s failing schools
Parents in Vegas can convert their neighborhood public school into a charter? And that has worked where?
Every successful white person Vegas charter – is sitting next to a successful white person public school. All in white neighborhoods full of five star “choices”. Successful Nevada charters are white. They support segregation and white flight.
The place folks need a real choice – charters do not work.
Get ready Vegas Parents to fight for your school. Our community will not be served by white folks in a white charters. Nor they will be served by young white folks imported into Nevada to do the takeover job.
For profit charters and corporate takeover is a scam.
Non-profit ASD is defunct. Futuro stinks. Agassi stinks. Do not go into that crap. ASD is now the worst district in Nevada. It used to be Nevada Charters were the lowest performers but now it is this new piece of garbage with 100% failure.
Where is the ASD data?
Is the ASD built to hide data?
Everyone involved needs to demand accountability for this new disfunction NVDOE is using to grab schools.
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We want MAGNETS – not disfunctional white flight charters.
Get away ASD.
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Look at the list closely attached to the bottom of this file.
Keep in mind that Vegas has 349 schools. 39 are struggling – they seem to all be in minority impoverished areas of town. Most serve language learners who research has shown need several years to learn academic English. Not difficult to figure out how to fix a money and support problem. Those schools need money and support. Lower class sizes and supplies.
NVDOE and the ASD will try to grab CCSD schools.
They do not know our students.
They do not love our students.
They will not serve our students.
They will grab schools listed because parents will not be informed.
Spread the word – no to ASD charters.
If they want to give a school money to improve – with research based best practice – great.
Turning any Vegas school into a charter is a scam.
If ASD Rebecca wants to come into your school and show a crappy charter video – tell her to hit the road.
We already know how to read a science book to kids or plug students into the computer. That is not teaching or effective.
Privatization is not education.
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We want MAGNETS – not disfunctional white flight charters.
Get away ASD.
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Every year I get angry that our community is targeted while the rest of the state flounders. NVDOE – do your job. You have plenty to grab. Go to these white areas and get it done.
Look at Elko. 100% of its schools are in severe failure. What is happening there? Those schools are along the Carlin Trend and heavily susidized by mining proceeds in a primarily white English speaking area. What is going on?
Look at Washoe which has pages on that list. A heavy heavy percentage of those schools are struggling – with more per pupil than Vegas. And again largely English speaking and middle class areas. What is going on?
Rural Nevada is sinking. When a school fails in a small town – it may be the only school in town. Better address those first. Charter “competition” kills the public schools and does not help small towns. It leaves expensive and hard to educate special education students in public schools and allows “choice” to everyone else.
Again the NV Charter schools are sinking. These schools serve white flight families. They are failing. Severely. That data which at least includes more of their 80+ campuses – is bad – extremely bad considering there are 24 charters and a large chunk are the lowest performers – again. Every year. Again.
It is not Vegas that is the high priority problem.
Folks who are brown do not want to be a target.
This has to stop.
Did not work in New Orleans.
Did not work in Tennessee.
Is not working in Nevada.
How many students have to be hurt to stop this ASD madness?
________________
We want MAGNETS – not disfunctional white flight charters.
Get away ASD.
The Teacher,
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Other than the fact that magnets are (hopefully) under the public school umbrella and therefore under the control (hopefully) of an elected school board, how are magnets any better than charters? Both pull kids out of local schools and send them running all over town, often with commutes that rival adults’. Both leave kids behind in the “failing” school, ensuring that only a select few get goodies like art or music. Both are subject to gaming by parents who are more savvy and connected, so the kids most in need of extras are the kids least likely to get into the magnets.
Why not focus on enriching all neighborhood schools so that all kids can have smaller class sizes, access to arts, language, sports and other “extras” offered in clean, well-maintained facilities?
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charter schools vs magnet schools
There is a difference
https://www.niche.com/blog/charter-schools-vs-magnet-schools/
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According to your link, the difference is exactly what I said: magnet schools are under the public school umbrella and answerable to the local school board, whereas charters are private entities answerable to their management/authorizers. However, in a place like Chicago that has no elected school board and the appointed school board is actively hostile to the needs and interests of citizens, I’m not sure that makes a whole lot of difference.
All my other similarities stand. Magnet schools present the same kinds of problems to the kids left behind in the local school as charters do. Both charters and magnets are subject to creaming (in fact, magnets can be worse because they’re allowed to admit based on auditions, tests or other selective factors).
Again, the solution is not school choice of any flavor. The solution is supporting local public schools in order to offer a full curriculum and extras to all students in a clean and safe environment, not just to get extra opportunities for the lucky few who can get out.
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What about students that qualify for an AP class or Honors Class at a regular public school?
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What about them? I’m not sure I’m understanding your point. Are you saying that Honors/AP are themselves segregated and divisive, just like magnet/charter schools? If that’s what you’re saying (and correct me if I’m wrong – I don’t intend to put words in anyone’s mouth), then I’m inclined to agree.
As far as AP, I think the classes are garbage, not so much because of the tracking (although, yes), but because they’re an inch deep and a mile wide. If you can name a concept or an historical event/person, etc. and give a one-sentence description, you’re good to go, no further understanding needed.
As far as honors, I guess I’m a little torn. I just wish we could offer advanced classes in more subjects and look at all advanced classes that require prerequisites as “honors” classes. Sure, not everyone is going to take Calculus in high school, so Calculus should be an “honors” class, but then again, not every kid is going to take high level art or industrial arts or music classes either, so why aren’t those considered “honors”? If every school had the resources to offer a rich curriculum in all areas, kids could self-select into their areas of interest/strength and the whole “honors” thing would be rather meaningless.
