A number of charter chains have bragged that 100% of their students are accepted into four-year colleges and universities. What they don’t acknowledge is that they have set a requirement that students cannot graduate unless they have won acceptance into a four-year college or university.
The issue came up recently in Nashville.
Metro education officials are reminding one of the largest charter schools in Nashville it can’t make college acceptance a high school graduation requirement.
LEAD Public Schools brags all seniors in its first five graduating classes at LEAD Academy had been accepted into a four-year college. Part of that could be due to the fact that college acceptance was a requirement in its original charter application.
The office in Metro Schools that oversees charters is still consulting legal experts on whether mandating college acceptance is illegal.
What happens to the students who don’t get accepted into a four-year college? Do they stay in 12th grade for years, or do they drop out or return to the public schools?
There are other charter chains who set this as a requirement? Why? It enables them to brag about their success.
Are these graduation requirements serving the students or burnishing the reputation of the charter chain?
The same question came up recently when José Espinosa, superintendent of a school district in Texas, complained that a charter chain was misleading the public with its claims of a 100% college acceptance rate. He said this was misleading advertising. He wrote:
While 100 percent of charter seniors get accepted to college as required, the public has a right to know the percentage of charter students who didn’t make it to their senior year.
Ed Fuller, Pennsylvania State University professor, found in one of his studies of a particular charter network that when considering the number of students starting in the ninth grade as a cohort, the percentage of charter cohort students who graduated and went on to college was at best 65 percent.
In other words, 35 percent of ninth-graders at a charter network didn’t make it to their graduation….
A correspondent in Texas informed me that there are four charter chains with higher graduation requirements than the state:
BASIS
Great Hearts
Harmony
YES Prep
Setting rigorous standards and requiring acceptance into a four-year college weeds out the students who struggle and need extra help.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I went to a two year college since I couldn’t afford four years away from home. I guess that means that in certain charters schools I would have had to falsely apply to a four year college with no intention of ever attending. Isn’t this a waste of time and energy for everyone involved?
My brother never wanted to go to college. Maybe we’d both still be trying to graduate from high school if we went to the wrong school.
LikeLike
Here’s a thought: make everyone who supports this idea sign a pledge to only interact with college graduates. That might be the only way they learn to understand why we need to pay attention to non-college bound students.
LikeLiked by 1 person
far too clever and useful a suggestion….
LikeLike
More smoke and mirrors from our charter foes
LikeLike
In my opinion, one should first have to get a Nobel Prize (and not the econ prize, which is actually a fake Nobel Prize*) in order to graduate from high school.
There is no Nobel Prize in Economics
https://www.alternet.org/2012/10/there-no-nobel-prize-economics/
The Economics Nobel isn’t really a Nobel (Five Thirty Eight)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-economics-nobel-isnt-really-a-nobel/
LikeLike
Here’s what ed reformers accomplished in Ohio last year:
“Ohio kids will soon be required to learn cursive
In an age of text messaging and email, Ohio is attempting to keep the handwriting tradition of cursive alive. A new state law will require students to be able to write in cursive by the end of fifth grade. ”
That’s the sum total of their contribution to students who attend public schools- another dumb, gimmicky unfunded mandate.
Ohio public school children would literally be better off if all of these adults stopped showing up for work. They’re a net negative. Our schools would improve with simply the ABSENCE of ed reformers.
LikeLike
Like so many bogus claims charters make, this one is easily “juked*.” There are many, many for-profits that call themselves four-year colleges that will accept anyone, and anyone who actually follows through and enrolls would get federal and state higher-education loans — the true business plan of these for-profit colleges is to snare that money, leaving the students in debt. Some of those have collapsed, but I think University of Phoenix still exists, for example. Here in San Francisco, the huge Academy of Art is a highly visible example — no requirements, just apply and be accepted (and should you choose to attend, get those loans, pay your tuition, rack up the debt).
There’s also a realm of not-for-profit colleges that will accept almost anyone on basically the same premise, though perhaps with a loftier goal. (I bet most people in populated areas know of some in your locale if you think about it). So anyone (anyone, no exceptions) who will fill out the application can get accepted to a four-year college.
To be fair, I was just talking to a mom whose four kids went through a perfectly respected Catholic high school here in San Francisco, and it does something similar. It doesn’t strictly require students to be accepted to four-year college to graduate, but pushes them very, very, very hard to do the whole apply-and-be-accepted-to-anything-that-will-accept-you routine so it can tout its high percentage accepted to four-year colleges. That mom likes the school but disapproves of that practice because she’s a booster of community college. This four-year-college hypefest tends to discourage and disparage community college, so the mom I was talking to feels kids who would do well at community college instead don’t go to college at all after the bogus four-year application dance.
*”Juking the stats” is a term popularized by the TV series “The Wire” — it should be self-explanatory — employing deceptive, cheating practices to make your statistics look better, in whatever area.
