Can We Close the Achievement Gap Between Success Academy and Democracy Prep, KIPP et al?

Emergency crisis emerges as Eva's Success exposes massive achievement gap amongst charters.

Moskowitz proclaims: They would have done better if not for those bad teachers at the charter schools. Clearly there are not enough choices out there for parents to choose between good and bad charters. But since we are the only good charter, I am changing my position on choice. We should be the only choice.

{OK, above it satire alert, though would it surprise you of Eva actually said that?}

Gary Rubinstein did some great work on the charter scores (Driven by data … right off a cliff). Gary uses their own data to hammer the nail.

The most stunning example is the famed Harlem Village Academy which had 100% passing in 2012, but only 21% passing in 2013 for a 79% drop....Democracy Prep officials didn’t respond to a request for comment...KIPP also did not respond to a request for comment.
I actually got one of the third grade questions wrong....these new tests have the opposite problem:  Students can do very poorly on them even if they do understand math.  This is why I don’t like to base 20% of my teacher rating on a single test that I didn’t write.
.... Gary Rubinstein

Gee, Harlem Village Academy suffered a bigger drop in scores than Michelle Rhee gained in her 10 minutes of teaching. HVA's Ed deform media darling Deborah Kenny, who had that noted educator Cathie Black on her board, will escape scot-free on this. I call for a recall on all her appearences on NBC's education shmation. Do any of these "experts" ever ask the question as to how a school gets 100% rates when it has enormous teacher turnover. [Below, in Afterburn, are a batch of ed notes links to Kenny and the school, including  a link to the fawning Brian Williams interview with her.

Gary also points to the hit in the big chains, KIPP and Democracy Prep, with TFA miracle workers, took.

Anyone have an eraser?

While DP won't comment, former chief Seth Andrews, wearing his yellow baseball/thinking cap, is probably thinking: I only left 6 months ago and they already fucked up our scam. Leonie Patrick Sullivan points out on the NYCParents blog:

The Democracy Prep results shouldn't be surprising to those who recall the earlier audit of Democracy Prep where DOE reviewers found “few lessons required higher-order thinking skills or deep analysis of concepts.” 

KIPP is already making plans to expand S.L.A.N.T.S. so KIPP can close the achievement gap between then and Eva's Success Academy. Can't let the competition get too far ahead. KIPP Amp dropped from 79% in 2012 to just 9% in 2013.

And TEP run by Zeke Vanderhoek, profiled on 60 Minutes, the NY Times, and the film "American Teacher" dropped from 76% to 20% in one year. Rewrite. [Also see Afterburn for Ed Notes links to TEP stories]. Gary sums up:

To see if most charter schools were like KIPP Star and Democracy Prep, scoring well below the 22% city average, or if most were still doing relatively well, like the Success Academies, I made another scatter plot, but on this one I marked all the charter schools (or at least the ones that had the word ‘charter’ in them) with a red circle.... charters are, in general, the ‘outliers’ meaning the schools that had the biggest drops relative to other schools with similar 2012 scores.  In the Stephanie Simon report she mentions that KIPP Star and Democracy Prep hadn’t done so well with their proficiency rate, but she doesn’t mention how far they had dropped.  Out of over 500 schools, which includes about 35 charter schools, of the one hundred largest drops, 22 were charter schools.

The Bronx Charter School Of Excellence, which recently received money from a $4.5 million grant to help public schools emulate what they do, dropped from 96% in 2012 to 33% in 2013.  So these are the schools that are the red ‘outliers’ hovering near the bottom right of the scatter plot.  In general, the average charter school went down by 51 percentage points compared to 34 percentage points for the average public school.  The most plausible explanation for charters dropping so much more than public schools is that their test prep methods were not sufficient for the more difficult tests.  In other words “you’re busted.”

evidence that charters are certainly not working the miracles they claim is very clear from this data.... if the ‘reformers’ really value their ‘data’ so much, they should really think about how to interpret the charter grade crash.... this suggests that maybe the hundreds of millions of dollars given to charters, both from the government and from private benefactors could be spent elsewhere in education more effectively.

Afterburn

Ed Notes Online: Harlem Village Academy Retained Only 4 Full ...

