"Magically" successful public charter schools? (IEP, universities, teachers)
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I'm not a proponent of charter schools, but I just saw a post on tumblr about Urban Prep Academies, two high schools located in the southside of Chicago. Its student bodies are comprised entirely of young black men, and every year the schools have a 100 percent graduation rate and all of their students are accepted to 4-year colleges/universities. I absolutely do not agree with public money going into private hands, but clearly there is something about the model of Urban Prep (and others) that is working. What do you think it is? (or do you think the success of these schools is overhyped and/or being misconstrued? if so, how/why?)
Success Academy in Harlem (NYC)
They boast an 85% pass rate for NYS Math tests.
Why ? Because they are not mandated to keep all students. They can expel.
They can operate like private schools and only keep those students that actually want to learn.
IMHO the public school system needs permanent alternative education for those students that are disrupting the learning of all the others. And I don't mean the occasional troublemaker. There are students with chronic problems that need alternative K-12 education.
I'm not a proponent of charter schools, but I just saw a post on tumblr about Urban Prep Academies, two high schools located in the southside of Chicago. Its student bodies are comprised entirely of young black men, and every year the schools have a 100 percent graduation rate and all of their students are accepted to 4-year colleges/universities. I absolutely do not agree with public money going into private hands, but clearly there is something about the model of Urban Prep (and others) that is working. What do you think it is? (or do you think the success of these schools is overhyped and/or being misconstrued? if so, how/why?)
Probably the single best thing they do for these young men is provide a peer group of other young black males who value education and want to academically succeed. The public schools aren't allowed to segregate by behavior or ability, to the detriment of those who want to do well. If we ever want to seriously reform public education that is the route we would take instead of sacrificing everyone else for small gains to the the bottom.
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IMHO the public school system needs permanent alternative education for those students that are disrupting the learning of all the others. And I don't mean the occasional troublemaker. There are students with chronic problems that need alternative K-12 education.
Most teachers in public schools would agree with you 100%. Those whose view of education is only from a theoretical standpoint, or whose focus is strictly on social justice, are the ones who disagree.
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Yeah, they fiddle with the enrollment numbers to hide dropouts. Urban Prep selects students from over 31 zip codes in Chicago which is a pretty wide swath to select from. Looking at average ACT scores for Urban Prep shows that they are still below average for Illinois, but if all the kids are getting into college then it's all good. Since Charter school can actively get rid of the kids that don't want to learn they can better focus their teaching on the "good" kids. They don't have the racism problem that public school teachers appear to have.
Yeah, they fiddle with the enrollment numbers to hide dropouts. Urban Prep selects students from over 31 zip codes in Chicago which is a pretty wide swath to select from. Looking at average ACT scores for Urban Prep shows that they are still below average for Illinois, but if all the kids are getting into college then it's all good. Since Charter school can actively get rid of the kids that don't want to learn they can better focus their teaching on the "good" kids. They don't have the racism problem that public school teachers appear to have.
It's difficult to be accused of racism when 100% of your enrollment is black and therefore 100% of those that you expel (whether that's 2 students or 200 students) also must be black.
As others here have correctly pointed out, 99.9% of these charter school "miracles" have to do with the way that their student enrollments are manipulated.
I'm not a proponent of charter schools, but I just saw a post on tumblr about Urban Prep Academies, two high schools located in the southside of Chicago. Its student bodies are comprised entirely of young black men, and every year the schools have a 100 percent graduation rate and all of their students are accepted to 4-year colleges/universities. I absolutely do not agree with public money going into private hands, but clearly there is something about the model of Urban Prep (and others) that is working. What do you think it is? (or do you think the success of these schools is overhyped and/or being misconstrued? if so, how/why?)
There are some very good charter schools out there but there are some bad ones too. We should learn from the good ones.
The charter school I taught at had an exceptional K-8 program. Unfortunately, they did not retain enough of those students for high school so the high school did not compare. It was rather disappointing as a parent. I was so happy with the K-8 program but just could not bring myself to send my kids to the high school. It was a totally different program because they had totally different kids. Every year there were a significant number of new students and every year there was a high withdrawal rate. The student body was not stable. As a result the program wasn't stable.
It's difficult to be accused of racism when 100% of your enrollment is black and therefore 100% of those that you expel (whether that's 2 students or 200 students) also must be black.
As others here have correctly pointed out, 99.9% of these charter school "miracles" have to do with the way that their student enrollments are manipulated.
No different than private schools.
The difference is that they can say "No" to an application.
The public schools can't do that..everyone is accepted.
My nephew attends a charter school which is aggressively trying to get him out. He has Tourette's and some behavior issues other than the ticks.
The charter has met its match in that my brother has significant financial means and this particular charter school has violated the IEP and other sped laws. My brother has hired an attorney and experts.
I hope he sues the hell out of them. I'm so sick of charter schools that boast that they have better teachers, programs...whatever. If you can exclude the most troublesome students, of course you are going to get better results.
I was a huge proponent of charter schools when I first learned about them. But anyone who bothered to look at the research, sees the false promise.
My nephew attends a charter school which is aggressively trying to get him out. He has Tourette's and some behavior issues other than the ticks.
The charter has met its match in that my brother has significant financial means and this particular charter school has violated the IEP and other sped laws. My brother has hired an attorney and experts.
I hope he sues the hell out of them. I'm so sick of charter schools that boast that they have better teachers, programs...whatever. If you can exclude the most troublesome students, of course you are going to get better results.
I was a huge proponent of charter schools when I first learned about them. But anyone who bothered to look at the research, sees the false promise.
Is this a charter school in Las Vegas?
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