FOX vs. DeSantis on Libel Law

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2023 //
19

FOX “news” is battling a $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which claims it suffered damage to its reputation and to the lives and safety of its employees because FOX repeatedly aired conspiracy theories about the election. These theories, repeated numerous times on FOX, asserted that the Dominion Voting machines were programmed to flip votes from Trump to Biden. Some who were interviewed numerous times on air by leading talk-show hosts claimed that Dominion machines originated in Venezuela, when left-wing tyrant Hugo Chavez was president.

Depositions of the talk-show hosts and of Rupert Murdoch showed that none of them believed that Trump won the election, yet they continued to feature election deniers. The talk-show hosts laughed at the claims of the election deniers, yet interviewed them repeatedly.

FOX’s defense is that it was reporting the news. Any judgment against FOX, its lawyers say, would restrict freedom of the press. Read the debate here on NPR.

FOX’s lawyers rely on a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1964, New York Times v. Sullivan. The Times won the case, and the high court made it very difficult to sue a media outlet for defamation or libel.

As a result of that decision, the media and individuals can ridicule public officials without fear of being sued for libel or defamation.

Now, here is the irony: Conservatives don’t like the Sullivan decision. Trump railed against it. Justices Thomas and Gorsuch think it should be “reviewed,” presumably the way they reviewed Roe v. Wade.

Ron DeSantis has initiated legislation that would lower the bar for libel suits against public officials. He wants to be able to sue reporters and newspapers that criticize him.

If DeSantis had his way, FOX would undoubtedly lose its case. FOX now defends its lies by appealing to Sullivan. If DeSantis had his way, Dominion would win, and FOX would lose.

Haha.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Lies, Media

Peter Greene: A Conservative Makes a Case for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2023 //
14

Peter Greene discovered a conservative making a case for public education. Was it inadvertent?

Peter writes:

Okay–where do you think this next excerpt came from?

Our public schools are one of the few unifying institutions that we have left. If we allow [something] to continue to individualize and atomize the classroom, we shouldn’t be surprised if our culture and political climate follow suit. In a traditional classroom with central texts, common knowledge, and routinized behavioral norms, our children learn to let another finish speaking before interrupting, no matter how much they might disagree. How many complete strangers could spark up a conversation over their shared love—or perhaps disdain—for the Great Gatsby because so many of us have read it in high school?

Traditional literature classrooms in particular seem all the more important as technology advances. When children spend ever more timeisolated in their rooms, endlessly scrolling on their phone, depressed and anxious, the act of putting a phone away, reading together, and then making eye contact to discuss the text could be the very “social and emotional” support that they need. When artificial technology can accomplish evermore tasks, enjoying a book with friends is one of the few remaining, distinctly human pleasures.

Is this me, arguing against current versions of school choice, particularly tech-based versions like micro-schools?

Nope. This is Daniel Buck, rising star conservative education writer on the AEI/Fordham circuit. I’ve written about him before, and you can check that out if you want more of his story or the story of his website, but for right now, mostly what you need to know is that Buck’s specialty is arguing against straw versions of progressive education stuff, which is what he says he’s railing at. My impression is that Buck means well, but doesn’t spend near enough time reading actual non-conservatives about education.

Here he’s railing against progressives who, in his telling, are out there letting students in classes pick all sort of different texts and do different things and follow different muses and while I have no doubt such teachers exist (in a pool of 4 million, you can find examples of anything), I’ll bet that most teachers, conservative or not, find the idea of overseeing 130 different individual reading units the stuff of nightmares.

No, the place you’re much more likely to find an array of students following an atomized assortment of varied educational paths would be a city that offers dozens of school choices, from “classical” whiteness to computer-driven whatever to contemporary diverse authors to neo-Nazi home schooling.

The argument he makes in this latest piece–that the nation benefits from having students share core experiences together while learning some of the same material even as they learn how to function in a mini-community of different people from different backgrounds–that’s an argument familiar to advocates of public education. The “agonizing individualism” and personalized selfishness that he argues against are, for many people, features of modern school choice–not public schools.

Open the link to read the rest of this post.

Categories Curriculum, Literacy, Literature, Supporting public schools

Steve Hinnefeld: Indiana Librarians Defeat Effort to Make Them Criminals

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2023 //
9

Steve Hinnefeld writes about a threat in Indiana to ban books and to criminalize librarians who allow anyone to check out a banned book.

