The battle has begun about whether to lift the cap on charter schools in New York City.
New York City has 235 charter schools serving 123,000 students (about 10% of those enrolled in public schools) and there are no empty slots for additional charters unless the legislature raises the cap. Governor Cuomo, flush with hedge fund cash from his last campaign, wants to raise the charter cap.
Now billionaire Merryl Tisch, who previously was Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents and is now on the board of the State University of New York, proposed that the city be allowed to use some of the 99 open charter slots from the rest of the state.
Under Tisch’s leadership at the Regents, New York won a Race to the Top grant of $700 million, hired John King as State Commissioner, committed to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students, and adopted the Common Core and PARCC Testing. Tisch set off the Opt Out Movement, and she also hired MaryEllen Elia from Hillsborough County in Florida, which was part of the Gates Foundation’s failed experiment with VAM (value-added measurement) of teachers.
We are told that the waiting list for admission to charters in NYC is very, very long.
So think about this:
If there is a long waiting list, as Merryl Tisch says, why do charters hire a marketing firm to send recruiting letters to children in public schools? Why are they moaning about not having access to the public school names and addresses? Why don’t they just accept kids from the waiting list? Is there a waiting list? Maybe there are actually vacancies, as in Los Angeles, where 80% of the charters have empty seats. Even Eva Moskowitz needs access to public school names for recruitment purposes.
Would someone please audit that alleged waiting list?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They need more students to apply so that they can weed out the ones they don’t want and still meet their profit goals.
LikeLike
I thought that the charter cap can’t be lifted without Albany’s approval.
This is why replacing the pro-charter Democrats in Albany with pro-public school Democrats was so important. I hope that Albany holds fast. There is no reason to lift the cap.
And I think we all need to ask Meryl Tisch why she wants to change the law to give a lot more charters to the woman who endorsed Betsy DeVos and insists that DeVos’ heart “is in the right place” because they share the same philosophy of how to treat children.
Meryl Tisch should be asked why she is advocating to give Betsy DeVos’ biggest cheerleader more charters that suspend lots of 5 and 6 year old children and insist that it is only because those very young children are all violent and violent only because of their own natures because the teachers and school are blameless.
It isn’t just the wait lists that need to be audited. It is the enrollment lists from the beginning of the lottery through BEDS day in October need to be audited. The number of students who are forced to repeat grades multiple times needs to be audited. The number of students whose parents are “encouraged” to leave should be audited.
The Democrats in Albany should be holding fast and I hope AOC and other prominent Dems draw attention to this move to give Betsy DeVos’ biggest cheerleader more charters.
LikeLike
I have heard that 50% of the children who are accepted by Success Academy do not enroll there. So SA has to recruit. My hunch is that the waiting lists are mythical. That’s why they should be audited for duplications, kids already placed, kids who decided to stay in their public schools, etc.
LikeLike
That number is correct according to the study that Success Academy itself commissioned:
Click to access 2017_Success_Academy.pdf
From page 8:
“Of the lottery winners in the sample (both kindergarten and first-grade entrants), about 82 percent attended a welcome meeting. Approximately 61 percent of lottery winners attended student registration, 54 percent attended a uniform fitting, and 50 percent attended a dress rehearsal. With few exceptions, lottery winners who did not attend an activity did not attend subsequent activities. Ultimately, about 50 percent of lottery winners enrolled in Success Academy schools in the 2010-2011 school year. (As explained above, there are various reasons why a student might not have enrolled.)”
Here is the “explanation” of why such an outrageously high number of students didn’t enroll:
“To examine enrollment rates for students who won Success Academy lotteries, MDRC looked at participation in various Success Academy preenrollment activities that students (and their parents/guardians) who were offered a seat were told to attend. Specifically, after winning the lottery and before the school year started, students and their families were informed of a welcome meeting, student registration, a uniform fitting, and a dress rehearsal. In addition,before enrollment (as is common among many charter networks), parents/guardians signed a contract highlighting the education-related activities offered throughout the year and outlining the various ways the Success Academy staff communicates with families.”
So Success Academy makes parents who win the lottery jump through hoops to enroll their kid and half drop out. Note that most of the drop outs happen after each of the three required actives that Success Academy demands parents attend. A whopping 82% took the time to attend the first enrollment meeting, which shows how much they wanted to attend. But whatever went on in those meetings certainly seemed to discourage many parents from enrolling.
Finally, the NAACP report documents exactly what happens when parents of the unwanted students somehow make it through the gauntlet that was supposed to week them out.
(Page 17)
“My son, with great fanfare, got accepted into Harlem Success Academy. Within his first day of school, I was told that he was unfocused and he needed to be disciplined. I was like, “Okay. They have high standards. This is good.” I didn’t see anything wrong with it…within days, people were coming into the classroom. They didn’t identify themselves. They were sitting in the back and they had papers and pads and they immediately, systematically, with these systems in place, identified children that they knew were going to be problematic and my son was among them, along with four other kids. Within three days, they had placed him in the back of the class in a table together and one by one, as every day went by, one of those kids were missing and they were gone. I was the hold out and I only lasted twelve days… I could not understand how a school that claimed to be public could come to me and say, “Listen. Something is wrong with your son. You got to go.”
Charters like Success don’t want to teach the students who win the lottery. They want to cherry pick from all the students who sign up for the lottery and teach only those with the parents most motivated to do all that is asked of them. Which makes their high attrition rate even more suspect.
None of that will stop Meryl Tisch from giving Eva Moskowitz whatever she wants while adamantly refusing to do any oversight except “did the kids who remained — and we don’t care how many left — do okay?”