Sep 19, 2010

This year Harlem Village Academy opened its doors with only 4 full time teachers returning, a turnover of more than 75%. There are office staff, department heads and and administrators that returned (some of them teach one ...

Cathie Black on Board of Harlem Village Academies, HVA Head ...

Nov 29, 2010

Cathie Black's placement on the board of Harlem Village Academy as a way to get her ed creds- despite the fact that she didn't attend any meetings, has focused attention on this scandalous school and its relation to the ...

  

Ed Notes Online: NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam ...

Jun 12, 2012

Why would you believe anything reported on NBC? Even more outrageous was the puff piece NBC's Today show and Brian Williams did in an interview with Harlem Village Academy founder Deborah Kenny. Leonie has done ...

Ed Notes Online: Steve Koss: The Cathleen Black story just gets ...

Nov 11, 2010

Seems that her singular claim to education involvement was being on an advisory board of some sort for Harlem Village Academy. However, the Times is reporting that she not only just joined that group a few months ago and ...

 

Ed Notes Online: NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam ...

Jun 12, 2012

I was researching Deborah Kenny to see what teaching experience she has and to learn more about her credentials (and salary) and you were the second piece to show up on a Google search. Great writing, Ed. I'm definitely ...

Ed Notes Online: Cathie Black on Board of Harlem Village ...

Nov 29, 2010

"[Deborah] Kenny, who oversees 450 students, is paid $442,000, including a $140,000 "bonus" and $27,780 in "other" expenses.....Bloomberg has called the school a national "poster child" for school reform. Conservative ...

Ed Notes Online: Videos: FairTest Honors Diane Ravitch with the ...

Jun 10, 2012

After all, being in the same space with Debbie Meier and Diane Ravitch is a very special occasion, especially as it was a fundraiser for a worthy organization. ..... NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam and NY .

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Ed Notes Online: TEP: Hey, Buddy, Wanna Teach for 125 Grand ...

Oct 02, 2012

Remember a year ago at Education Nation at the premiere of American Teacher celebrated Zeke and TEP, which had lured a Harvard grad teacher away from Jersey who ended up being a low rated teacher based on flawed ...

Ed Notes Online: The Failures of Katie Couric as a Reporter: Biased ...

Mar 14, 2011

Couric did bring up the fact that TEP's scores were lower than the public schools in the area (only a 31% pass rate) but didn't drill too deep on that one. You know the line: it takes time to reverse the effects of those awful public ...

Ed Notes Online: UFT Leaders Show Disdain for Tweedies: We Don ...

Dec 17, 2012

This is for all non-TEP schools (TEP is Danielson Pilot schools). If your school is not in the pilot, please let me know if you have groups of people coming into your rooms to observe or to ask you for your lesson plans, etc.

Ed Notes Online: Reviewing "American Teacher": Ed Deform Wolf in ...

May 27, 2011

And presenting Zeke Vanderhoek as a hero (on the post-screening panel) who pays teachers at his TEP charter school $125 grand is enough to make you gag. Vanderhoek was featured on 60 Minutes (Ed Notes link) trashing ...

NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam and NY Times Trip Gabbriel Trips on Vouchers

NBC's Brian Williams is a shill for charters and ed deform

Student attrition at HVA is huge...the 66 5th graders in 2007-2008 have shrunk to just 16 9th graders in the 2010-2011 school year.  This is a 75% attrition.  In that same time, the district that the school is in went from 904 5th graders in 2007-2008 to 1313 9th graders in 2010-2011.  That is a 45% growth....  Contrary to what she preaches, teachers are her lowest priority

Why would you believe anything reported on NBC? Even more outrageous was the puff piece NBC's Today show and Brian Williams did in an interview with Harlem Village Academy founder Deborah Kenny. Leonie has done a few pieces on the school and today Gary Rubinstein tears it all apart.

An outrageous puff piece NBC's Today show and Brian Williams did on Harlem Village Academy founder Deborah Kenny. Leonie has done a few pieces on the school and today Gary Rubinstein tears it all apart. Really, if you want to see the entire charter sham exposed this is a must read piece.If NBC were fair and balanced they would have Gary or Leonie on to give the counterarguments. But NBC may be even less "fair and balanced" on school deform than even Faux FOX.