Hat’s off to Indiana’s librarians. They turned out in force last week when legislators considered making it easier to ban books and prosecute people who provide material that’s “harmful to minors.” And they pushed back when lawmakers suggested they didn’t know what they were saying.

The legislation was written and ready to roll. For now, though, it’s off the table. Steve warns that it could be attached to another bill. Hoosier librarians are watching.

Categories Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Freedom to Read, Indiana, Librarians, Literacy, Literature

Anand Giridhadaras: The Woke and the Unwoke

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2023 //
25

The following was posted by Anand Giridhadaras on his blog The Ink. He is the author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.

In 2017, a political eternity ago, I gave a talk at the Obama Summit in Chicago. One section of it dealt with the question of so-called wokeness, which has in the years since between a national tinderbox, with more heat than light. I wanted to share that part of the speech today. The bottom line: Wokeness is good, actually. But we need a plan for the still-waking……

As our society fractures, some change-makers are drawn to visions of progress that don’t bother with suasion. I’m thinking especially of those of us who live in what we regard as the America of the future and who think of ourselves as “woke” — aware of injustice, committed to pluralism, willing to fight for it.

As wokeness has percolated from Black resistance into the cultural mainstream, it seems at times to have become a test you must pass to engage with the enlightened, not a gospel the enlightened aspire to spread. Either you buy our whole program, use all the right terms, and expertly check your privilege, or you’re irredeemable.

Is there space among the woke for the still-waking?

Today, there are millions who are ambivalent between the politics of inclusion and the politics of exclusion — not quite woke, not quite hateful.

Men unprepared by their upbringing to know their place in an equal world. White people unready for a new day in which Americanness no longer means whiteness. People anxious about change’s pace, about the death of certainties.

The woke have a choice about how to deal with the ambivalent. Do you focus on building a fortress to protect yourselves from them? Or a road to help them cross the mountain?

A common answer to this question is that the people angry at losing status don’t deserve any help. They’ve been helped.

I understand this response. It is hardly the fault of the rest of us that those wielding unearned privilege bristle at surrendering it. But it is our problem. The burden of citizenship is committing to your fellow citizens and accepting that what is not your fault may be your problem. And that, amid great change, it is in all of our interest to help people see who they will be on the other side of the mountaintop.

When we accept these duties, we may begin to notice the ways in which our very different pains rhyme. The African-American retiree in Brooklyn who fears gentrification is whitening her borough beyond recognition probably votes differently from the white foreman in Arizona who fears immigration is browning his state. Yet their worries echo.

When we learn to detect such resonances, we gain the understanding of other people that is required to win them over, and not simply to resist them.

It isn’t enough to be right about the world you want to live in. You gotta sell it, even to those you fear.

I find this rhetoric very appealing. Of course, we should try to persuade those who don’t agree with us, as they try to persuade us we are wrong.

But I think the appeal to reason is doomed. It would be like trying to persuade a devout follower of Trump that he is a con man. I have tried but never succeeded, just as they have tried to persuade me that Biden is demented, with no success.

The leaders of the anti-WOKE frenzy, like DeSantis and Rufo, are riding this crusade for power and money. They are not open to suasion.

Their followers tend not to be able to define what WOKE is. They just know they are against it. They assume that WOKE means grievance politics, and they want nothing to do with it.

I’ll see if Anand has some useful ideas about how to remove the stigma that rightwing rabble rousers have attached to the word WOKE. I certainly see nothing attractive in their antonyms: “I’m sleeping.” “I’m not awake.” “I have no interest in making the world a better place.” “I don’t care about social justice.” Who would espouse such views?

Categories Democracy, Equity, Extremism, Justice, Racism

Clarence Thomas, the Billionaire, and the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2023 //
19

The blog called “Misinformation Kills” usually focuses on COVID Lies and misinformation and their perpetrators. In this post, however, Dr. Alison Neitzel takes a different perspective on the money men who are undermining our democracy by capturing the courts.

She shows the outlines of a “vast rightwing conspiracy,” as described years ago by Hillary Clinton in 1998. At the time, people thought she was exaggerating. Now we know it exists.

It involves not only Harlan Crowe, the very generous benefactor of Justice Clarence Thomas, but Charles Koch and the mysterious Council on National Policy, where rightwing zealots meet and greet and plan their strategy.