In any case, if that’s not what you were asking, let me know.
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One huge difference in magnet schools is that the sender-receiver districts generally have an agreement about the maximum number of students that can enter from each district so as to not unfairly burden any one district or school. With charters there are no such agreements, and public schools often have no say over the number of students that can leave. You also have to remember that we are dealing with larger districts and a small number of students accepted into magnet schools so the impact to local schools is somewhat controlled.
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I think Dienne77 is right that there is little difference between the two. There are a fair number of charter schools around the country that are under the public school umbrella (all in Kansas and Virginia, almost all in Wisconsin, and some in Massachusetts for example), so perhaps in those states those charter schools are best thought of as magnet schools.
There is an issue of savvy and connected parents gaming the admission process, but at least at qualified admission magnet high schools like Stuyvesant political clout can not be used to get admitted to the school.
I don’t think that it is possible to recreate the curriculum at a qualified admission magnet high school like Thomas Jefferson because an essential part of the curriculum is to be part of a community of learners. It is possible, for example, that the neighborhood high school might offer a course in multivariate calculus, differential equations, or complex analysis, but it would likely only be a class with one or two students. Thomas Jefferson is able to fill these classes, creating the community that supports learning.
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“…but at least at qualified admission magnet high schools like Stuyvesant political clout can not be used to get admitted to the school.”
Oh puh-leaze. I can’t speak to Stuy, but Rahm Emanuel clouted his daughter into Walter Payton in Chicago (the Chicago equivalent of Stuy) and he wasn’t even a resident of the city!
“I don’t think that it is possible to recreate the curriculum at a qualified admission magnet high school like Thomas Jefferson because an essential part of the curriculum is to be part of a community of learners.”
You don’t think local schools have a “community of learners”? That says more about you than it does about local schools. What you mean by “community of learners” is elite, privileged students who share similar economic background and cultural norms – i.e., rich white kids and a handful of poorer and/or minority kids that can act white enough.
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Dienne77,
I think that you are giving an argument here for using exams as the sole criteria for admission. Emanuel could not have used political clout to get his child into Stuyvesant.
There would not be a community of learners in the local high school’s differential equations class because there would likely be only one person in the class. The single student would have no peers to talk to, to work out problems with, no peers to help them learn the material.
Being able to discuss and construct proofs in a complex analysis course is not about acting white, it is about acting like a mathematician.
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What are “magnets”? And why want them?
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Magnets are public schools that often operate in larger school districts. They are sometimes considered “choice” schools within a larger urban district. They are sometimes selective and offer accelerated curricula, and sometimes they are organized by interests such as performing arts, sciences, engineering, technology, etc. They are open to students from all attendance areas within a city or county, but they may or may not require an entrance exam in order to be admitted.
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That’s what I thought. I just wasn’t sure why one would use that concept as a demand and a reason to not have charters. Something with the post doesn’t add up in my mind. Or else I’ve misread the post. I’ll go back and reread it.
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Magnet schools are thought to provide additional opportunities for students that otherwise would not be available to them. I attended a magnet school before we even called them magnets. It was a highly competitive selective school, and I found it snobby. I worked my tail off and got a good education from it. I probably could have done as well in a good comprehensive high school. My son attended a county-wide magnet that included a longer school year and day. He also got to specialize in an particular area such as engineering. He left at six in the morning and got home at 5:30 in the evening. He enjoyed the project based learning and access to technology.
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and they may or may not (more likely “may” in our district”) carefully push out students who will not test well before test-taking time…
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Magnet school have been around for decades. Their performance is uneven. They are a way to provide school choice, within a public school system. see
https://www.niche.com/blog/what-is-a-magnet-school/
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Yes, I know that. I was just confused by what the author was attempting to do with the post. Magnet schools certainly are not a magic solution to the inequities that we see in the public school sector. If anything they serve to heighten segregation, not only by race or ethnicity but worse, by mental capabilities wherein only certain students are chosen, usually on the basis of some invalid test.
The research that I know of shows the positive benefits for all students in mixing of all student types from the gifted to the disabled (and everyone in between and beyond) to be at the same school, with programs that are designed to help the students intermix and mingle with each other, especially those who may not be in the same “category” as themselves. I’ve seen the benefits, not only to those students with handicaps but even more important to those students who interact with the special needs students in learning the basic humanity in all of us. It reverberates in a very positive fashion in our small rural town where no one thinks twice about “those others” because “those others” were classmates and friends growing up together in school.
Magnet schools defeat that ability for students to learn of and interact with students who are different than themselves resulting in the Balkanization of the students, who then internalize that Balkanization with some concluding that they are far better than others. As it is, can you say elite private schools leading to Yale or Harvard, etc. . . and the attitudes that one sees from many of the graduates of those institutions.
I am a product of that “Balkanization” of schooling having been educated in Catholic K-12 schools (certainly not elite as the schools I attended had lower to lower middle class families). But the concept of “We’re better than the non-Catholic, public school kids” permeated every aspect. I rejected that concept by the time I got to high school. The same applies to those who are chosen for a magnet school in that they are told, perhaps not explicitly but certainly through the whole process involved in getting into one, that they are above the common or uncommon students not in the magnet school.
I have to come down against magnet schools in a public system.
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Duane,
If you could find a neighborhood high school that provided students with the opportunity to be in a differential equations class I would agree with you. I am very very confident that the only schools providing “programs designed to help those students” are qualified admission high schools.
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