Tisch doesn’t care about attrition. Tisch doesn’t care about parental complaints. Tisch doesn’t care about “got to go” lists. Oversight means that as long as Betsy DeVos’ favorite charter CEO tells them every problem is an anomaly, they demand she be given more resources taken directly from those public school kids that Tisch and Moskowitz don’t seem to care about at all.
You’ll never get Tisch to audit a waitlist because that would assume she cares about the truth. And every action by the SUNY Charter Institute demonstrates that the truth is not their concern. Optics are.
LikeLike
Wait lists are generic marketing pitch for every sales environment. Free market enthusiasts love this feature of “competition.” Charters ads have become a reason why many local districts are spending money on ads when those funds would be better spent on instruction.
LikeLike
I have doubted the “waiting lists” since I heard from a public radio reporter in Boston who reviewed those in his city and found multiple duplications (students who applied to four different charters and were listed four times); students who had already been accepted in a charter school but remained on the list; students who decided to enroll in a public school; etc.
When a new Success Academy opened in my neighborhood, there were posters advertising it on city buses, even in the supermarket. I wondered why this advertising was necessary if there was a waiting list of “thousands.” If it exists.
LikeLike
Exactly.
LikeLike
Using Success Academy’s definition of “wait list”, the “wait lists” for public schools number in the tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands.
Let me give you an example from the NYC 2019 High School Directory:
Edward R. Murrow High School. 5,667 applicants for 562 seats.
Using Eva Moskowitz’ methodology, I would insist there are over 5,000 students on the wait list for Edward R. Murrow.
Fort Hamilton High School. 3,148 applicants for 91 seats.
Using Eva Moskowitz’ methodology, I would insist there are over 3,000 students on the wait list for Fort Hamilton.
Leon Goldstein High School. 4,253 applicants for 206 seats.
Using Eva Moskowitz’ methodology, I would insist there are over 4,000 students on the wait list for Goldstein.
Francis Lewis HS:
Jacob Javitz Law Institute: 4,596 applicants for 67 seats
Engineering and Robotics: 3,532 applicants for 63 seats
University Scholars: 2,663 applicants for 67 seats
Science Research Institute: 3,234 applicants for 63 seats
Using Eva Moskowitz’ methodology, I would insist there are well over 13,000 students on the wait list for Francis Lewis.
Just 4 public high schools already have wait lists of over 25,000 students! If I added the “wait lists” from the other 396 high schools, there would be lots more 8th graders on wait lists than there are 8th graders period!
Remember, charters insist that just entering the lottery — applying to the school — and not getting a seat means the student is counted as on the “wait list”. Charters insist that it doesn’t matter if those students attend other schools because simply “applying” and not getting a seat means the student must be counted as on the “wait list”.
Yes, it is ridiculous for Tisch to make policy based on this type of dishonest accounting of “wait lists” but charter folks don’t care about being honest — they care about undermining public schools by taking resources out of the budgets of the most vulnerable at-risk children and handing it over to charters that get tens of millions of dollars in donations and refuse to teach every child that wins their lottery.
We know from all the praise that Moskowitz gave DeVos that she considers DeVos a kindred spirit. I think Meryl Tisch wants to be their new BFF and that means doing whatever she needs to do to make them like her.
LikeLike
Excellent point, NYC PSP!
Four NYC public high schools with a wait list of 25,000!
LikeLike
Diane,
Is there any politician you can reach out to, to let them know how fraudulently those so-called “wait list” numbers are counted?
Here are links to info on public school “wait lists”. The Inside Schools website posted this article:
https://insideschools.org/news-&-views/top-20-selective-manhattan-high-schools-are-among-the-most-popular
It links to this recently released document that lists how many NYC public school students are on “wait lists” (as charters insist wait lists must be defined) for 20 of the 400 public high schools.
Click to access top%2020%202019_8hzb.pdf
If you go to the above link, you can see that there are a total of 171,144 8th graders who “applied” to these 20 schools and 16,247 8th graders who got seats.
Leaving a grand total of 155,497 8th grade students on “wait lists” for NYC public high schools.
To repeat — according to the methodology that charters insist we must use, there are currently 155,497 8th grade students on “wait lists” for 20 public high schools and certainly tens of thousands more on “wait lists” for the other 380.
Of course, there are only about 78,000 8th grade students in NYC public schools! But there are 155,497 8th grade students on “wait lists” for just 20 of the 400 public high schools. Twice as many 8th graders on wait lists as there are actual 8th graders! Using false charter accounting methodology.
Does Meryl Tisch want to build more public high schools for those 155,497 NON-EXISTANT 8th graders that charter supporters would have to agree that by their methodology must be counted as being on “wait lists” for public high schools?
Every politician who seems willing to vote to expand charters must answer to whether they agree with the notion that there are 155,000+ 8th graders on “wait lists” for public high schools, too.
LikeLike
NYC PSP,
I expect to have a conversation in the near future with members of the City Council education committee and will refer to these numbers.
LikeLike
That’s great! Thank you.
LikeLike
Boy, if this happens the citizens will be worse off and those in bad places, even badder.
It’s a real RACE. A RACE to the BOTTOM…stimulus response and ticky tacky prizes…THE HUNGER GAMES.
LikeLike
Looks like I’ll be contacting Governor Cuomo and my elected representatives again!
We are currently in the admissions process for New York City public schools. SA parents have been on the chat the words complaining. Of course, there are complaints about the excessive discipline and homework and the uniforms, but also about what a mess SA is at middle school and high school levels. They complain about high teacher and administrative staff turnover (We all knew that already.) They do not help with SHSAT, but subject middle school parents to marketing meetings about their high school. I fail to see how this organization is tenable, outside of the significant hedge fund contributions they receive.
LikeLike
It’s supposed to be chat boards.
LikeLike