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.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.
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
Gary also points to the hit in the big chains, KIPP and Democracy Prep, with TFA miracle workers, took.
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| Anyone have an eraser? |
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.Afterburn
The Bronx Charter School Of Excellence, which recently received money from a $4.5 million grantto 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.
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 .
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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 ...
And this anonymous email does take aim at our of our favorite targets. 