Students apply for up to twelve high schools and are assigned by a complex algorithm … all schools, except for the schools requiring examinations (only a handful), receive a range of ability groups … the goal is a level playing field. Some schools receive far more applicants than others skewing the entering classes … there are over 200 small high schools. Of the 1450 schools in NYC about 200 receive “support” from not-for-profits called Partnership Support Organizations … the two largest with about 75 schools each are CEI-PEA and New Visions. Support means instructional support and principal mentoring. All 1450 school must select a School Support Organization … and the school pays a fee established by the Central Board.

The letter Report Card grade is primarily based achievement and progress compared to peer schools, schools with similar student bodies.

An excellent analysis with a range of recommendations in a recent Report by the Center for NYC Affairs.

http://www.newschool.edu/milano/nycaffairs/publications_schools_thenewmarketplace.aspx

“Response: I’m not in New York so I have to speculate a bit, but I believe that most of those schools get students assigned by default — am I correct? My district, San Francisco Unified, is an all-choice district, but except for the two magnet high schools, all the high schools get students assigned by default.”

This is not the case in NYC. There are many high schools that screen, in addition to the highly successful specialized high schools such as Stuyvesant, Laguardia, etc.. Are there similar concerns regarding these schools, or are they excused simply because they are run by the DOE? How about New Vision schools and new, small DOE schools which have a special application process?

I agree that for a parent, the primary concern in school choice is the benefit of the school for their own child rather than policy implications. As such, schools should be evaluated on their own merit. The benefit of the charter in this situation is that you can make that choice regardless of where the school is. Parents need to be aware though that there are much fewer seats in charter schools that there are applications, so even if you choose an ideal school you are far from guaranteed to have you child placed there. Have many positive alternatives.

There are also DOE run New Visions schools which receive special

That’s why it’s really, really wrong and harmful for charter school folks to claim that this doesn’t happen. Perhaps these false claims are made in true innocence, perhaps denial, perhaps deliberate dishonesty — we have no way of knowing. But they need to be aggressively refuted — and the charter folks really need to stop making them if they truly aren’t aiming to harm public education.

I think that there are some aspects to creaming that we can agree on. For example, it does not have to be intentional or even done consciously to be a reality. I think that we might also agree that creaming entails taking a disproportionate share of the “cream” of students and/or families.

Where we might disagree is in what constitutes the cream of the students and/or families, and what actions or structures might lead to creaming.

Luckily, there is a lot of research out there as to what factors are associated with greater student success. SES, parental education level, speaking English in the home, parental involvement and a whole host of others. You’re right that the suburbs effectively cream, by this definition, relative to urban or rural schools. Heck, some neighborhoods effectively cream, relative to other nearby neighborhoods.

I think that Caroline and I are talking about an additional dimension to this issue. Suburban districts or the right neighborhood schools don’t claim to be serving a larger population. I think that she and I are both concerned about claims — either by charter schools or their proponents, though not always both — that they serve a wider and more diverse or representative population than they actually do. While it is often is theoretically possible for them to serve such a population, there are a whole host of reasons as to why they serve a disproportionate portions of the “cream” of such populations.

Why does this matter? Why is this a different issue than suburban creaming or the creaming done by neighborhoods? Well, it’s the disconnect between the claims or perception of the populations and the reality. This leads to unsupportable claims about charter schools and the impacts they can have on children, families and communities. So long as the kinds of creaming that charters do — either intentionally or not — are recognized, this will be no greater an issue than those other kinds of creaming. As when those other kinds of creaming are acknowledged, we understand the basis for the Broader, Bolder Coalition.

He says: “Just because a parent has the wherewithal to enter their child into a charter school lottery does not necessarily mean their children are better students or easier to teach.”

Response: Any veteran educator who has worked with inner-city children would disagree with you. Of course this isn’t true in every single case — there are exceptions, aka outliers. But overall, parents who care about their kids’ education are likely to have children who are better students and easier to teach than do parents who don’t have the wherewithal to care about their kids’ education (let alone kids without stable home situations and, thus, parents). It would seem rather absurd to stubbornly insist otherwise.

Gideon says: “It may be that parents with children who are not succeeding in traditional schools choose to send their kids to charter schools, giving the charter school more, not less, challenging students to teach.”

Response: This is a valid point, but these would still be children who had parents who cared and made efforts in support of their education. Meanwhile, the children who are not succeeding in traditional schools and who don’t have parental support stay in the traditional schools, while the charter schools proclaim themselves superior.

Gideon says: “…using choice as a definition of creaming, most high schools in NYC would be considered to be creaming since most students choose which one they attend, though they don’t all get their first choice.”

Response: I’m not in New York so I have to speculate a bit, but I believe that most of those schools get students assigned by default — am I correct? My district, San Francisco Unified, is an all-choice district, but except for the two magnet high schools, all the high schools get students assigned by default.

Gideon says: “…to argue that zone schools don’t cream ignores the fact that many parents choose where to live, thereby choosing their children’s schools.”

Response: Yes, it’s obviously the case that schools in higher-income areas overwhelmingly tend to be more successful. (Here in California, the state’s accountability system is called the API, the Academic Performance Index. Wags refer to it as the Affluent Parent Index.) But those higher-income schools really aren’t part of this discussion. The issue here is the fact that charter schools cream for students who are predisposed to be higher-functioning, leaving the more-challenging students to the non-charter schools that serve low-income, at-risk, high-need students. Again, the non-charter schools that serve more-privileged students aren’t relevant to this discussion.

As far as the grandma who asked the question is concerned, this creaming effect is a positive attribute in a school, I realize. But in the big picture, it’s damaging to public education overall.

