An article coming out in this week's Globe magazine examines the high pressure world of 21st century kindergarten. The article briefly mentions Edward W. Brooke Charter School. I think it's important to make a distinction between wealthy suburbs and urban schools. In wealthy suburbs, most kids who start school have important literacy skills before starting kindergarten. In low-income, urban schools like Edward Brooke, many kids start kindergarten not even knowing how to hold a book correctly, let alone knowing their alphabet or numbers. While suburban parents are striving to get their kids into Harvard, charter schools like Edward Brooke are trying to reverse an achievement gap that arose before the kids even got to school. This, to me, seems like a more important goal, and one which might warrant giving up some playtime for a greater focus on math and literacy.
And on the wireless, RadioBoston was supposed to do a piece on charter schools this week, but it was bumped for special on Ted Kennedy. The charter school piece should air a week from today on WBUR.
Finally, I appreciate the love that I got from MATCH's Mike Goldstein, who was guest blogging over at Eduwonk. I'd love to hear from the Eduwonk crowd if you're out there reading...
Friday, August 28, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Is Boston Latin School "High-Performing?"
In an op-ed in today's Globe that supports teachers unions and attacks efforts by Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick to expand the reach of charter schools, Ed Doherty refers to Boston Latin School as a "high-performing school." What does it mean for a school to be high performing? I would argue that it has more to do with the amount of growth children make in said schools over their time there, than with the absolute levels of achievement (although those would ideally be high as well). Schools can and should be transformative in students' lives.
Let's take a look at BLS: while I know that some BLS students do impressive things in and after high school, it's important to remember that every child at the school had to have high grades and excellent test scores to get in. This implies that they should have a head start on the road to academic success and college admission at the beginning of 9th grade.
At BLS student demographics (in terms of race, income status, etc.) are not at all representative of the district as a whole. For example, here is the race data for BPS in aggregate:
African-American: 38%
Asian: 9%
Hispanic: 38%
White: 13%
And here is the profile for BLS:
African-American: 12%
Asian: 28%
Hispanic: 8%
White: 50%
Looking at low-income status (free and reduced lunch), the disparities are also apparent:
BPS: 74%
BLS: 31%
In those areas that charter schools have recently taken so much heat recently, special education students and English language learners are also underrepresented:
LEP Status
BPS: 19%
BLS: 1%
Special Education:
BPS: 21%
BLS:1%
And finally, many students do not finish their high school careers at BLS after starting there. The numbers decline from about 440 9th graders to about 380 12th graders. A school filled with academically prepared students should not lose 15% of their students over 4 years. I know of a number of students who excelled in middle school and did not make it through BLS because they did not feel supported there.
Boston Latin and high performing charter schools both achieve excellent end-game results with their students. BLS is held up a paragon of excellence by the teachers' union, while charter schools are accused of "creaming" the best students. But who is really "creaming?" BLS has a academically-based admissions policy; charter schools use a lottery that allows in a random sampling of the student population, most of whom are many grade levels behind. BLS enrolls a student body that is drastically different than the district as a whole, and skewed towards White, Asian and less disadvantaged kids; charter schools enroll student bodies that often have higher levels of African-American and/or Hispanic students, and similar percentages of low-income kids relative to BPS as a whole.
Which type of school is more "high-performing?" If schools are supposed to be transformative, I would have to say high-performing charter schools.
Let's take a look at BLS: while I know that some BLS students do impressive things in and after high school, it's important to remember that every child at the school had to have high grades and excellent test scores to get in. This implies that they should have a head start on the road to academic success and college admission at the beginning of 9th grade.
At BLS student demographics (in terms of race, income status, etc.) are not at all representative of the district as a whole. For example, here is the race data for BPS in aggregate:
African-American: 38%
Asian: 9%
Hispanic: 38%
White: 13%
And here is the profile for BLS:
African-American: 12%
Asian: 28%
Hispanic: 8%
White: 50%
Looking at low-income status (free and reduced lunch), the disparities are also apparent:
BPS: 74%
BLS: 31%
In those areas that charter schools have recently taken so much heat recently, special education students and English language learners are also underrepresented:
LEP Status
BPS: 19%
BLS: 1%
Special Education:
BPS: 21%
BLS:1%
And finally, many students do not finish their high school careers at BLS after starting there. The numbers decline from about 440 9th graders to about 380 12th graders. A school filled with academically prepared students should not lose 15% of their students over 4 years. I know of a number of students who excelled in middle school and did not make it through BLS because they did not feel supported there.