Here is Leonie's comment:

Great piece from invaluable Gary Rubinstein on the fraud that is Deborah Kenny and her charter school Harlem Village Academy. Kenny is all over TV promoting her new book, interviewed by the likes of Brian Williams and other reporters who never bother to check the stats or uncover the truth.

I would put quotes around reporter in this case. Just take this stat from Gary:

Gary Rubinstein's TFA Blog

It takes a village

 Excerpt:

The reason I need to debunk miracle schools is because lawmakers use them as examples of why it is good education reform practice to close down failing schools and fire their teachers.  My purpose is to show that the good test scores, if they really have them, come at an even greater cost.  The more I can show that the ‘miracle’ schools aren’t any better than the failing schools, maybe people will be more outraged when ‘failing’ schools are shut down. The latest ‘miracle’ school getting a lot of attention is Harlem Village Academy Charter School.  The founder of the school, Deborah Kenny, recently published a book about her experience, called ‘Born To Rise.’  The school was featured on NBC with Brian Williams.

 Gary also deals with their bogus claims on regent success and teacher turnover. He contacted a former teacher at HVA who has blogged about the school. Here is her entire comment which reveals ao much.

When a school is truly great, teachers want to keep teaching there year after year.  So it should be telling that in this school over the past three years the amount of staff turnover was 2007-2008 53%, for 2008-2009, 38%, and for 2009-2010, a whopping 61%.  By comparison, the teacher attrition for the entire district in 2009-2010 was just 19%.
To me, this teacher turnover is the most alarming statistic of all.  So I tracked down a TFA alum named Sabrina Strand who taught for one year there.  Sabrina wrote an excellent blog post called ‘I’m no Superman.’  I asked her if she would give more details about her experience, and here is what she wrote:

I am more than happy to tell the truth about HVA, at least how it was when I left after the 2006-2007 school year. I’m really glad you’re dedicated to exposing the truth behind the whole TFA/charter school charade. It is very much a charade, an elaborate, expensive smoke & mirrors. HVA, as I knew it, was one of the worst offenders of creating and sustaining the myth that teachers can solve everything. Waiting for Superman infuriated me because just like HVA – just like Deborah Kenny – it sent the message that good teachers should be martyrs, not people with lives and passions of their own that happen to also be talented and passionate about educating children. I am not a martyr, and as I titled my op-ed, I am also not superman. But yet many would say I am a very good teacher. In Deborah Kenny’s world, that would be impossible.
During the 2006-2007 school year at HVA, I taught huge classes of 5th graders who were poorly behaved. The administration was weak and ineffective. Everyone, including the principal and the dean, was so stressed out that there were often medical problems. I used to take the bus up to Harlem with my co-teacher and best friend at the school, Johanna Fishbein, and we would often cry on our way to work.
The working conditions at the school were plainly unreasonable. They took advantage of young, idealistic, competent teachers; they squeezed and squeezed until there was nothing left to give, even our dignity. Deborah Kenny is LARGELY to blame for this, as we were all desperately trying to play our parts in the Deborah Kenny play – one where she produced and directed but never wrote or starred in the productions. I have zero respect for that woman. The only time she actually came into the trenches is when she was preparing the kids for some dignitary’s visit. At that time, she would talk to them like they were slow kindergarteners, and when she left, they would all ask me who she was. That’s how connected she is to the school. Yet when President Bush came to laud our teachers’ efforts for earning the highest math test scores in the city, it was Deborah who schmoozed and gave the tour, Deborah who took the credit.
Deborah Kenny and her Village Academies take advantage of budding teachers, often crushing their spirits in the process. Though we barely made more than NYC public school teachers while working seven weeks over the summer, teaching on multiple Saturdays, and averaging 12-hour work days during the week, Deborah pays herself the HIGHEST SALARY out of any charter school executive in NYC (that stat was recently published in The New York Post). She makes almost nine times as much as her teachers who are doing all the real work, the hard work, that lands her in the press so often and helps her send her own kids to tony private schools. Her “vision” is a bunch of bullshit – basically, work your teachers to death, and you’ll see results. Sure, and you’ll also see a lot of unhappy teachers, and a lot of people leaving your school and vowing to never come back.
The year I left, my entire fifth grade team left with me. Deborah refused to write letters of recommendation for any of us. Contrary to what she preaches, teachers are her lowest priority and she never has their best interests at heart. In fact, this whole thing started when her husband tragically passed away from leukemia, and she needed a massive project to keep her grief at bay. That project was Harlem and its children. She developed her miracle solution about holding teachers accountable after she had already latched onto this “save the poor black children” project as a desperate attempt to find new purpose in her life. I admire that tenacity and resilience, but not what has become of it.
No school with a 60% teacher turnover rate should be praised in the press as the model for other schools to follow. Now that I’ve taught in a relatively stable independent school for four years, I see that a school’s real success comes from its sense of community. When teachers are leaving left and right because they’re being asked to perform superhuman feats for little compensation, the idea of “community” essentially vanishes. All that holds Village Academies together is Deborah Kenny’s unrelenting ambition and greed.
Feel free to use any or all of this in your blog post. I am absolutely, 100% done with the TFA and charter school world, and I have no fear of burning my bridges. I’m one of the lucky ones; I moved across the country and found a teaching job that calls to my soul instead of giving up on education altogether like many of my peers did after their horrific experiences at HVA.