Leonard Leo, the Catholic and deeply conservative leader of the Federalist society, planned the successful conquest of the U.S. Supreme Court. Donald Trump was his useful idiot.

Koch is all in for deregulation. But not when women’s reproductive rights are at issue.

Will Justice Thomas be held accountable for his unethical behavior? His benefactors will protect him. His dear personal friendship with Mr. Crowe began after Justice Thomas joined the Supreme Court. What a coincidence!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Deregulation, Education Industry, Elections, For-Profit, Fraud, Freedom, Funding

DeSantis and His Morality Police in the Schools

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2023 //
26

The editorial board of the Miami Herald knows exactly what Ron DeFascist is up to: He wants to remove local control of public schools and gather complete power over what is taught in the schools. He wants to crush unions. He wants to censor books in school libraries. He wants to make sure that students use the bathroom assigned to the gender on their birth certificate. He wants to control the pronouns that teachers use in their classroom (check every student’s birth certificate so you don’t break the last two laws). He wants to control the state curriculum and tests to be certain that only patriotic history is taught. It’s not at all clear whether Black history can be taught (even though it is mandated) unless it meets his approval. He wants to control school boards, and he doesn’t hesitate to select and endorse candidates who share his views. He is power-mad. And he thinks his authoritarian behavior is a model for the nation! He must have skipped history at Harvard.

Florida Republicans’ ‘ideology patrol’ is coming to a school near you | Opinion

The Florida Legislature could de-certify many teacher unions in charge of negotiating salaries and working conditions.

Florida Republicans’ ‘ideology patrol’ is coming to a school near you | OpinionBY THE MIAMI HERALD EDITORIAL BOARD

It’s the biggest irony of a state that calls itself “free.”

A basic tenet of America’s political system — one that conservatives, more than liberals, have staunchly defended — is that the government closest to the people is best. But the Florida Legislature, egged on by Gov. DeSantis, is poised to further constrain locally elected school boards from making decisions about books, what teachers can say in the classroom and even school bathroom rules.

If the Republican-led House and Senate get their way, by the time they are done local education will be a mere arm of state leaders who act like the ideological patrol of Florida’s K-12 system. Meanwhile, there’s not enough talk about real issues like post-pandemic learning losses and the shortage of teachers. In fact, lawmakers might make the latter even worse with a union-busting bill that could de-certify many teacher unions in charge of negotiating salaries and working conditions.

So strong is the Legislature’s desire to turn K-12 into a field of culture battles, they are seeking to turn school board races, which are currently nonpartisan, into partisan contests. This would play right into DeSantis’ hands. He’s said that his goal is to elect candidates of his choosing in 2024 local races, including for the Miami-Dade County School Board.

This move would exclude millions of Floridians who aren’t registered with either major party — and who outnumberRepublican voters in Miami-Dade — from voting for their board member in primaries. The saving grace is that this measure would only go into effect if at least 60% of voters in the state approve it as an amendment to the Florida Constitution.

Another bill would relax residency requirements for school board candidates. They would not have to live in the district they want to represent until taking office. This isn’t unheard of in Florida. The same requirement applies to sheriffs and other constitutional officers. But it would allow any outsider with money and backing from, say, a powerful governor to run to represent communities they have no connection to.

To be fair, there are some sound proposals making their way forward at the Capitol. Lawmakers want shorter, eight-year term limits for school board members, down from 12 years. There’s a bill to require instruction on the effects of social media on young people and to ban the use of a school’s internet for social media, unless it’s for education purposes. Senate Bill 52 is ready for a Senate vote and also would ban cellphones in class.

But lawmakers are too busy fighting gender pronouns, sex education and transgender youth.

SB 1674 would make it a second-degree misdemeanor for adults to use a bathroom or “changing facility” that doesn’t align with their sex assigned at birth. The bill also would require districts to come up with “disciplinary procedures” to deal with students who violate the ban, further stigmatizing trans kids who already are often the target of ridicule.

Republican lawmakers want to prohibit teachers and staff from calling students by pronouns that differ from those given to them at birth, even when a parent is OK with it. SB 1320 expands a law that bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity — known by critics as “Don’t say gay” — through the eighth grade.

That same bill would also give outsized power to a single person to, at least temporarily, ban books from schools. Districts would be required to pull books that have been challenged while a complaint is being heard. It allows not just parents, but any county resident, to file an objection, likely resulting in blanket attempts by activists to ban books about LGBTQ issues and race.