Boston Latin and high performing charter schools both achieve excellent end-game results with their students. BLS is held up a paragon of excellence by the teachers' union, while charter schools are accused of "creaming" the best students. But who is really "creaming?" BLS has a academically-based admissions policy; charter schools use a lottery that allows in a random sampling of the student population, most of whom are many grade levels behind. BLS enrolls a student body that is drastically different than the district as a whole, and skewed towards White, Asian and less disadvantaged kids; charter schools enroll student bodies that often have higher levels of African-American and/or Hispanic students, and similar percentages of low-income kids relative to BPS as a whole.
Which type of school is more "high-performing?" If schools are supposed to be transformative, I would have to say high-performing charter schools.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Teach for America in Boston Charter Schools
Teach for America is placing corps member in Boston this year for the first time. Placement sites among charter schools include Boston Collegiate and Excel Academy.
The Experiment
The Amherst College alumni magazine featured a piece on Excel Academy and its founder Yutaka Tamura '93 in its spring 2009 issue. You can find the article here. The article lays out many of the challenges inherent in starting up an excellent new school. The article highlights how the school overcame many of its early struggles to become of the preeminent charter schools in Massachusetts.
Good Schools Remove Labels from Students
For the first time ever, Charter School Independent has a pair of guest bloggers. Jon Clark and Kimberly Steadman, principals of the Edward W. Brooke Charter School, have crafted a thorough and well-thought out response to the most recent charter school article in the Globe. Since their piece was too long for publication in the Globe, I'm giving them the floor here:
Jamie Vaznis’s recent article about charter schools (Charter schools lag in serving the neediest - Aug. 12) raises interesting questions about whether schools should be praised for serving a high number of ELL and Special Education students or questioned why they have created or preserved these labels for so many students instead of working to remove those labels.
Consider these two recent headlines and excerpts from other Globe articles. “Boston Students Struggle With English Only Rule” (4/7/09) states "Students not fluent in English have floundered in Boston schools since voters approved a law change six years ago requiring school districts to teach them all subjects in English rather than their native tongue, according to a report being released tomorrow." Our school works relentlessly to build student proficiency in English as quickly as possible so that we can remove them from this category; we were able to reclassify 7 of our 11 ELL students as Fully English Proficient. At other schools, many students who are identified ELL retain that status for years – perhaps because the schools are incapable of building English proficiency or perhaps because they value these labels for their financial benefit. Students who are labeled ELL receive 25% more state funding; this means that an ELL carries a $2,600 reward for each student labeled.
And an article entitled “Changes Urged In Special Ed” (7/9/09) asserted that "The Boston public schools are keeping too many students with disabilities out of regular classrooms and may be wrongfully identifying some students for special services because of shortcomings in teaching literacy or dealing with behavior problems, according to a report released last night at a School Committee meeting." We wholeheartedly agree. We recognize that because charter schools do not serve students with the most severe educational needs, the percentage of special education students at district schools should be slightly higher than in Boston Public Schools. But the vast difference between our school and district schools is attributable to the failure of many schools to intervene early, respond to children’s educational needs within the regular classroom, and remove them from their special education plans. We pride ourselves on the fact that the number of special education students at our school has decreased, not because we are losing our special education kids, but because we are allowing them to lose their special education labels.
When comparing students in Boston Public Schools and Boston area charter schools, we urge people to consider demographics that schools do not control: race and low income status. Looking at statistics that rely on subjective labeling by districts isn't a valid analysis. It is backwards to criticize urban charters for not "serving the neediest" because they resist placing children into these categories when they enroll many more African American and similar numbers of low-income students and have closed the achievement gap between them and their suburban counterparts.
- Guest bloggers Jon Clark and Kimberly Steadman, Edward W. Brooke Charter School
Jamie Vaznis’s recent article about charter schools (Charter schools lag in serving the neediest - Aug. 12) raises interesting questions about whether schools should be praised for serving a high number of ELL and Special Education students or questioned why they have created or preserved these labels for so many students instead of working to remove those labels.
Consider these two recent headlines and excerpts from other Globe articles. “Boston Students Struggle With English Only Rule” (4/7/09) states "Students not fluent in English have floundered in Boston schools since voters approved a law change six years ago requiring school districts to teach them all subjects in English rather than their native tongue, according to a report being released tomorrow." Our school works relentlessly to build student proficiency in English as quickly as possible so that we can remove them from this category; we were able to reclassify 7 of our 11 ELL students as Fully English Proficient. At other schools, many students who are identified ELL retain that status for years – perhaps because the schools are incapable of building English proficiency or perhaps because they value these labels for their financial benefit. Students who are labeled ELL receive 25% more state funding; this means that an ELL carries a $2,600 reward for each student labeled.