NY Times weak piece on vouchers
With the news that Michael Winerip is leaving the ed beat at the NY Times we know that the paper has basically abandoned adequate ed coverage on both the local and national ed beats. Today's Trip Gabbriel piece on the Romney Voucher program has so many holes, the space shuttle could have passed through it on its recent journey. How can you write an article on vouchers and totally ignore the failed voucher programs already in existence, as pointed out in Diane Ravitch's book where she has a whole section on the Milwaukee failed voucher program (p. 130-31):

When a team of reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examined the voucher schools... they uncovered unanticipated problems. Applicants to run voucher schools did not need any particular credentials, nor did their teachers. The journalists visited 104 out of 115 voucher schools (nine voucher schools would not let them in); they found good schools and awful schools. [many religious schools --Ed:  using public money to support religion, a major purpose of the voucher movement]. 
The reporters judged that about 10 per cent... were excellent, and the same proportion showed "alarming deficiencies."
...on the whole, the reporters concluded that "the voucher schools feel, and look, surprisingly like the schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools District."...This was not the momentous result that voucher advocates had predicted."

In other words, let's destroy the fabric of the public school system for no real gain while opening up the ability to open schools by any charlatan or religious entity.

==========
The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.

Cathie Black on Board of Harlem Village Academies, HVA Head Makes 450 Grand, and Check the Pushout and Teacher Turnover Rates

Smack yourselves in the head - more than once - after reading this - and look for our followup later on another scandal packed charter,  Ross Global Charter.

From the Daily News article

"[Deborah] Kenny, who oversees 450 students, is paid $442,000, including a $140,000 "bonus" and $27,780 in "other" expenses.....Bloomberg has called the school a national "poster child" for school reform. Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave $5 million toward construction of the new high school.- The Daily News, Nov. 28

Cathie Black's placement on the board of  Harlem Village Academy as a way to get her ed creds- despite the fact that she didn't attend any meetings, has focused attention on this scandalous school and its relation to the BloomKlein corrupt running of the NYCDOE.

This Sept. 19, 2010 Ed Notes' report on Harlem Village Academy based on a surprising report in the NY Post received some notice.

Harlem Village Academy Retained Only 4 ...

This year Harlem Village Academy opened its doors with only 4 full time teachers returning, a turnover of more than 75%...

The Post article also references a 100% passing rate on the state math exam in 8th grade.  In order to be promoted in middle school you must have an 80% in each class (I am not sure if this practice is legal.) A number of students that do not have an 80 in each class choose to leave the school rather than be held back or go to summer school. In fact DOE numbers show that they lose 32% of their students between 6th and 8th grades (See the link below.) Under standing their standards for promotion, it is easy to see that the 32% of students that leave are almost all the lowest performing students. If traditional public schools withheld students that got less than an 80 it would be easy to have high passing rates, but we would have to build 30% more schools. Essentially HVA dumps its lowest third of students back into public school system.