SB 1320 also would take away school boards’ power to choose textbooks for sexual and reproductive health classes. Instead, that would be up to the Department of Education, which reports to the governor.

Current law already requires districts to teach that abstinence is the “certain way” to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and about “the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage.” But lawmakers seem to think we still cannot trust the people we elected to run our schools with basic decisions about curriculum.

We’re not fools. This isn’t simply a traditional power grab by Tallahassee. This is an attempt to ensure only certain voices are allowed in public education. Parents and educators who think differently be damned.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom to Read, Teachers, Unions

Orlando Sentinel: Florida Legislators Should Go See “Kinky Boots” in Orlando

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2023 //
22

Scott Maxwell, opinion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, has some advice for Florida’s Republican legislators: See “Kinky Boots,” playing in Orlando. The show was a huge hit on Broadway. It won multiple awards. Just promise not to close it down.

To say that Florida’s GOP lawmakers are obsessed with drag queens is like saying Jabba the Hutt has a few extra pounds.


These guys have a preoccupation with cross-dressers that would confound Dr. Ruth.


While the state is plagued with problems ranging from a teacher shortage to skyrocketing insurance rates, GOP lawmakers have assigned anti-drag-queen legislation to, not one, not two, but five different legislative committees.


They’ve spent hours holding hearings, taking testimony and staging debate.


During one two-hour hearing, Brevard County Rep. Randy Fine tried to explain why he wanted to make it a first-degree misdemeanor to admit minors to shows that appeal to, as his bill says, “shameful” interests.


“What is ‘shameful’?” asked a Democratic colleague, wondering if Fine could define the word he wanted to enshrine in Florida statutes as a basis for arresting people.


Fine responded: “Um … um … [Eight seconds of silence] … I think that it again, that is things that are … I dunno … I mean, again, you can look these things up in the dictionary.”


Well said, Representative.


Florida theaters keep watchful eye on Legislature’s drag drama
It’s obvious drag queens fluster some of these folks. But instead of trying to rewrite state statutes in ways even they struggle to explain, I have a suggestion: Take a field trip.


Come see the Orlando Shakes’ latest production, “Kinky Boots.”
It’s a funny, heart-warming and family-friendly show that won Tony awards when it debuted on Broadway.


It features oodles of the drag queens you’re so interested in. But it also features characters who, like you guys, claim to be offended by drag queens — but who come to understand that, just because someone is different from you, it doesn’t make them bad.


That’s a lesson many of us learned in kindergarten or from Mr. Rogers. Well, think of “Kinky Boots” as kindergarten with a rock soundtrack. Or Mr. Rogers in bright red, 6-inch heels.


Now, if you do come see the show, you have to promise something: You won’t try to censor it or shut it down.


I don’t think anyone anywhere ever has. “Kinky Boots,” after all, is well-known and family friendly with songs by Cyndi Lauper. “The Book of Mormon” is way more raunchy.


But we know how some of you like to ban things that espouse ideas you dislike — books, history lessons, corporate diversity classes — here in the “Free State of Florida.”


More troubling, we’ve already seen you target another one of Orlando’s cultural gems, the Orlando Philharmonic, after its foundation let drag queens rent out its theater for a raunchier show.


Gov. Ron DeSantis objected to alleged lewdness in front of kids. And even though undercover state agents reported “… agents did not witness any lewd acts …” in Orlando, DeSantis’ business-regulation division is still trying to yank the nonprofit theater’s liquor license.


So if you come see “Kinky Boots,” you have to promise to just sit and listen.


There, you’ll not only be able to see men dressed as women, you might benefit from the messages in this award-winning Broadway musical.
It’s the tale of a shoe-making company in England that falls upon hard times and discovers a path to financial success by making footwear for a niche market — drag queens. (Capitalism!)


It’s also about how some of the factory-workers who mocked and teased the drag queens didn’t really understand what they were mocking.


My wife and I saw the two-hour show Thursday night in a packed theater that gave a standing ovation to the hard-working professional actors. I promise it’s more entertaining than the two-hour legislative hearing.


