I think that these paragraphs really deserve some more discussion:
Geoffrey Canada is justly celebrated for the creation of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which not only runs two charter schools but surrounds children and their families with a broad array of social and medical services. Canada has a board of wealthy philanthropists and a very successful fund-raising apparatus. With assets of more than $200 million, his organization has no shortage of funds. Canada himself is currently paid $400,000 annually. For Guggenheim to praise Canada while also claiming that public schools don’t need any more money is bizarre. Canada’s charter schools get better results than nearby public schools serving impoverished students. If all inner-city schools had the same resources as his, they might get the same good results.
But contrary to the myth that Guggenheim propounds about “amazing results,” even Geoffrey Canada’s schools have many students who are not proficient. On the 2010 state tests, 60 percent of the fourth-grade students in one of his charter schools were not proficient in reading, nor were 50 percent in the other. It should be noted—and Guggenheim didn’t note it—that Canada kicked out his entire first class of middle school students when they didn’t get good enough test scores to satisfy his board of trustees
I note that the Harlem's Children's Zone seems to get only positive press in the blogosphere. Yet two facts here really seem to stand out. One, making the compensation structure that of a corporation is going to mean that we get advertising and not honest accounting of performance. A very high salary ($400,000 per year) and a corporation that lives or dies on profit does not incent actors to give a balanced view of the shortcomings of the corporation.
The second, and more damning, issue is that kicking out an entire class of students when their tests scores are low is guaranteed to ensure that Charter schools look better -- after all, the weak students have been ruthlessly removed. Anybody can look competent under this system.
This cuts to the heart of my discomfort with the charter school system. One of the most important issues facing American education is the drop-out of vulnerable students. Charter schools that are willing to remove poorly preforming students for reasons of "optics" cannot, in aggregate, improve this situation.
[Mark has already extensively documented other concerns with interpreting charter school performance]
In Canada's defense, the mass dismissal was done in the open as a drastic and highly unusual move. I am far more concerned by the covert and ongoing attrition policies of schools like the Bay Area KIPPs.
ReplyDelete"In Canada's defense, the mass dismissal was done in the open as a drastic and highly unusual move."
ReplyDeleteTrue, but could any public school make that decision? What would have happened if the public schools had not been avaialble as a back-stop?
The Gulen Charter schools are guilty of Visa Fraud, their schools Magnolia Science Academy, Horizon Science Academy, Harmony Science Academy and Sonoran Science Academy are bringing foreign teachers without credentials to the USA under h1-b fraud. American Tax payers are footing this bill, you will note that they have more h1-b visas for teachers than the largest school district in the USA (LAUSD)
ReplyDeleteAt a time when great American Teachers are getting pink slipped the Islamic Gulen Movement is dismantling the American Public School System one state at a time. The Gulen Charter Schools have robbed American Taxpayers of over $1 billion in Educational funds over the span of the last 10 years. Throught the network of Gulen Foundations, and bribes via their interfaith dialogue, they have managed to snow job members of congress, local politics, local religious leaders, and local academia. Free dinners and free trips to Turkey to side step their true agenda which is to dominate and control American Education, politics, interfaith dialog, police, media and military. As Fethullah Gulen has done world wide and in his native Turkey which got him exiled for attempting to overthrow a secular government.
http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php?q=science%20teacher
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2010/07/gulen-schools-and-their-booming-h1b.html