Showing posts with label Zeke Vanderhoek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zeke Vanderhoek. Show all posts

Monday, August 12, 2013

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 ...
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 ...
  

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 ...
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 ...
 
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 ...
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 ...
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 .
--------------
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 ...

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 ...
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.


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 ...

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Charter school TDRs are now online at the NYP

UPDATED: 8:30PM

We all know this stuff is crap for charter school teachers too. And this anonymous email does take aim at our of our favorite targets.

Sixty Minutes did a feature on Zeke Vandehoek who is the 125K a year maven for paying teachers. Where's the follow-up? In fact I don't necessarily believe TEP is a bad school or any worse than many other schools and in fact may be better. His results may be a sign he is not creaming and in fact playing an honest game. What Vandehoek is discovering is that unless he creams he will be branded a failure no matter what he pays the teachers. He is also a hero of sorts in the movie American Teacher which I've written about - a movie that claims all it takes is paying teachers more money -- with the usual caveat that teachers have to be accountable -- code for measure them, evaluate them to death and place the blame on them when things don't go right but when they do be sure to credit the school or district leadership.

Fascinating little insight: TEP charter school, headed by that publicity hound Zeke Vandehoek who bragged about how he would get great teachers w/ higher pay and that class sizes didn’t matter at http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2011/03/zeke-vanderhoek-relentless-self.html

Has two teachers listed, both below average.


One of the TEP teachers who is featured in the movie American Teacher got an 18.



The eight winning candidates, he said, have some common traits, like a high “engagement factor,” as measured by the portion of a given time frame during which students seem so focused that they almost forget they are in class. They were expert at redirecting potential troublemakers, a crucial skill for middle school teachers. And they possessed a contagious enthusiasm — which Rhena Jasey, 30, Harvard Class of 2001, who has been teaching at a school in Maplewood, N.J., conveyed by introducing a math lesson with, “Oh, this is the fun part because I looooooove math!” Says Mr. Vanderhoek: “You couldn’t help but get excited.” Hired.
---------------
March 10 - STATE OF THE UNION PART 2: TIME TO FIGHT BACK ---- See Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on the right for important bits.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The Failures of Katie Couric as a Reporter: Biased 60 Minutes Report on Zeke Vanderhoek and TEP Charters

Katie Couric after reading Ed Notes on her 60 Minutes TEP segment
REVISED Tuesday, March 15, 12:30 PM
NOTE: I revised this as my column this week for The Wave.


by Norm Scott

Katie Couric exhibited a failure of epic proportions as a so-called reporter in her 60 Minutes interview (http://bit.ly/fPqMMk) on The Equity Project charter school lead by another former Teach for America who spent his 10 minutes in the classroom, Zeke Vanderhoek. (Did you know that 30% of NYC charter schools are lead by TFA alums - talk about cult to school pipeline?) The program was an unadorned ad for an attack on teacher tenure and seniority rights and Katie jumped right in. Her next job will undoubtedly be at FOX.

They had the obligatory kid who talked about how the public school teachers didn't care about him. Gee, I've heard a hell of a lot of former charter school teachers who not only found their teachers uncaring, but actually abusive.

Vanderhoek is making his bones on paying teachers 125K a year in what amounts to a full time and full day job.  Leonie Haimson calls him a shameless self-promoter. "He is clearly a genius at self-promotion, if nothing else. Though the test scores at his school turned out to be terrible, he still managed to score a profile in 60 Minutes."

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 schools that actually had higher scores even though they pay teachers half as much.  Or - wink, wink - just go our and cream kids with higher performing potential.

This fall, Vanderhoek proved that just about any hokey ed deform idea will get you lots of publicity. An article by Justin Snider of the Hechinger report that Leonie called "highly deceptive [by] claiming the very existence of this charter school proved that teacher quality is more important than class size."