In that hearing, Fine told members his concern was children. His bill would assess fines and charges against venues and individuals who admit minors to a show that “Predominantly appeals to a prurient, shameful, or morbid interest” and “Is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community of this state as a whole …”
“Clear as mud,” one Democrat responded.
Democratic lawmakers also wondered why Fine only wanted to crack down on “live” performances — and not movies that show hardcore sex and gory violence, which parents can take their kids to see in Florida.
Fine knew he had no good response to that. So he suggested legislators could add criminal penalties for movie theaters, too. But, of course, they haven’t. It’s just the drag queens that have them so … interested.
At one point, Pasco County Republican Rep. Kevin Steele said he wouldn’t take his kids to a drag show before adding: “Obviously, that’s a personal choice.”


It was a bizarre thing to say, considering Steele supported the bill that would outlaw precisely that — the parental right to make that choice.
I obviously don’t think children should see anything pornographic. But this bill goes way beyond that, trying to impose nebulous, overly broad, opinion-based standards and only focuses on live performances.
“This isn’t a clinic on Constitutional Law,” Fine said. Boy, was that the truth.

There are many issues more worthy of lawmakers’ time. If these politicians truly cared about children and families, for example, they’d focus on ending the decade-long wait faced by thousands of children with disabilities who are desperate for help.

Instead, they’re planning more hearings, meetings and votes on HB 1423, the so-called “Protection of Children” act — the drag-queen bill.

So if these politicians are going to bypass addressing the truly pressing problems facing the state, they might as well enjoy a quality production that features some of the very performers they’re so obviously obsessed with.

And maybe learn something in the process.


smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories DeSantis, Florida, Freedom, Gender

Tom Ultican: Warning! Education Profiteering in Texas

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2023 //
13

Tom Ultican left a STEM career to teach high school physics and advanced mathematics in California. Since his retirement, he has become a crack investigator of scams in education.

His latest deep-dive into dirty deals, unsurprisingly is in Texas, where state officials are quietly steering major contracts to a Laurene Powell Jobs company called Amplify.

Amplify is a tech company that delivers instruction online. It was created by a tech company in Brooklyn to meet the needs of the New York City public schools when Michael Bloomberg was mayor and non-educator Joel Klein was chancellor of the schools. When Klein resigned, he persuaded Rupert Murdoch to buy Amplify for $500 million, and he became CEO.

Amplify developed software for its curriculum, and it sold both its own tablets and software. Launched with a bang, it soon imploded due to problems (the tablets sometimes spontaneously combusted), and sales never took off. Murdoch decided to sell it and write off a loss of $371 million.

Now we know that billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs owns Amplify, and the company is very cozy with the Texas Education Agency. Amplify is back with its plans to digitize and standardize instruction.

Tom Ultican begins:

In March, the Texas house of representative’s education committee introduced House Bill 1605. Chairman Brad Buckley from Killeen was lead sponsor and 25 other members are listed as co-sponsors including one Democrat. The actual author of the bill and who if anyone paid for it to be written is not known. The legislation creates two major changes. It transfers purchasing power from the state education board to State Commissioner of Education Mike Morath and it opens the door for Laurene Powell Jobs’ Amplify to control instructional materials for the Foundation School Program.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) explains,

“The primary source of state funding for Texas school districts is the Foundation School Program (FSP). This program ensures that all school districts, regardless of property wealth, receive ‘substantially equal access to similar revenue per student at similar tax effort.’”

Foundation curriculum includes the list of the big four subjects mapped out by the TEA curriculum division.

English Language Arts and Reading
Mathematics
Science
Social Studies

The material is to be delivered using open education resources (OER). This means the content deliverance via interactive electronic screens. Districts will have the right not to use the curriculum however the structure of HB 1605 bribes them to employ it.

Under this new legislation, the state of Texas is contracting with Amplify to write the curriculum according to TEA guidelines. Amplify will also provide daily lesson plans for all teachers. The idea is to educate all Texas children using digital devices and scripted lesson plans while teachers are tasked with monitoring student progress.

Senate bill 2565 is the companion legislation. The language of neither HB 1605 nor SB 2565 mention Amplify. However, during the senate education committee public comments period on SB 2565 it was revealed that TEA had already given Amplify a $50,000,000 pandemic contract. When witnesses referenced Amplify as the purported contractor, senators did not push back and the only company the Senators spoke about themselves was Amplify. So it is clear that it will be Amplify and some people in the know believe Commissioner Morath has already made a deal with the company.

Please open the link and read on. Amplify is not only risen from the ashes, but it’s on the road to profiting by the creation of a teacher-proof curriculum.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Curriculum, Education Industry, For-Profit, Technology, Texas

ProPublica: Billionaire Bought Justice Thomas’ Family Home

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2023 //
28

ProPublica has another scoop involving Justice Clarence Thomas and his friend Texas billionaire Harlan Crow.

