A couple of points:
1) First off, Kane did not include all of these schools in his matched study, only the ones that are oversubscribed. Second, there is a huge discrepency between the high perfoming schools and the low performing schools, as Pallas acknowledges. I think it's better to flesh out the picture, as I've done below. My guess is that Klein was using data from the study without reflecting on the fact that all charter schools in Boston were not included.
2) Pallas argues that what makes a high quality school is the percentage of kids who score advanced. As we can see in the chart above, only one charter school (Excel) in Boston matched Brookline's 44% in math last year. In ELA, a number of schools equalled or surpassed Brookline's 24%. As a teacher, I can see the validity in that point. I always want all of my students achieving at the highest level. But what about the argument that the goal of a good school is to get all of their students to be proficient or better? In that case, Brookline is matched by a number of charter schools. This is how the Boston Globe compares schools each year. I think both methods are important.
3) Note that 44% advanced on 8th grade math is 10th highest in the state. The highest percentage was 55% (Wayland). Brookline's ranking on ELA was not quite as high.
I think charter schools need to worry about performance at a number of levels:
1) Are we scoring higher than Boston? - lowest bar
2) Are we scoring higher than Massachusetts?
3) Are we one of the top schools statewide in A +P?
4) Are we pushing as many kids into Advanced as possible without slipping in #3?
Update: Thanks to Aaron Pallas for catching an error with Roxbury Prep's data on the ELA chart. The new chart should be correct.
1) If you don't account for student on the way in (e.g. demographics), comparing these achievement levels tells you nothing about how well the school is doing.
ReplyDeleteThink about it this way: Does Boston Latin have high scores? Of course it does! And that's not necessarily a reflection of the teaching going on there.
2) If you only look at at achievement levels and don't look closer you're missing something. It's not just a question of how many make advanced or proficient, though those *are* valid ways to look at schools. You also need to look at how well they do *within* those bands.
I think all nine of the charters are included in the study by Kane and his colleagues, but there are two different kinds of analyses: those involving lottery applicants, for the oversubscribed schools, and those involving matching, for both oversubscribed schools and those that were not oversubscribed.
ReplyDeleteYour data for Roxbury Prep may not be accurate. The data on the state website at http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/mcas/performance_level.aspx?linkid=32&orgcode=04840000&orgtypecode=5&
indicate that 12% of the eighth-graders were classified as advanced on the ELA assessment in 2008, and 78% were proficient. The chart shows about 30% of the students at the advanced level.
ceolaf:
ReplyDeleteIt's obvious that Brookline and the charter schools in Boston work with different popuations. Only 10% of Brookline students are low income. It seems obvious to me that most Boston charter schools are adding more value than their suburban counterparts, especially in comparison with Boston Public Schools. So as PR/policy position, it's easy to say "Look at how great we're doing. We're almost getting scores like Brookline and our kids are far behind when they come to us." But that's not enough to really close the achievement gap, is it?
As a teacher, I acknowledge that my kids came to my school way behind, but I try not to let that lower my expectations for them. Despite where they come in, I want them to get higher scores than Brookline and Wellesley and Wayland on the MCAS. I don't want to say to my students, implicitly or explicitly, "Well, you did as well as I could expect based on your demographics." And this isn't a pipe dream, because they do pretty darn well as a result.
Aaron:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the catch on Roxbury Prep. Those were the math numbers repeated from the previous table.
You're right about the study. Kane also included students at a few Cambridge charters that take Boston students. The numbers that you and I are looking at don't reflect either part of the study perfectly.
As you can see, Uphams Corner does very poorly. They recently lost their charter and will not be around next year.
Uphams Corner was indeed the worst-performing of the Boston charters, with only 13% of eighth-graders proficient in math in 2008. Interestingly, it was also the only one of them not currently relying on a lottery for admission.
ReplyDeleteState law requires lotteries for charter schools in Massachusetts. In my understanding, though I may be wrong, the only reason that Uphams Corner did not rely on a lottery in recent years is that they were not attracting enough interest to fill their 5th grade class. Now, they don't have a lottery since they won't be open next year.
ReplyDelete