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Over 12,000 families applying for 1200 seats.  I can’t think of a more important endorsement of Success Academy schools.

I wish we had access to these statistics in a clear and comprehensible format for every school in NYC.  (Let me know if we do!)

And Gotham — how can you print “according to the network” for every “fact” they give you? That is distorted journalism because naive people like Ken believe it. If they won’t show you the hard data you shouldn’t be their propagandist. DEMAND they publish their data reports. Why did someone have to FOIL their parent handbook which I published on Ed Notes?
 

There are 29,000 separate and individual kids sitting for the SHSAT every year. 

There are something like a ridiculous 40,000 separate and individual kids sitting for the elementary gifted-and-talented test every year (across all four entry grades).

There are the 2,500 kids on neighborhood K wait lists, and the thousands of middle school applicants who are turned away from district middle schools every year. 

Why is ‘parent demand’ always given as a justification for expanding the number of charter schools, but virtually ignored in these other areas? 

And Tim — just think — all that demand and wait lists without spending a million and a half bucks on advertising. 
And Ken — you are a business guy. If you had 10 times the demand for a product you had would you flood every home with ads? And hire people to stand in front of schools and on subways to hand out glossy brochures? If if you say that is a good thing then I hope you contribute to the local competing public schools that get no budget for ads — maybe a broken down copy machine.

As to propaganda — did Gotham ask why if there is such demand they have to spend all that money to advertise? I disagree that pub the numbers they give you with the disclaimer is OK given that people remember the numbers and act like they are true. Gotham has an obligation to ask to see the  data and print if they are refused. Would Gotham publish my Teacher Data Report – which by the way is 200 percent above average even with a disclaimer? It is selected disclaimers — like they always tell us how E4E had thousands of supporters or members or whatever — to the point that it became a number that was accepted. If they were to ask me to prove that GEM has published 8000 dvds of our movie and distributed them I can pretty much show them facts. 

Norm, if you have 20,000 applicants for your school’s 2 spots, I hope you will expand and I hope that special interest groups don’t stand in your way.

Ahhh, Ken, no wonder you are successful. An expert at avoiding the question. So I ask again, if there is 10 times demand for Success why do they need to spend so much on ads? Or advertise at all? Will they release the names and contact info of the applicants?  After all, the public gets numerous direct mail from Success which gets the names by buying lists from the DOE — why do they need to even do that with so much “demand”? And with so much demand why such a drop in numbers as each grade moves on? Example from Gary Rubinstein: Harlem Success’s 83 kindergartners and 73 first graders in 2006 had dwindled to just 63 third graders and 59 fourth graders in 2009.  This is a stunning 22% decrease.  Meanwhile in P.S. 149 they went from 39 kindergartners in 2006 up to 44 third graders in 2009 and from 45 kindergartners in 2005 to 44 fourth graders in 2009.

Norm, I have no significant knowledge about their advertising strategy.  Maybe they think it is a public good to reach as many families as possible.  Maybe they are trying to reach populations that are underrepresented in their schools.  (Note that some people attack charters for not getting enough ELL’s and then attack them for excessive outreach.) Maybe they want to maximize demand to strengthen their case to open more schools.  Maybe they underestimated the demand they’d have.  I have no problem with any of these possible explanations.  

(I don’t have much of an opinion on the attrition issue although I won’t accept your claims as fact without doing my own research, which I don’t intend to do anytime soon.)Meanwhile, do you really think Success is lying to the media?  Do you think it is a conspiracy or does Eva hide this lie from everyone involved with Success including her staff, the board, the charter authorizers, etc?  How many people do you think are likely involved in perpetrating this lie?  

I may be the only one who’s never seen a Success Academy advertisement.  Although I tend to keep my head down on the train.

Hey Tim,

I don’t really know much about their advertising approach or budget.  $1416 per seat definitely sounds like a very big number, if that, indeed, is a reasonable way to interpret what is going on.  (I’m guessing that the denominator in that calculation is questionable.  They probably don’t think of their advertising as only designed to fill currently open seats.)  I’d be hesitant to draw any conclusions without considering what Success has to say about the issue.  

On the ELL’s, if they haven’t been successful in attracting ELL students, one obvious approach to increase the numbers would be to run advertisements designed to attract those families.  

I find it theoretically possible but far-fetched that Success would lie to GS about the 12,000 number.  I do wish that there were official numbers on this important “bottom line” statistic.  I think it is really important and interesting to see where families want to send their children.  Maybe the data exists and I’m just not aware of it.  If it doesn’t exist, I’m curious as to why that is the case.  

hmm 12000 families applied for 1200 seats many applied to multiple schools——-so if 6000 families applied to 2 schools thats 12,000–and if 3000 families applied to 4 schools thats 12000 –and 2000 families applied to 6 schools each thats 12000——-you get the picture….oh and they have to sign contracts to support school events–ie bus trips to PEP meetings–fraud,fraud,fraud

So many interesting explanations as to how Success got 12,000 families to apply.  Here’s an unconventional one: maybe their schools are really great and parents are hungry for great educational opportunities for their kids.  Never mind, that’s probably not it.  Let’s get back to the conspiracy theories.  

Also an indictment of the state of the public school system, or its perceived state. Thank YOU Mr. Bloomberg!

