<p>Agree with teriwitt. People use superficial stories like this one as evidence that public schools are inadequate, when it’s apples and oranges.</p>
<p>Charter schools are public schools. The public elementary schools many of these boys attended did fail them. Should magnet programs, Governor’s schools, Music and Art focused schools and the Stuyvesant High school equivalents be closed because they’re not equal to the neighborhood public high school? </p>
<p>Give people choice and they will find the right fit for their children, be it public, private, parochial, homeschooling or charter. Give people vouchers and the choices will flourish. The funding should go with the kid, especially in a city system where so many options could be available. Let people choose from Montessori to military. Why should public schools be limited to one size fits all? </p>
<p>Education should be about the kids, not about perpetuating the system.</p>
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<p>With all due respect, and although some might have a different definition, the use of the term “cherry-picking” in discussions about charter schools is pretty clear. In almost all cases, critics and skeptics suggest that the schools cherry pick the brightest students from local schools. The term also has a few variances such as “creaming” or “skimming.” Be it based on fruit or milk, the idea remains the same: to spread an allegation that students were selected arbitrarily as opposed to have participated successfully in a lottery, or simply signed-up through an open-enrollment.</p>
<p>You missed my point xiggi. These students are not picked… they go there after entering a lottery and winning a spot. But the fact that the school has to offer a lottery (because there are more students who wish to attend than there is space for), it means the student body population is not like that of other public high schools who must accept all students. So the fact that these kids and/or their families are motivated enough to seek out another option, puts them in a category unlike other publics. </p>
<p>An elementary district in our area opened a ‘choice’ school (K-5) several years ago that was based on best practices and it utilized things that the other schools were not using. Over time, as it became apparent that the test scores were better than the other K-5 schools, it was suggested that it wasn’t all necessarily due to all the practices, but that the parents who chose to enroll their kids (or enter them in the lottery, because it, too, had less room than students it could accept) did so because they were more involved in their kids education, which alone can be a factor in student success. Over time, the other schools did adapt most of these best practices, and while their test scores may have increased, it wasn’t to the level of the ‘choice’ school because these parents were motivated and encouraged in ways that parents of students at the other schools weren’t.</p>
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<p>Oh, have no fear! Superficial stories are not what people use as evidence that public schools are inadequate. There is plenty of “local” hard data regarding dropouts and performances. And plenty of confirmation through the international comparative studies. And plenty of people who vote with their feet by moving out of blighted urban areas.</p>
<p>Not much has changed since we were labeled in 1983 a “Nation at Risk” as efforts to obfuscate the dire situation of our middle and high schools have been quite successful. The “actors” who are interested in maintaining the chokehold on our education are, however, running out of ways to hide the sad truth and our of ways to keep people unaware of the shenanigans of the past 50-60 years. </p>
<p>Ultimately, with the reduction and removal of the parties that are desperately clinging to a self-serving monopoly, solutions will emerge. </p>
<p>and that is what people do … fear!</p>
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<p>I am fully aware of the issues of motivation by parents you brought up. Similar issues are almost always raised in the analyses of voucher programs. However, I still think that the cherry-picking charge is mostly used to “expose” the fact that the students might be better qualified and thus selected for that reason. </p>
<p>May I invite you to check the following article, and perhaps click through to the SRI report? </p>
<p>[Report</a> looks at “cherry-picking,” attrition and test scores at KIPP schools | The Education Report](<a href=“http://www.ibabuzz.com/education/2008/09/16/report-looks-at-cherry-picking-attrition-and-test-scores-at-kipp-schools/]Report”>http://www.ibabuzz.com/education/2008/09/16/report-looks-at-cherry-picking-attrition-and-test-scores-at-kipp-schools/)</p>
<p>I see no problem with motivated parents finding a peer group for their children. Should all private schools be closed because motivated parents seek out something better for their off-spring? What would the 40% of Chicago teachers who send their kids to privates do? Is it fair that those insiders remove their children from the same system they would force the less fortunate or less knowledgeable into?</p>
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<p>I taught elementary grades in two public school districts, both in extremely poor communities. One district was rural (2/3 AA and Latino), the other an urban public charter @ 99.5% African American.</p>
