Labor lawyer comments on the Rocketship post:
“Rocketship operates charters that enroll students via application. Therefore, it necessarily follows that the Rocketship will enroll a different mix of students than the low-SES-area neighborhood public schools. In low-SES areas, many parents are too unconcerned/dysfunctional to learn about the charter, to successfully complete the application process, and to provide daily transportation to the charter. The neighborhood public school will enroll all of the children of the unconcerned/dysfunctional parents as well as some of the children of he concerned/functional parents (who decide not to enroll in Rocketship). Rocketship, by contrast, will enroll only children of the concerned/functional parents.
“For this reason, it is comparing apples to oranges to compare Rocketship test scores with neighborhood public school test scores.
“If Rocketship thinks it has discovered the secret to effectively educating low-SES-area students, let Rocketship take over a low-SES-area neighborhood school — enrolling all the neighborhood school children and only the neighborhood school children — and let’s see how Rocketship’s model works when Rocketship has the same apples as the neighborhood public school.”