My report also referenced a June 2010 Gotham School report by Kim Gittleson (who I got to meet at the Gotham School party 2 weeks ago). So, the scandalous story of HVA charter and its self-promoting leader Deborah Kerry who grows rich at public school expense, has been out there.

Some of the comments on my piece were telling. Take one Debra Kurshan, who many of us have seen representing the DOE at so many charter school invasion hearings. Her link to HVA is just another part of the chain of corruption in the NYCDOE under Joel Klein. (There's still time to take him out of Tweed with his coat over his head.)

Debra Kurshan
Cohort: 2006 New York
Fellowship Placement: Harlem Village Academies
Education: MBA, Columbia University, Business School
Current Position: Senior Director, Portfolio Planning, New York City Department of Education

As an Education Pioneer, Debra worked at Village Academies Network, a charter school management organization operating two schools in Harlem, New York. At Village Academies she was responsible for the relocation of Harlem Village Academy to a district space. She worked with contractors and vendors to negotiate purchasing and facility upgrades. She was also responsible for implementing the technology plan for the school which involved working with the e-rate program and various other vendors and stakeholders.

She now works for the NYC Department of Education as Senior Director, Portfolio Planning.

Another comment came from the inside apparently, even  prompting an email from Diane Ravitch asking where I got the info. I  could only say it was anonymous.

This is a school with teachers turn over rate in the past three years  60%, 53%, and now 75%. This is a school where only 19 out of 66 students that started 5th grade graduated. This is a school where 62% of the  students have been suspended. This is a school where if a student don't get 80% average, he is asked to repeat the class or attend a summer  school, and if the average is less than 75%, the student repeat the class or leave the school. Even regents score has to be no less than 80% or the entire course is repeated. This is a school where students spend 10 hrs a day, and are punished for speaking in the hallways. Upon all  these, our leaders are praising this school and even calling it the poster child school. Wake up people!!!        

Well, thanks to the Cathie Black story, people are looking at HVA. Another example of how Bloomberg even as he "wins" on Black, ultimately loses. Reality Based Educator at Pedido Street School picked up the story from the Daily News and I'll let him run with it.

Harlem Village Academies

This Daily News article on the Harlem Village Academies, ostensibly examining Cathie Black's alleged connections to the school, is a devastating look at the school itself:

Whatever Black's role there, Harlem Village has little in common with the average public school.


Kenny, who oversees 450 students, is paid $442,000, including a $140,000 "bonus" and $27,780 in "other" expenses.


The schools chancellor gets $250,000 to oversee 1.1 million students.


Many charter schools have a parent representative on their board. Harlem Village does not.


Bloomberg has called the school a national "poster child" for school reform. Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave $5 million toward construction of the new high school.


The school has been lauded nationally for its high test scores, including for pushing 100% of its eighth-graders to pass state math tests.


A look at the overall scores tells a different tale. In the last round of tests, like schools across New York, numbers dropped precipitously after the state made the tests tougher.


Schoolwide English test scores fell from 81% passing to 41%, while math dropped from 91% to 71%. And by eighth grade, the number of students taking the tests is a small fraction of the earlier grades.


The eighth grade with the 100% passing rate in math had 19 students.


'Why do they keep kids back?'


An unusually high number of younger students either drop out or are held back. In school year 2003-04, the year the school opened, only 48 of 73 fifth-graders made it to sixth grade. In school year 2006-07, 46 of 68 moved on; in 2007-08, just 40 of 76 fifth-graders made it to sixth grade.


Several parents praised the school for improving test scores and enforcing discipline but questioned why so many students were held back repeatedly.


"The school is good in some ways, but I don't like how they keep making so many kids stay back," one parent said. "There's a lot of pressure. If the school is as good as they say, then why do they keep the kids back?"


Higher grades fared better, although only 31 of 43 of the seventh-graders in 2006-07 made it to eighth grade and only 24 of that class went on to ninth, records show.


Harlem Village officials called the drop in overall test scores "irrelevant" because the school takes in low-performing students whose scores rise the longer they're at the school.


They also said the academy's high school students outperformed their public school peers, with 97% passing all Regents exams compared with 66% in public schools. They did not mention that the high school serves 163 students in ninth and tenth-grades only.