Harlan Crow is a really good friend to Supreme Court Justice Thomas. Not only did he give Justice Thomas and his wife fabulous vacations over the past two decades (which the Justice never reported on financial disclosure forms), but the very generous Mr. Crow bought Justice Thomas’s family home in Georgia, with his mother still living in it. He also bought two vacant lots from Justice Thomas on the same street. The billionaire made some repairs on the home. He sold the two lots. It’s not clear whether Mama Thomas continues to live in the home purchased by the kindly billionaire.

Justice Thomas did not report that sale, as he did not report the lavish vacations that were gifts from Crow.

A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. Thomas never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties. That appears to be a violation of the law, four ethics law experts told ProPublica.

Justice Thomas broke the law.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Dark Money, Ethics, Funding

Gary Rubinstein: Attrition at Success Academy Worse Than Ever

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2023 //
44

Gary Rubinstein has been following the attrition rates at Success Academy for years. His interest was piqued by literally unbelievable claims issued by the public relations team at Success Academy. The charter chain, a favorite of former Mayor Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, has very high test scores. It has also been in the news for high attrition rates. It is a truism that the best way to get high test scores is to get rid of kids who don’t get high test scores.

Gary looked at the latest boasts and did some new checking of Success Academy’s claims:

On April 5th The New York Post published their annual ‘100% of Success Academy students get accepted into four-year colleges’ editorial. The class of 2023 will be the sixth graduating class of the infamous charter chain and according to the first paragraph of the editorial, Success Academy has accomplished this feat six years in a row.

I’ve been fact checking claims like this for about 12 years now and if you follow me at all you know that of course the 100% four year college admission statistic is a lie, but you will want to know how much of a lie it is this time.

What I usually do to check these claims is go to the New York State Education portaland go through the different schools. The quickest calculation is to simply compare the number of Kindergarteners who started the school twelve years earlier to the size of the graduating class. This is not the most accurate thing to do since Success Academy only used to ‘backfill’ students who leave up until 3rd grade, but it is still a pretty informative number. As I’ve reported in previous blog posts about four of the first five graduating classes, this led to senior to kindergarten ratios of 2018: 16/73=22%, 2019: 26/83=31%, 2020: 98/353=28%, 2021: Pandemic so I wasn’t able to do this one, and 2022: 137/538=25%.

Success Academy complains that this way of doing is makes the attrition seem worse than it is because it is equivalent to about a 10% attrition per year. But these numbers are actually inflated because they don’t account for the number of students who left and then were replaced in the early years. I once got data on this from the State and was able to use it to get a more accurate number of 22% for the class of 2021.

Looking at the year to year attrition, the thing that always jumps out at me is how almost half the students who are in 9th grade will graduate on time four years later. For this years analysis I found one of the most bizarre examples of short term attrition I think I have ever seen.

So The New York Post editorial mentions that 100% of the 117 students at Success Academy got into 4 year colleges. Looking back at the 2010-2011 school year, there were seven Success Academy schools that had a combined enrollment of 726 students. (For five of the schools I found Kindergarten stats for 2010-2011 but for the Harlem-5 school I used the 78 1st graders in 2011-2012 and for Bronx-2 I used the 93 2nd graders in 2012-2013). So this quick calculation leads to the lowest ever senior to Kindergarten ration of 117/726=16%. And remember, this is an overestimate since it doesn’t count all the students who left but were replaced.

But the craziest statistic I think I’ve ever come across in this type of research is the number of 11th graders that were in the school just one year earlier. It is hard to get this data sometimes because I had to look at Harlem-1 and Harlem-3 schools even though I think there is just one high school, it is kind of confusing. But it shows that Harlem-1 had 89 11th graders in 2021-2022 and Harlem-3 had 81 11th graders in 2021-2022. So this is 170 eleventh graders in 2021-2022 and now ‘100%’ of them are 117 students. But of course 117/170=69%. So where did 31% of the eleventh graders who were at Success Academy last year go? Well it is doubtful that so many would transfer out. It would be like dropping out of the marathon with 100 yards to go. Though it is possible that some transferred out when they were told that they would have to repeat 11th grade

Please open the link and read the rest of this important post.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cheating, Data, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City
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