Roslindale Mom Investigates School Options

A newish blog called Braving the BPS Lottery, written by a Roslindale mom, is tackling the drama of figuring out how to pick a public school in Boston for her little one. Geeky Mom, as she refers to herself, is exploring different options, including, it seems, charter schools. The writing is solid, and I'm guessing it will be interesting to follow the process from the perspective of a parent. She also does a nice job of keeping a calendar of upcoming events for those parents starting to investigate and enroll kids in schools. You can find the blog here.

RadioBoston Talks Charters

RadioBoston, the weekly WBUR show, featured the charter school debate as their main piece yesterday (with a nice piece on Camp Harbor View, where a number of my studens went this summer, to wrap up the hour). Not much new for those in the know, but a good overview of the arguments on both sides for newbies. A couple of quick thoughts:

No appearance by BTU president Richard Stutman. He declined to appear, which is odd since he normally takes any chance to attack charter schools. I'm curious if anyone knows why he would have sat this one out.

While there was lots of support from Paul Grogan of the Boston Foundation, and Mitchell Chester from the DESE, there was very thin coverage of actual charter schools. There was a small bit on Edward W. Brooke Charter School in Roslindale, including a short interview with guestblogger Kimberly Steadman, and a teacher. However, there was no appearance by Jim Peyser, who is leading the ballot initiative to lift the cap, Marc Kenan, from the Charter School Association, or any other actual charter schools.

Candidate Analysis

The September 22nd primary is coming up fast, so it seems like a good time to see where the candidates for Mayor and City Councillor sit in regards to charter schools.

Mayoral Race

The incumbent, Mayor Tom Menino, is proposing an expansion of charter schools that would be run by the Boston Schools Committee. His plan allows the BSC to take over the lowest performing schools in the district and convert them to charter schools with new leadership and no unionized teachers.

Sam Yoon supports lifting the cap under a proposal that he refers to as a "smart cap." This model, which he pushed before Gov. Deval Patrick picked up the idea, would only allow high achieving schools to replicate.

Michael Flaherty supports lifting the charter school cap, among many other school reform ideas. Flaherty references the Harvard charter/pilot school study in this campaign literature.

Kevin McCrea does not support lifting the cap on charter schools.

City Councillor At Large

There are a lot of candidates, so I'll group them by their positions, or lack thereof:

Supports Expansion
John Connolly (Incumbent)
Robert Fortes
Sean Ryan - also supports vouchers

Supports
Ego Ezedi
Hiep Nguyen

No Comment
Felix G. Arroyo
Doug Bennett
Tomas Gonzalez
Tito Jackson
Andrew Kenneally
Stephen Murphy
Ayanna Pressley
Jean-Claude Sanon
Bill Trabucco
Scotland Willis

Kennedy to be Honored (Perhaps)

Health Careers Academy, a Boston Horace Mann charter school, will be renamed after Senator Kennedy, pending approval by the state Board of Ed.

Coming Soon...

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...

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.

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.