Listen to this drivel by Snider:

The reality, though, is that of all the things we should worry about in providing a quality education to our children, class size isn't high on the list. Teacher quality matters a lot more. Zeke Vanderhoek, the founder of The Equity Project Charter School in New York City, knows this. His teachers are the most highly compensated public-school educators in the country, earning minimum salaries of $125,000 per year. How does the school afford such salaries? Because Vanderhoek decided he'd much rather have the nation's top educators teaching classes of 30 students rather than mediocre folks teaching classes of 20 students.

Mona Davids of the NY Charter Parents Association said, “He should fire himself now. Equity Project only had a 31% pass rate. Where's his accountability?”

Even the NY Charter Center, the well-funded charter school booster, admitted such in its latest report:

Naturally, Couric dragged out that old warhorse, Joel Klein to discuss the tenure issue. In a case of bad reporting, she failed to raise just a few questions she could have asked. For Katie's future reference, I will list just a few she might try the next time.

Klein is asked by Katie how you get tenure and responds:

Klein:  if you have a pulse you get tenure.... tenure is something you get for showing up.

Fantasy questions from Katie:

·      Mr. Klein, how long were you in charge of the NYC schools? Wasn't it 8 years?

·      Mr. Klein, did you realize that 60% of the current teaching corps in NYC has been teaching for 5 years or less? If you look at the totals over 8 years the number of teachers hired under your tenure might be as high as 70% (or more).

·      Mr. Klein, scuttlebutt has it that 80% of the current corps of principals was placed in their positions since you took over the NYC schools.

·      Mr. Klein, isn't it true that principals are the ones who grant tenure?

·      Mr. Klein, what do you have to say to the fact that a majority of the teachers who you claim are granted tenure for merely breathing have been granted tenure by the 80% of the principals who were appointed under your tenure as head of the NYC schools.

·      Mr. Klein, explain exactly who should be held accountable if teachers receive tenure for merely breathing?

·      Finally: How dare you Mr. Klein try to perpetrate these lies and slanders regarding tenure on the American people?

By this time Klein is sweating bullets and runs off the stage with his coat over his head - and Katie never gets to ask about the scandals and massive incompetence, things that will hopefully one day truly lead to Klein taking the perp walk with his coat over his head.

Ahhhh, real journalism is fantasyland.

END OF COLUMN

 -------


Afterburn
So, how much fun was it to receive an email from CBS today touting Katie and her piece?
Hello,

This week on 60 Minutes Overtime, Katie Couric Katie Couric discusses her report on the ground-breaking New York City school known as TEP (The Equity Project), her own experience with mentoring students, and the accusation that teachers are "greedy."

To view the video, click here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20042201-10391709.html

Tiny URL:  http://bit.ly/eApWza
  
Let me know if you have any questions.

Jenifer Boscacci
CBSNews.com
415.344.2441
Jenifer.boscacci@cbs.com
Hmmm. I think I'll send my list of questions to Jenifer.


Leonie Haimson did some work on the segment and posted at NYC Ed News listserve:
See video of last night’s 60 min: segment on TEP Charter school, featuring Joel Klein attack on tenure and celebrating the fact that Zeke Vanderhoek fired two of his teachers – that he had so carefully recruited. One was a sped teacher from Arizona who had moved to NYC to take the job.


Strangely, the segment never mentions the large class sizes that supposedly allows him to pay $125,000 per teacher; instead Couric claims the trade off was that teachers had to take on  additional admin responsibilities.

For my earlier post on this school: Zeke Vanderhoek, relentless self-promoter
It sparked a few comments:
-----
Mel:
The report says 247 kids and 15 teachers, all of whom actually seem to teach.  Ratio of about 16.5 students to a teacher. There are no quick fixes.
-----
Leonie
It’s clear from the video that class sizes are much larger than that.  Some are clearly special ed teachers and intervention specialists.
-----
Diane Ravitch
Does the school have a library? a librarian? a school nurse? a social worker? guess not. What is its attrition rate? Anyone know?

-----------
Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.