And how many families has McD’s served? Is it an important endorsement of their methods, nutrients, philosophy? I believe the founder of Starbucks links coffee to the soul.

That idea probably makes you feel better. But know, it’s not true. Most charter school teachers have taught in zoned schools before going to charters. Most leave zoned schools because of the chaos, lack of professionalism and low-expectations for students.

I wish more people would use qualifiers to express more clearly their level of knowledge on a subject.   Here is a crisp phrase for you, though: 22,000 families for 1200 seats.

I’ve actually visited Success schools multiple times.  I think if more people had the opportunity to visit great charter schools and the traditional public alternatives, special interest groups would be in a much worse position than they are now.  Luckily, much of the media has visited which is why even most traditional liberal newspapers and magazines are frequently pro-charter.  Or it could be a conspiracy.

My original comment: “Over 12,000 families applying for 1200 seats.  I can’t think of a more important endorsement of Success Academy schools.” 

If Success lied to GS about this (as Norm implies), I think multiple people would have to be involved, i.e. a conspiracy.  While this is possible, I’ve offered another possible factor: Success schools might be great.  

I’m not sure if a single anti-charter commenter on this thread (or in most threads) has even mentioned the possibility that the quality of the schools might be a factor in the equation.  I’d hope they’d be curious in those regards. 

I think the word “experimented” implies that the status quo was acceptable.  With that said, I agree that charters are so attractive in part because traditional public schools are generally so screwed up.

 NOW we’re getting somewhere.  Bloomberg’s been in charge of this system for over 11 years now.  If anything is status quo it’s his annihilation of a system that needed help, but already had some good things in place.

Thus, I agree, Bloomberg, generally, screwed up the the traditional public school system.

So, at what point does “status quo” get applied to a decade of educational failure?

I am just curious Ken how you know that the entire public school system is in shambles? But if it is I can show you the conspiracy. The very people who are running it for a decade have an agenda to sell charters to the public. Why? Well if you can replace a unionized employee with a non-unionized employee — instant saving. Point 2 — if you set up a separate school system that can toss kids they don’t want back to the public schools you have effectively differentiated between 2 classes of students, the latter which you believe has not much hope anyway so you can allow resources for that class to dwindle. So you squeeze the public schools in areas where you want to push charters.
Now I won’t disagree that for the kids they want to keep Success is decent though friends at co-locos report some awful incidents of how some kids are treated — before they are tossed I guess — and you should check the attrition rates as many of my pals in co-located schools with them can list a number of kids that come right back to them — as Brian Jones says in our movie, “They win the lottery and then lose the lottery.” But then again there are public schools that have attracted enough of a demographic in recent years to tip them in a positive direction too. Meaning that it is often the kids that make a difference and we then get into which school can attract enough kids to make the ones who are at risk easier to manage. Get too many of those and you get all sorts of reactions that can spiral it down. The managers of the system are the only ones who can save the school — by providing more resources and putting in an effective leader (why do that when your goal is to push the nearby charter?). PAVE in Red Hook is getting $75,000 per child for a new building while PS 15 where they are co-located gets little in comparison. Meanwhile PAVE with a shortage of students had to collapse their 2 4th grade classes into 1 with 24 kids this year. For the entire grade. And check their performance even though they are given recruitment advantages over PS 15 which has a waiting list of out of zone kids.

I think the outward success of top charters speaks for itself. It’s then up to ALL of us to dig deeper.

If methods and philosophies that can be carried over to TPS’s are not being discussed, it leaves little to do but consider various tactics and some important bigger pics. How do we want people who are developing the minds of the future to be treated?
How do we want children to be treated? Whom do we want to control or have influence over this? What is sustainable? What can / should be broadly replicated? Changed? Rethought?

“Well, why not just make the names public?”

Surely someone somewhere can brainstorm some reasons why a school wouldn’t unilaterally decide to publish the names of every parent who applied for a spot to satisfy the curiosity of some guys on the Internet.  

Ok, edit my post to replace “curiosity” with “allegations.”  I don’t think it changes my point.

Have you asked HSA for this information? 

I find it funny that all of the supposedly “data driven” reformers tout these wait list numbers as if they have any real significance in indicating preferences.  They don’t.  In order to truly understand what they mean, you’d have to know how the applicant has ranked the school among their various preferences.  And you’d have to level the playing field by creating a uniform centralized application for all schools.  The process now required to apply to most local or magnet schools is pretty involved – it requires going to the school office during school hours at least once, with a raft of paperwork to prove your residency, and the staff often discourages applications when the chance of admissions is low.  

That said, I do believe that many people aren’t thrilled with their local school.  But in the “mixed-income” neighborhoods that SACS is targeting, people aren’t really dissatisfied with the quality of education, they just want a seat in a school that is relatively progressive and not overwhelmed with resource challenges.  By jamming in these co-locations and creaming off the more advantaged middle-class families who see the resources and support that SACS gets (and local schools don’t), the DOE is making the challenges faced by local schools even worse.  It really is a vicious cycle.

To wit – when families in my neighborhood don’t want the local school, they apply for progressive magnets or g&t, or they get a variance to another zoned school.  They sure aren’t applying to SACS in Bed-Stuy.