The middle school teacher turnover rate at Harlem Village Academies is also high: more than 50% of the teachers left or were fired in both the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years. In 2008-09, the turnover was 25%; in 2009-10, the rate was up to 39%.


School officials said the reasons teachers leave are "wide-ranging," including teachers who "move out of state or become full-time mothers."


The school also punishes students at an exceptionally high rate. Harlem Village suspended half its students in school year 2005-06, 44% in 2006-07 and 62% in 2007-08.


By comparison, nearby Public School/Intermediate School 210 reported suspension rates of less than 5% in 2006-07 and 2007-08.


School officials said 95% of the suspensions were for "nonviolent behavior," including "teasing, cheating or disrespect."

High rates of students left back or dropping out of the school, exceptionally high rates of suspension, high teacher turnover rate and low test scores. Gee, it sounds like a fabulous school and one we should certainly use as a model for education reform.

And of course so many of the "celebrities" in the education reform world have stated it is just that - from Bill Cosby to John Legend to Bob Herbert to Tiki Barber to unfortunately the most powerful ed deform celebrity of all - Barack Obama. But the reality that underlies the hype is that Harlem Village Academies is no miracle shop and the people running it are no miracle workers.

Rather, it is an education sweatshop that runs through its workforce quicker than you can say "exploitation" and treats its students to an education that is designed to create even more feudal serfs for the future ready, willing and able to do whatever their corporate masters want them to do for whatever their corporate masters want to pay them and then go away quietly and compliantly when their corporate masters no longer want them.

And of course the people running the school pay themselves handsomely to do all this.

I think that RBE pretty much sums this one up. If the UFT didn't have 2 charters that invaded public school space, they might actually spend some time exposing this junk.

Harlem Village Academy Retained Only 4 Full-Time Teachers While Losing 75%

This piece came in over the transom tonight. While exposing the disregard some charter schools hold for their own teaching staffs, this piece also exposes the shameful NY Post reporting on the phony grad rate. And of course the exposure of the force-outs and other manipulatives.

Last year Mayor Bloomberg visited Harlem Village Academy high school and called it "the poster child for this country."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/item_qM5tLTxv4VD6iAzd2A8pcJ;jsessionid=B6F2EB5549FF300018C58001CDD43800

Here is a selection from the Post piece:
Another student offered a stark comparison between her experience at Harlem Village and her former public school. "The teachers didn't care (in the public school)," she said. Asked by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein how many planned to attend college, every hand shot up. Harlem Village achieved national prominence last year when 100 percent of its eighth-graders passed the state math exam.

Nice to see her teachers cared more than her public school teachers even though most of them left.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/item_qM5tLTxv4VD6iAzd2A8pcJ;jsessionid=B6F2EB5549FF300018C58001CDD43800#ixzz102Qc7dI3

Can a school that can't retain 75% of its teaching staff be considered a poster child?

This year Harlem Village Academy opened its doors with only 4 full time teachers returning, a turnover of more than 75%. There are office staff, department heads and and administrators that returned (some of them teach one period) but only four full time teachers returned.  Teachers were told they would be working 9 hour days when they were hired, but the week before school started they were told they would be working 12 hour days. School starts at 7:30 so teachers arrive around 7.  School ends for children at 4:15 and there is a mandatory meeting for teachers from 5-7pm from Monday-Thursday.  Can be called a model that can't retain 75% of its teaching staff. The school sent a letter home addressing parents' concerns over the turnover without saying what caused it or how it will be fixed.

The Post article also references a 100% passing rate on the state math exam in 8th grade.  In order to be promoted in middle school you must have an 80% in each class (I am not sure if this practice is legal.) A number of students that do not have an 80 in each class choose to leave the school rather than be held back or go to summer school. In fact DOE numbers show that they lose 32% of their students between 6th and 8th grades (See the link below.) Under standing their standards for promotion, it is easy to see that the 32% of students that leave are almost all the lowest performing students. If traditional public schools withheld students that got less than an 80 it would be easy to have high passing rates, but we would have to build 30% more schools. Essentially HVA dumps its lowest third of students back into public school system.

http://gothamschools.org/2010/06/09/left-behind-but-not-gone-forever-augmenting-the-ufts-vanishing-students-report/