<p>While I agree that at the elementary level, choosing to enter the lottery system bespeaks only the parent’s longing for better schooling, it’s not that hard to do. I wouldn’t call it “cherry-picking.” Where I taught, it was this hard: pick up the phone one time, complete and mail one postcard on deadline. That’s not a high bar of “motivated family.”</p>
<p>As well, by the time students reach high school, the students themselves make most of their own choices throughout each working day, evening and weekend. So I think it’s a mistake to conflate elementary and high school students in this regard. </p>
<p>Certainly it’s not “cherry-picking” when signing up for the lottery is all it takes to be considered for admission. </p>
<p>When I taught elementary, one particular mother of a black male student told me, shaking, that all she really wanted was her son to live to adulthood and she was afraid the odds were stacked against him , at age 7.</p>
<p>My point is that we should be all over this Chicago school to find out what is working there. One of the best things charter schools can do is be places for pilot studies, testing new approaches, and applying them to a broader group of public schools. I’m tremendously curious to know what’s working there, aside from the red ties.</p>
<p>WHEN good results come out of a charter school, I’m for studying it upside and downside to glean successful methods, programs and attitudes that might apply elsewhere throughout a city or nation’s public schools. Not everything can apply elsewhere, but some will. </p>
<p>As for how many of these young men will graduate from the four-year colleges that just accepted them, I’m betting on them a lot more than some of the totally spoiled and drunk freshmen who don’t make it to sophomore year, not because of academics but because of ridiculous social choices in lifestyle in their dorms. </p>
<p>As a teacher I saw this in students: character counts, and motivation is everything. I therefore put a lot of trust in a student who moves from around a Grade 5 reading level to a Grade 9 level DURING his 9th grade year, once he’s in an environment where he can improve. His learning curve has spiked so much that I would anticipate continued upward trends once in college, even if he starts out on the lower deck in standardized test scores. Someone who blasted up many grade levels in reading as a 14-year-old is highest on my list of "most likely to [continue to] succeed in college.</p>
<p>Yankee Belle, twice you’ve talked about closing schools. Who said anything about closing schools?</p>
<p>Many of the hostile postings about this school and its students show some posters find its existence and that of charters, in general, to be unfair to non-attending students. The only way to remedy the unfairness would be to force all students into some cookie cutter mold school. Those that don’t fit would have to closed.</p>
<p>Charters: I imagine that the rules vary by state. In my state, the charters do not need to pay for ESL, transportation, or special ed. Yet they receive the same per-pupil-grant as the other publics, which do need to provide those services. You can call it cherry picking or whatever you choose; the burdens on these schools are not equivalent.</p>
<p>You’re right the burdens are different, as are the needs of the kids who attend. My daughter attended a k-8 charter through 6th grade in a fairly affluent suburb in Colorado. Our school was the poorest in the district with a 40% poverty rate, yet we had a large number of families making well over $100,000. The one thing these parents wanted was the best education for their children. </p>
<p>Just for reference: Colorado is an open enrollment state, meaning any student can go to any public school in the state if there is room and the parents arrange transportation.</p>
<p>In that district we were only funded at 85% of the per student level. From that we had to pay a $150.00 per student special ed fee for all 500 students. The only services were once a week speech for a handful of students for that $75,000 a year.</p>
<p>We had to pay rent and all building maintenance, unlike the other schools, from that same per pupil funding budget. We didn’t receive ESL services although we had several non English speaking students. No transportation costs were paid, because no transportation was provided. Parents had to arrange that for their children. The furthest came from 40 miles away, the average was 5-6 miles. </p>
<p>With this budget disparity, we had the 2nd highest ITBS scores in the district. The one ahead of us was also a charter. The school was not a lottery school, but first come first served. The wait list was at least 75 kids each year, and people put their kids on the list 3 and 4 years before kindergarten. </p>
<p>Did some kids leave? Sure. Some went back to the neighborhood school, for convenience or the friends or the lack of uniforms. A few were asked to leave for major discipline issues. Most stayed. They all had an opportunity to choose.</p>
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<p>This is important for two reasons. Getting the kids to feel that school is special and more formal than street life is one. Weeding out families who won’t cooperate with rules is another. If mom whines and threatens lawsuits and won’t make the kid follow dress code, what are the chances that the student will be encouraged to do his homework?</p>
