Comments on: Report: Many city charter schools lack hardest-to-educate kids

By: ‘Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education’ « NotionsCapital

‘Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education’ « NotionsCapital — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 04:21:23 +0000

[...] “Many city charter schools lack hardest-to-educate kids,” Philissa Cramer, Gotham Schools. [...]

By: Nolan Mayland

Nolan Mayland — Wed, 12 May 2010 06:44:34 +0000

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By: Dear Obama: You’re destroying education by Mary Elizabeth Williams « Transparent Christina: A Personal Blog by a member of the Christina School Board

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:45:51 +0000

[...] There’s a school in East Harlem within walking distance of a bunch of homeless shelters that has no shelter kids in [...]

By: Writing Blog :: Uncategorized :: Report: NYC Charters Do Cream, Exclude Neediest Students

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:11:10 +0000

[...] (h/t to Gotham Schools) [...]

By: Peg

Peg — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:28:20 +0000

The “creaming” debate has been around for years, and before there were charter schools to complain about, the public schools were criticized as well. At this time, charters may only accept students through random lottery. Public schools, on the other hand, are allowed to use tests, interviews, and other hoops to weed out–cream–students whom they do not want to educate. Everyone has access to the special education statistics in New York City: simply go to the school site on the DOE website, go to “statistics,” and then pull up the special education information. You can find there, for instance, the following percentages of students with disabilities at these high schools: Stuyvesant (.2%), Bronx Science (.1%), Brooklyn Tech (.5%), Townsend Harris (.5%), Bard (.5%), Baruch College Campus HS (2.6%) and Beacon High School (5%). How many are arguing that these school should be now forced to go to a random lottery?

By: KitchenSink

KitchenSink — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:46:49 +0000

How about publishing the free & reduced eligible %, homeless %, special ed %, ELL % for each charter school along with their test scores? And, of course, compare those to the district averages. Wouldn’t that increase the transparency?

I found the insideschools report to be uncharacteristically slanted, with generalizations NOT backed up by any evident data. Where are these statistics that they uncovered? I may be missing something, but I didn’t see them attached to the report.

By: Michael Fiorillo

Michael Fiorillo — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:33:46 +0000

Please, enough with the deception and delusions. Charter schools are private schools capitalized jointly by taxpayer money and corporate/malanthropic venture capital. While a few charters may serve high needs students, the overwhelming majority don’t, which is intentional. The venture capitalists are test marketing a range of schools, and when they find out the most marketable ones, they will unleash them as franchises, complete with Initial Public Offerings or their equivalent.

In Harlem, Ground Zero in the hostile takeover of the public schools, the stats overwhelingly show that ELLs and Speceial Ed students are grossly under represented. In any world other than the Through the Looking Glass/ Newspeak world of corporate ed reform, this wouldn’t even be a debatable point any more, yet here we are, arguing whether the sky is blue.

Or is the sky whatever color Michael Bloomberg, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, et. al. say it is?

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:29:52 +0000

Charter schools do not deal with the same dilemmas that regular public schools deal with. Many charter schools require parents to sign a contract that states they will participate in X number of school events every year. I would love to see that happen in my school. (I am laughing hysterically right now.) The mother from the story claimed her daughter’s needs were neglected in her charter school because of the behavior problem she exhibited. If that happened in a regular public school it would be on the front page of the Post and Daily News. Charter schools are given a ton of leeway in how they deal with their children. It’s a shame that more articles like the one above aren’t available to the general public in their daily paper. OH WAIT…Bloomberg is a saint according to those papers, so why not shine a BRIGHT LIGHT on his pet projects. Remember, when politics gets involved with education, only the kids suffer.

By: Michael M.

Michael M. — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:02:59 +0000

Gideon,
Thanks.
One way to comply with all known constraints is to have the lottery later in the year, no?

By: Gideon

Gideon — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:13:16 +0000

Charter schools are prevented by state law from reserving seats for students. If more students apply than the school has seats, enrollment is done by random lottery. In NYC the law requires preference be given to students in the CSD in which the school is located, and I believe schools can also give preference to siblings and at-risk students. I would assume homeless students could be given preference as at-risk students, but they would still have to enter the lottery to enroll.

By: Ruben

Ruben — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:58:43 +0000

So Greg, only the homeless families that go to public schools are honest? That doesn’t make any sense. The free lunch statistics don’t come from some home survey either. The city/state has data on it, because all those lunches are paid for by state/federal money, and that money has to be accounted for. If you want to defend charter schools, okay, but I think you’re gonna have to come up with something better than that.

By: Michael M.

Michael M. — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:39:54 +0000

111 out of 51,000 is outrageous. De facto “creaming.”

What’s to prevent charters from reserving a few seats for kids from homeless shelters?

“June” is too late? Try telling that to roughly 300 families on various wait lists in D2.

By: D

Wed, 20 May 2009 18:03:26 +0000

There are many who would refuse to answer a question to whether or not they are homeless for many reasons. The data is likely incomplete. It’s the same with free lunch. There are individuals who do not want to contribute to statistics and opt not to fill out papers which would make them eligible for free lunch because they do not like the labeling of their kids.
Not sure that could be perfectly fixed. Perhaps one partial solution would be to provide school choice information to be readily available at shelters and supporting organizations. It’s hardly the fault of a charter school that they do not have kids enrolled that never applied.

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:40:15 +0000

This is not a good assertion because charters vary so widely. Some charters serve tons of Homeless and ACS involved Kids. One Elementary school, Mott Haven in the bronx serves mostly those students, Democracy Prep in Harlem has 5% homeless students and others in the ACS system, while Vanessa’s numbers show KIPP and AF as having no Homeless students, which I find hard to believe. There is a data problem here, as well as an overreaching problem of those who think that ELLs should be in bilingual programs only. Some ELLs need immersion, and one size definitely doesn’t fit all.