And an article entitled “Changes Urged In Special Ed” (7/9/09) asserted that "The Boston public schools are keeping too many students with disabilities out of regular classrooms and may be wrongfully identifying some students for special services because of shortcomings in teaching literacy or dealing with behavior problems, according to a report released last night at a School Committee meeting." We wholeheartedly agree. We recognize that because charter schools do not serve students with the most severe educational needs, the percentage of special education students at district schools should be slightly higher than in Boston Public Schools. But the vast difference between our school and district schools is attributable to the failure of many schools to intervene early, respond to children’s educational needs within the regular classroom, and remove them from their special education plans. We pride ourselves on the fact that the number of special education students at our school has decreased, not because we are losing our special education kids, but because we are allowing them to lose their special education labels.
When comparing students in Boston Public Schools and Boston area charter schools, we urge people to consider demographics that schools do not control: race and low income status. Looking at statistics that rely on subjective labeling by districts isn't a valid analysis. It is backwards to criticize urban charters for not "serving the neediest" because they resist placing children into these categories when they enroll many more African American and similar numbers of low-income students and have closed the achievement gap between them and their suburban counterparts.
- Guest bloggers Jon Clark and Kimberly Steadman, Edward W. Brooke Charter School
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Want a Label for Your Child? Go To BPS!
Today's Globe article argues that charter schools serve less students with special needs and less English language learners than their sending districts. By the numbers, this is irrefutable. However, it's important to ask the next question: why?
The general argument from the teachers unions and school districts is that charter schools intentionally recruit so as to avoid students that are "hard to educate." If that were the case, wouldn't the logical solution be to recruit the parents of the "easiest to teach" (according to popular conventions)? Shouldn't they be recruiting middle and upper middle class white kids in West Roxbury and JP like this mom's kids? However, if you look at the numbers, most charter schools in Boston (with a couple of exceptions) serve predominantly low income, minority students who come in to their schools way below grade level.
Perhaps the problem is on the other side. Perhaps BPS is over-labeling ELL and special education students. According to this piece:
Maybe Boston Public is labeling students as special education because they are frustrated because they are not able to get them to learn. On the other hand, as today's article mentions, the charter schools with which I am familar work really hard to get them OFF of unnecessary special education plans. They also label fewer students.
The same may be true for English Language Learners. Districts have a financial incentive to label students as Limited English Proficient. Why? Because then they get an extra $3,000 per LEP student in state funding. In Boston, 50% of all students whose first language isn't English are labeled as LEP. In most charter schools, that number significantly lower. Why aren't they labeling a similarly high percentage of their kids? Even in Lawrence, where 80% of students don't speak English as their first language, only 20% are labeled LEP. It seems as if BPS has caught onto the fact that if they label more of their non-English speakers as having the most severe needs, they will get more money.
I'm sure charter schools need to do more to recruit special education and ELL students; the Patrick proposal that would get the district mailing lists into their hands will help with targeting these efforts. However, someone needs to take a closer look at the district to see if they are over-labeling their students to make them seem needier than they actually are...
The general argument from the teachers unions and school districts is that charter schools intentionally recruit so as to avoid students that are "hard to educate." If that were the case, wouldn't the logical solution be to recruit the parents of the "easiest to teach" (according to popular conventions)? Shouldn't they be recruiting middle and upper middle class white kids in West Roxbury and JP like this mom's kids? However, if you look at the numbers, most charter schools in Boston (with a couple of exceptions) serve predominantly low income, minority students who come in to their schools way below grade level.
Perhaps the problem is on the other side. Perhaps BPS is over-labeling ELL and special education students. According to this piece:
"Some 20 percent of Boston’s 56,000 students received special education services last year, about 3 percentage points higher than the state average and notably higher than other cities nationwide."
Maybe Boston Public is labeling students as special education because they are frustrated because they are not able to get them to learn. On the other hand, as today's article mentions, the charter schools with which I am familar work really hard to get them OFF of unnecessary special education plans. They also label fewer students.
The same may be true for English Language Learners. Districts have a financial incentive to label students as Limited English Proficient. Why? Because then they get an extra $3,000 per LEP student in state funding. In Boston, 50% of all students whose first language isn't English are labeled as LEP. In most charter schools, that number significantly lower. Why aren't they labeling a similarly high percentage of their kids? Even in Lawrence, where 80% of students don't speak English as their first language, only 20% are labeled LEP. It seems as if BPS has caught onto the fact that if they label more of their non-English speakers as having the most severe needs, they will get more money.
I'm sure charter schools need to do more to recruit special education and ELL students; the Patrick proposal that would get the district mailing lists into their hands will help with targeting these efforts. However, someone needs to take a closer look at the district to see if they are over-labeling their students to make them seem needier than they actually are...
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