"Magically" successful public charter schools?

[Clevelander17]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

Not that they "become worse" but that those that have a chance leave and the true scores of that school are shown.

"True" scores? A school's scores are almost entirely based on the demographic profile of the student's enrolled. Take a "successful" school in any wealthy suburb and enroll hundreds of poor minorities (with disabilities sprinkled in for good measure) and I'll bet my paycheck that that school's "true" score drops significantly.

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

Those student left are the ones that need extra help and extra money.
Many of those students need social workers to be at those schools for lots of one on one.
Then maybe TPTB can truly address the problem in public school.

You'll have students that spent more time in AEP then in their home school.
What do you do with a student that within a week of returning tries to a) burn down the school or b) phones in bomb threats or c) physically threatens teachers, staff and other students ?
What do you do with the student that deals out of his locker or backpack ?

Why you send them off to AEP for 30 days and then they are back doing the same ole same ole.
And they all know that by 15 turning 16, they have to be pushed to HS regardless of their grades.

What we are doing now is dragging down everyone else at the expense of these types of students.

These types of students need another type of alternative pathway. However that would mean that the powers that be would have to admit that there is a small but growing problem on the student/family end of things that must be addressed in order to improve the regular public school environment.

[Clevelander17]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

I disagree. Are you in the classrooms with these "difficult students" ?

The DOE thinks these students will graduate "college and career ready".
And that couldn't be further than the truth.
Teach them to read, do basic math and then some type of blue collar vocational skill and that's IF you can keep them in school and actually interested and participating.

I work with a difficult population in a Title I school, so yes, I see a few of them. All of my students are regular education (supposedly), but they all have a track record of doing poorly on our state's yearly achievement assessment. For some of them, this is simply because they're honestly not all that bright and struggle to retain material, but they would not qualify for special education. For many others of them, they could achieve a bit but they lack motivation. I have no problem with kids in either of these groups because they're workable. However a small percentage of my kids are huge behavior problems and create terrible classroom environments for not only myself but other teachers in our building. These kids would have been booted out of most charter schools by October, but as a public school we have no place to put all of them. So guess what? They get to stick around, they will post terrible test scores for themselves, and ensure that many of their peers learn less than they might elsewhere. As I said above, we need an alternate education system for these types of kids. If charter schools are supposedly as great as everyone says they are, they should be able to help these kids, right?

Also, I didn't address your other points, but we definitely agree that the DOE is out of touch with the reality that some kids will not achieve much no matter where you put them or who teaches them. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I just don't think they should be allowed to be a drag on public schools either.

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

Not that they "become worse" but that those that have a chance leave and the true scores of that school are shown.

Those student left are the ones that need extra help and extra money.
Many of those students need social workers to be at those schools for lots of one on one.
Then maybe TPTB can truly address the problem in public school.

You'll have students that spent more time in AEP then in their home school.
What do you do with a student that within a week of returning tries to a) burn down the school or b) phones in bomb threats or c) physically threatens teachers, staff and other students ?
What do you do with the student that deals out of his locker or backpack ?

Why you send them off to AEP for 30 days and then they are back doing the same ole same ole.
And they all know that by 15 turning 16, they have to be pushed to HS regardless of their grades.

What we are doing now is dragging down everyone else at the expense of these types of students.

But it's not the true score of the school if the better kids left is it? And extra money won't help unless it's used to make class sizes very small or put bouncers in the classroom and that will never happen. You just can't teach 30 kids in a classroom when 15 of them are disruptive.