Jersey Jazzman seems to be in an endless battle with New Jersey’s largest newspaper, The Star-Ledger, or at least with the writer of its editorials. He went to the trouble of getting a doctorate in statistics so he could persuade that editorialist to understand how the charters produce high test scores. It is called creaming, picking the best and excluding the rest.
This article explains how in works.
Creaming has become a central issue in the whole debate about the effectiveness of charters. A school “creams” when it enrolls students who are more likely to get higher scores on tests due to their personal characteristics and/or their backgrounds. The fact that Newark’s charter schools enroll, as a group, fewer students with special education needs — particularly high-cost needs — and many fewer students who are English language learners is an indication that creaming may be in play.
If you understand how creaming works (as in skimming the cream from the milk bottle when it rises to the top—a phenomenon unknown to people below a certain age), then the charter claims of superiority are unimpressive.
If you don’t understand, and you refuse to try, then you will find the Newark Test Scores to be “incredible,” as the Star-Ledger did. Parse that word: Incredible. Not credible.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t need to be no statistician to explain how charters do it.
“School Choice”
Charter picking,
Like cherry picking,
Selects the very best.
The ones who bore
The highest score
On every single test
But it helps if you are a poetistician
“Successful Turnarounds”
Eva’s found,
Without a doubt,
That “turn-around”
Means “turn ’em out”
“Branded for Success”
Eva’s brand
Is “Tests R Us”
“Worst” are canned
And “best” are bused
“Chartering a Course to $ucce$$”
The lesson of the charter
The key to their $ucce$$
Is focus on the “smarter”
Eliminate the rest
“BASIS Charter School”
The BASIS of success?
Selection at its best
Cuz Darwin’s fittest cases
Got nothin’ on the BASIS
exactly said: turnaround means TURN THEM OUT.
To be fair:
I think it is outrageous that states like Arizona give public money to BASIS Charter School. But at least BASIS is up front about what it is. BASIS has no interest in solving the problems of failing public schools. BASIS is offering a charter school for the most highly motivated and academically strong students. The rest can rot for all they care. BASIS isn’t making claims that if those students came to BASIS they would become high performing scholars. They make it clear they are established FOR high performing scholars and if you think your child is that, you enroll him, but it turns out he isn’t, you leave.
I think giving a franchise to a private operator to run the exact same types of g & t public schools that have always been successful is ridiculous. But at least we can have an honest discussion about it. The charters that blatantly lie about their cherry picking and claim to welcome all students do not care at all about the many children who their lies harm.
“BASIS is offering a charter school for the most highly motivated and academically strong students. The rest can rot for all they care.”
And if that is the case then let them stand or fail in the free market of private schools without stealing monies from the public schools and their students.
Duane,
I agree! In fact, that is exactly what BASIS did in NYC where they opened private schools. They don’t pretend to be something they are not, and no one in NYC is insisting we need to open more BASIS charters that will turn all the students trapped in failing schools into high performing scholars
“The Charter Secret to Small Class Size”
To keep the classes small
You just suspend the chaff
You don’t suspend them all
Just quarter to a half
Developing an exclusive population to enroll kids most likely to succeed is created not only from the “creaming” students.
Three other aspects of this experienced in choice programs old (desegregation) and new (charters and vouchers to ritzy private schools):
Creaming Parents/Caregivers – It’s the “Creaming” of the parents/caregivers who are more active and involved in their child’s education
“… need not apply” – Self-selecting parents/caregivers who knew not to bother applying because in spite of the fancy ads, the charters quietly make it known that students with disabilities and English language learners will not be served well.
“Counseled” out – Get data on the number of students who suddenly appear on neighborhood school doorsteps throughout the year to avoid suspensions ore were kicked out of their “public” (serves all?) charters.
(And usually after the charter has received it’s state funding per student)
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Corporate Charter Schools “CREAM” their way to raising test scores. Public schools are not allowed to use CREAMING because it is wrong!