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I hope that all those who provided so much attention and PR for the Equity Project’s charter school (whose rationale was based upon high teacher salaries and large classes, though it wasn’t clear that the classes were really much larger than average middle schools in D6) will now take a look at the relatively poor results in terms of their test scores. Paying large salaries (as a recent NY Times article proposed for Kindergarten teachers) does not necessarily lead to good results.

What can money buy?

I am interested to see what the operating budgets look like for each of the schools because I know for a fact that one school with an enormous budget scored very low on the list…prompts one to ask, exactly what can money buy?

Taxpayer — the new charter school law now permits state audits of charter schools, so we should be seeing information like that sometime soon.  When people do see it, and they realize how much more money is being spent — combining taxpayer dollars with private money — for results no different from, and often worse than, most public schools, maybe they’ll wake up to this corporate heist of public education and vote the charterizers out of office.

Kim please learn to use the (more…) button. You should really place large graphics like that below the break. 

I’m not sure averaging across grade levels is a fair comparison since students tend to be more proficient in lower grades than higher grades, thus giving elementary schools an advantage over middle schools, especially since schools that enroll students in grades 5 or 6 have had fewer years to affect their students than those that enroll in Kindergarten and grade 1 and then don’t test until grade 3. Similarly, you shouldn’t compare a school with only a few testing grades, especially elementary schools, to a district with scores for all six testing grades.

Leonie,

Thanks for your response. I have a great deal of respect for the work you do. Every child deserves an appropriate class size.

I am not in a position to speak for TEP but it seems that the theory behind the school is potentially sound. Putting a superb instructor in front of 36 students is a potentially superior option to putting a mediocre teacher in front of 18 students. Twice the kids can benefit from a teacher who’s twice as effective. Other countries do this without much hassle and they’re attaining test scores that make ours in the USA look measly by comparison.

I don’t agree with everything that goes on at TEP; teaching Latin seems like gimmickry to me when their student population might benefit more from ESL. However, I’m objecting to the cynical position you’ve taken that looks at one point in the data to extrapolate a conclusion that has not yet been borne out. Of course TEP’s test scores are far lower than we would want, but let’s give them a chance to teach the kids for a few years before questioning their model. And I’ll also object to the broad brush stroke you’ve used to paint all charter schools: TEP and Harlem Success Academy are separate organizations, and we should treat them accordingly.

Best,

Jack

Jack regarding:
“Putting a superb instructor in front of 36 students is a potentially superior option to putting a mediocre teacher in front of 18 students. Twice the kids can benefit from a teacher who’s twice as effective.”

Very interesting mathematics. AMAZING! I would say.

That Idea will solve every problem that exists in our public education.

Jack, to extend your example, how about putting that superb teacher in a class of 18-20 instead of 36? Think then about the possibilities. Many have made similar arguments about class size not being important, including the mayor, if I recall correctly. But did you consider the quality of the STUDENTS? Are you talking about 36 gifted kids? Or 36 struggling learners? A good teacher is important, but it’s a rare individual (if one exists as all) who can take an entire, oversize group of kids who are behind and work miracles (And very large classes of kids who are behind do exist- I’ve had them). We’re only human, which is something that gets overlooked.

I am in California where many k-12 charter schools have sprung up that focus almost exclusively in online learning, especially at the secondary level. These schools are not restricted to district boundaries and many have students spread across a wide geographic area. My question is this: Are the schools represented in your report all brick and mortar type schools? I have been trying to find out if online schools are as effective as traditional schools, but have not yet found data on this growing subset of public charter school providers.