LikeLike
Your last sentence tells the truth about requiring college acceptance in order to graduate from a charter. It is a way to force out those that are very poor, troubled, different and disabled. It is a way for them to sift out those that are more expensive to educate. The charter can then use the results of their sifting process to crow about a 100% college acceptance rate. The feckless media will repeat the story, and the charter gets free publicity that will garner them more “high quality seats.” Rinse and repeat cycle!
LikeLike
I think touting the college-acceptance requirement will certainly discourage the less-motivated, more-challenged etc. from even applying to the charter — though if you read my post above you can see that anyone, no matter how challenged, can actually get accepted to a four-year college of some kind.
LikeLike
NO!
LikeLike
This reminds me of something.
There are certain pseudo-Christian religious cults that have an arranged marriage system — marriages created by the leaders where people were assigned by leaders to marry whomever person the leadership wanted you to, like him/her or not.
Well, cult leadership keeps bragging that the marriage success rate or “no divorce” rate was 100%. They would sell their cult to the world, and to themselves, thusly:
“There has never been a divorce to any disciples who marry within The Kingdom.”
(“disciples” and “The Kingdom” are clues by which some may recognize one of the groups of which I’m speaking.)
Well, technically this was true because they “disfellowship” / excommunicate any couples who divorced, so as to keep that 100%-no-divorces-in-The-Kingdom* stat.*
Sound familiar?
It’s sort of like Eva Moskowittz bragging, “100% of the kids whom we don’t kick out, or who don’t leave prior to graduation end up graduating from Success Academy, so we have a 100% graduation rate.”
Perhaps my favorite of these pseudo-statistics was thrown out by disgraced MeToo perpetrator and school privatizer Jeremiah Kittredge, who ran the astroturf group Families in Schools. When shown the data of special ed kids kicked out of, or refused entry at the Success Academy charter schools (which he and his astroturf org promoted), Kittredge countered that the public schools also have a problem with low numbers of special ed kids.
“You know that, system-wide, almost half of traditional public schools have a less-than-average number of special ed. students.”
Uhh … that’s kind of how averages work, or it’s the definition of average. 49% of a group whose average numbers of data are being calculated will always have a less-than-average number of whatever the data that is being averaged.”
You can hear that Kittredge quote in near the end of the video “Unknowable” BELOW
(the title comes when Eva is asked if her requirements for parents and other tactics leads to an easier-to-educate subset of kids who attend Success Academy — otherwise known as “cherry-picking”— Eva replies that that’s just “unknowable.” Yeah, right.)
LikeLike
Having just watched this, I caught that I didn’t get the Kittredge quote right.
He said that “over 50% of schools are not serving close to the district average” … with “close to the district average” being, of course, less than the district average, which again is the definition of average, so it makes his statement literally truthful, but misleading.
LikeLike
There is another dimension to this pressure for acceptance into a college/university. It is coming from institutions that compete for students, lock them in early, and in doing so prevent them from a full comparison of financial-aid and (where possible) site visits.
This is from the Wall Street Journal: “ New Front in College Admissions: Nudging Students to Decide Early, ” p 3A. Updated Jan. 2, 2019
“Some colleges and universities have started asking students who have applied through the regular admissions process to try a binding option that would boost their chances and help the schools lock in acceptances….At some schools, the first early-decision round typically closes in November, and the second in January.”
“Some counselors, parents and students say the offers—sometimes known as Early Decision II—pressure students to commit before they are ready. At some schools, the first early-decision round typically closes in November, and the second in January.”
Students who receive these emails and decide to apply early decision are NOT guaranteed acceptance, but if they are admitted, they are obligated to pull all other applications. That means they can’t compare different financial-aid packages.
The WSJ article illustrates how this is a benefit for the college/university in competing for students, but does not actually guarantee admission to students who apply for early admission.
“At Colorado College, 27% of students who applied for early decision in 2018 were admitted compared with just 5% who applied regular admission. The overall admit rate for the year was 15%.”
In other words, the choice environment is rigged to limit admissions by accelerating the schedule, cutting off reflection and comparative information, and shoving away students who do not play this admission game. I think it as damaging as the charter school version: “must be admitted to graduate from high school.”
LikeLike
This sounds like a private school marketing gimmick.
It goes like this: the expensive private school starts to offer scholarships to top performing students from around the area when they hit middle school.
Then, as they near graduation all the students apply to various universities (especially Ivy League schools).
Then, in a big newspaper ad (at least here where I live) they publish all the names of the universities the graduating class has been ACCEPTED to.
It doesn’t mean the students end up going go there.
Also these same top performing students would have been accepted to these universities no matter what school they graduated from.
Agree with the person earlier who said smoke and mirrors.
LikeLike
No, no, no! Not everybody is college material. France learned that a long time ago. My husband barely made it through HS. But he did. College? He just wasn’t college material.
LikeLike
Mary Horsley: My brother is the same. He barely made it through HS. There is NO way he’d want to go to college. It would have been a waste of time to require him to apply to any college, even if it admitted anyone.
LikeLike