With regards to charter school accountability, it is true nationally that most charter schools are closed for financial reasons or mismanagment. 5250 charter schools have been opened since 1992, and 657 have closed, and only 14% for academic reasons. However, in New York 80% of the closed charter schools were for failing to meet academic standards. New York City is rather unique in that it is closing district schools as well, but nationally very few traditional district schools are ever closed. Why is this pertinent to a grandmother seeking a charter school for her kids: because even if parents and guardians are uniformly happy with a charter school, that does not guarantee its existence. She should look at each schools performance and whether it is meeting the standards set by its authorizer for getting its charter renewed.

Michael,

Read up on the New York Center for Autism Charter School in Harlem, it has exclusively served students with autism and PDD-NOS. It has been serving the community since 2006.

www(dot)newyorkcenterforautism(dot)com

Best,

Nicholas Tishuk
Director of Programs and Accountability
The Renaissance Charter School
teach11372 @ gmail.com

the recent supreme court Case did not say that parents are free to send their kids to private schools for thei children with special needs just because they want to. It was not that revolutionary a case.

In fact, it was a fairly narrow case. It was just about whether the simple fact that their child had not been enrolled in in-district options was an automatic bar to getting the district to pay for it.

Districts are still just as free to argue in the same old procedings that they can meet the child’s needs. The only difference, as I understand it, it thAt they can no longer say, How would they know? They haven’t even tried us, yet.”

There some excellent inclusionary models in NYC … the Brooklyn Secondary Studion Schools is fine example …http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/21/K690/AboutUs/Overview/Special+Programs.htm

Inclusionary programs cost more and require special expertise … you are correct, the schools are too few … BTW there are a few charter schools devoted to Sped Ed kids …

http://www.examiner.com/x-4959-Special-Education-Examiner

I’m a strong proponent of mainstreaming (based on family experience I won’t bore you with). And I agree that parents tend to prefer mainstreaming over “warehousing.” But moreover, special needs kids need special services. No family I know of wants their special needs child mainstreamed… if they’re dying of thirst mid-stream. Hence the case that reached the Supremes.

In light of the SCOTUS decision, school districts throughout the land need to come up with creative ways to retain — make that recruit — special needs Special Ed kids… or go broke. They just put all the power in the parents’ hands — and cut the school boards out of the loop. Until the invoice shows up.

Let’s bear in mind there’s a huge spectrum of kids and needs, but ferrexample, as I understand, NYC doesn’t even recognize Dyslexia!

If the person I’m talking to is asking about a charter school that (in a vaccum) seems like it might be potentially a good choice, and isn’t someone who follows education policy, I guess I’m likely to say: “I have some issues with charter schools, but …” and give my opinion (that the school is worth checking out as a promising option). That leaves an opening for them to ask what my issues are if they want, but they can comfortably ignore the opening if they prefer.

If I’m talking to someone I know is a public-school supporter and is likely to be interested in education policy, then I might go into some detail about why I view charter schools as problematic.

It has happened that I was talking to someone who knew very little and wasn’t informed about specific schools, but just had bought into the general assumption that charter schools were superior, from the massive free-floating hype — someone saying “I want to find a charter school for my kid! I hear charter schools are better!” In those cases, I’ve at least tried to make it clear that there’s a huge amount of unwarranted hype coming from powerful and wealthy forces promoting charter schools as superior and that in real life that isn’t true, even though a particular school might work well for their particular kid. In my district I can confidently tell them that most of the charter schools are outperformed by a significant number of public schools. How I said this and how much detail I gave would depend on lots of variables.

There’s one charter school in my district that used to get a lot of glowing press, but that I know is now troubled. I really don’t know if the previous glowing press was unwarranted or if they school had those problems all along. Sometimes parents who heard the past glowing press ask about that school, in which case I’ll give my informed opinion and take the opportunity to make some points about charter schools in general, including the all-important “don’t believe the hype” warning.

If they were asking about KIPP schools and didn’t appear to be familiar with KIPP’s distinctive practices, I might give some details. Some parents find the program appealing and some horrifying.

In general I guess I assume that the priority is the best interests of the child in those conversations, and just try to touch on the greater issues with charter schools, or at least mention in passing that there ARE greater issues with charter schools.

…Michael, I have been told that there are some charter schools that specialize in disabled students, or one particular disability, but I don’t specifically know of any. In my district, the most activist parents of disabled students are the ones fighting for their students to be mainstreamed in the “least restrictive environment.” So a specialized charter school for disabled students wouldn’t be what they want — they would want one that willingly welcomes disabled kids to be mainstreamed in regular ed classes. Dream on…

Given the inherent challenges involved, and the current stats, beating the DOE scores shouldn’t be too hard.

Further, given a recent Supreme Court decision socking school districts with the bill when parents choose private schools — without any obligation to even give the public school services a try — there’s a huge potential upside here for the neediest of children, let alone all of us Joe and Jane Taxpayers.

How hard do you try to make sure that they get it? Or do you not even bother?

When people ask me about private vs. public schools, I really try to convince them to choose public. (To the extent that they tell my spouse to tell me when they choose public.) But asked about charters I don’t feel the same obligation, even though they feel more like private schools than public schools to me.

(I know, they are paid for by the public and are therefore public schools.)

I’m second guessing myself here, but rather than explaining what I’ve come up with, I’m curious how others would respond.

The intent of those who originally conceived charter schools was that that would be a voluntary option, entirely by choice, so of course no one would be assigned by default. This effect, and its harmful impact on public schools, apparently didn’t occur to them.