<p>[Say</a> Yes to Education](<a href=“http://www.sayyestoeducation.org/syte/index.php]Say”>http://www.sayyestoeducation.org/syte/index.php)</p>
<p>By the way - Urban Prep is NOT the only inner city with a 100% college entrance record. Cristo Rey hit that benchmark as well in Missouri.</p>
<p>[Welcome[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Last year, 100% of our graduates were accepted to four-year colleges. We credit our success to our accomplished faculty and highly motivated students. The work program has helped our students realize that their dreams can become a reality.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/06/10/2010-06-10_shining_stars.html]Shining”>http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/06/10/2010-06-10_shining_stars.html]Shining</a> stars: East Harlem’s Cristo Rey High School is an educational beacon](<a href=“http://cristoreyboston.org/admission]Welcome[/url”>http://cristoreyboston.org/admission)</p>
<p>Cristo Rey’s 100% college acceptance rate is all the more proof that kids from low-income households will flourish if guided to meet high standards by first-rate teachers who go the extra mile.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cristoreykc.org/Support/documents/collegeneedlist-updated8.2.10.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cristoreykc.org/Support/documents/collegeneedlist-updated8.2.10.pdf</a></p>
<p>100% of Cristo Rey Kansas City seniors are going to college this fall!</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.detroitcristorey.org/admissions[/url]”>http://www.detroitcristorey.org/admissions</a></p>
<p>100% of Cristo Rey students are accepted to college each year. In addition, most of the graduating seniors in Cristo Rey schools earn college scholarships to the colleges of their choice.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.sacbee.com/2010/06/03/2794799/all-53-graduates-at-cristo-rey.html[/url]”>http://www.sacbee.com/2010/06/03/2794799/all-53-graduates-at-cristo-rey.html</a></p>
<p>But Cristo Rey, which graduated its first class Wednesday night, has something schools with million-dollar gyms and theaters would envy: Each of its 53 seniors is graduating and has been accepted into college.</p>
<p>Yesterday I was talking to a student who just entered the support program I am a counselor for in a college which tends to matriculate under-educated, low income students from Newark and nearby cities. I asked her where she’d gone to HS, and she named a charter from Newark. Unprompted, she went into a diatribe about what she hadnt liked about the school, centering on the fact that they “lie about what they do”. She said they claim everyone goes to college, but that only about a quarter of the students she started with ended up graduating. The rest either dropped out, or left to other schools, where of course their less than stellar accomplishments testified negatively against the public school that HAD to take them in, not the charter that kicked them out. She felt belittled by her teachers; that everything had been about perception, not about what really happened at the school.</p>
<p>The concept of charter schools would be harmless overall and fine for those lucky and ready to use their resources–but they are a disaster when held up–as they are–as a rebuke to the real, uncherrypicking, publics who have to take everyone, including the special ed, ESL, disfunctional family-ed students who the charters can’t and won’t handle, and which don’t get those wads of corporate money which provide the bridges past poverty that places like the Harlem Childrens Zone command (a school, which, by the way “fired” an entire grade’s worth of students who didn’t properly perform for them.)</p>
<p>With all of the lies told by charter schools, you’d expect their operators to be begging for students on each corner. Don’t people talk? </p>
<p>Yet, the biggest displeasure for both families eager to attend and critics eager to spread the vitriol must be that the … lottery lines are long and disappointing.</p>
<p>The criticisms of these PR-hype school stories are based on their use misleading statistic that ‘100% of our students are accepted to college (or 4 year college)’. This implies that all the students have been brought up to college-entry competence in general academic skills, especially reading, writing, and math, but generally they have not.</p>
<p>If a student enters such a school with a 5th grade reading level (let’s say), and by the end of 9th grade is reading and calculating at grade level, due to Herculean effort between school and student, that is itself a remarkable achievement. Who here is NOT impressed by a student who can do 4 years of work in 1 year, at age 14? </p>
<p>After that, let’s figure the student has exactly TWO YEARS (Grades 10 and 11) plus two months in the Fall of 12th grade to pack in: all missed AND current year core knowledge in all subject areas, take SAT’s, and write college applications. </p>
<p>So the criticism is this: those students will begin college alongside other more privileged students who had 12 school-years, not 4 school-years, with appropriate teaching to develop the same information and skillsets. Priveleged students schooled almost 3x as long in acceptable schools might be brought down by such classmates? If so, not for long.</p>