Do the Wealthy Need Segregated Charter Schools?

[yurbud]

Supporting links at original.

Heilig wrote a post recently about Great Hearts, the charter chain that has been trying to locate in an affluent neighborhood in Nashville, thus far without success. As readers of this blog may recall, the Metro Nashville school board has turned Great Hearts down four times. For exercising discretion, the district has been punished by TFA Commissioner Kevin Huffman, who has withheld $3.4 million in state aid from the district. Huffman, of course, believes he must be obeyed because he is the all-powerful commissioner and how dare they reject his order.

Now Great Hearts want to bring multiple charters to San Antonio, and you can guess where they want to locate. As Heilig says in his title, "Hey! The Wealthy Need Segregated Charters Too!?"

http://wp.me/p2odLa-2G7

[RandySF]

1. The wealthy don't send their kids to charter schools.

They send their kids to the best private schools. And here is SF where we have school choice, the well-connected upper middle class always manage to find spots in the best public schools.

[yurbud]

4. if they could set up a charter that is as exclusive as the private school...

the lower end of the wealthy wouldn't mind saving the cost of tuition.

[HiPointDem]

13. they can and do.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=48043

[HiPointDem]

12. They do these days. It's cheaper to set up a school for their little darlings and fund it off the

private dime. Don't think it's happening?

Taxpayers Get Billed for Kids of Millionaires at Charter School

In Silicon Valley, Bullis elementary school accepts one in six kindergarten applicants, offers Chinese and asks families to donate $5,000 per child each year. Parents include Ken Moore, son of Intel Corp.’s co-founder, and Steven Kirsch, inventor of the optical mouse.

Bullis isn’t a high-end private school. It’s a taxpayer- funded, privately run public school, part of the charter-school movement that educates 1.8 million U.S. children. While charters are heralded for offering underprivileged kids an alternative to failing U.S. districts, Bullis gives an admissions edge to residents of parts of Los Altos Hills, where the median home is worth $1 million and household income is $219,000, four times the state average.

“Bullis is a boutique charter school,” said Nancy Gill, a Los Altos education consultant who helps parents choose schools. “It could bring a whole new level of inequality to public education.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-15/taxpayers-billed-for-millionaires-kids-at-charter-school.html

Did you know lots of charter schools have multi-page applications, require essays, artwork, etc?
I.e. students who don't "pass" the application process get rejected.

Did you know there are charter schools that don't even let you see their application unless you attend a one-time event which most parents will conveniently never even hear about or learn the address of?

Questionable application processes at Green Woods, other charter schools

For years, parents have had to jump through astonishing hoops to apply to the popular Green Woods Charter School in Northwest Philadelphia.

Interested families couldn't find Green Woods’ application online. They couldn't request a copy in the mail. In fact, they couldn't even pick up a copy at the school.

Instead, Green Woods made its application available only one day each year. Even then, the application was only given to families who attended the school’s open house – which most recently has been held at a private golf club in the Philadelphia suburbs...

http://thenotebook.org/blog/125141/district-details-questionable-application-processes-green-woods-other-charters

It's the new way for the upper-middle & upper class to have private schools on the public dime -- and make a profit on them too!!!

And since state and local taxes are more regressive than federal taxes, it's a fabulous way for the rich to get the less rich to pay for rich people's class-&-race segregated private schools!!!!

[SheilaT]

2. Depending on the quality of the local public schools, well-off parents

often exercise the private school option.

[firenewt]

3. I'm in favor of anything that concentrates the wealthy in groups - makes it easier to find them come

the revolution...........

[Squinch]

5. Also, we don't want our children exposed to those values.

[Squinch]

6. Yeah. Give them charter schools. Let them see what they're inflicting on the rest of us.

Statistics about charter schools:

17% perform better than public schools

37% perform worse

the rest perform the same.

This from schools that self select more motivated students with more involved parents, and who turn away anyone who has a learning issue or disability.

They should be blowing the doors off the public schools. And they can't even keep up. They must truly suck.

Yeah, give it to the rich neighborhoods.

[yurbud]

7. I wish someone would say those numbers to Obama's face and ask him to justify

letting private companies collect PROFITS for that performance.

[yurbud]

8. the for-profit charters probably don't even worry about performance

they know that their contracts depend on political connections and campaign donations, not test scores.

[Igel]

9. "That self-select more motivated students with more involved parents ..."

Hardly.

I know two kinds of charter schools. (Neither self-select any students. 'Self-select' means that the schools would be selecting themselves, not something/body else for themselves.)

The first kicks out students who don't play by the rules. If you're not motivated, if you're not willing to be disciplined, then you're gone. These typically out perform peer schools, even if they perform lower than the district as a whole. Most don't handle IEPs or extensive 504s, mostly because (a) they're not equipped for it and (b) they don't get special federal funds to help subsidize SpEd and some of the more difficult-to-implement accommodations.

The second kind is for warehousing students. That's where parents who don't want to hear about complaints from teachers put their kids. It's where the especially unmotivated, failing kids are put so they can get easy good grades and maybe transfer back into a public school. These schools suck. One I know of had a zero-percent pass rate on the standardized test. The teachers--mostly green, whatever their ethnicity--knew what was up. The parents were sure it was best for their little darlings.

Of course, the first kind of school siphons off the above average students, or students who could achieve above average, from public schools. The second kind bleeds the bottom 20% of the public schools' achievement curve. In my experience, the percentages are about right--I've lost a few kids I really wanted in my classroom, but I've lost more kids that I didn't mind gone.

There are far more of the second kind than of the first kind.

Overall, charter schools slightly raise the public schools' performance.

Then there are all the other reasons for charter schools. I lost one kid because a charter school taught Japanese. That's the only reason. Another kid's parents said he felt uncomfortable around certain skin tones and would do better elsewhere. A third kid's parents didn't like the constant accusations that her good Xian daughter was cheating.

[Squinch]

10. You say hardly, but then you describe what I have described:

Schools with more motive students who have parents who are motivated enough to get them into a charter school in the first place, and allow discipline that is not experienced in the general public schools.

As you agree, they do not take children with IEP's. I have not seen any studies that say they outperform peer schools, even without IEP students. Even if that is true and they appear to slightly outperform peer schools, they are actually substantially underperforming peer schools for the average or above average student, because peer school scores include those of the children with learning and physical issues. Scores for these students bring down the average of the school. If as you say they are attracting the above average student, again, they should be blowing the doors off the public schools. They are not.

I have not see the schools that warehouse students, though I don't doubt they exist. In New York, those bottom 20% do not have charter school options, and remain in the public school. The public school HAS to take them, so there is no question of their having to work their way back into a public school, and no need for places where they can work toward that.

PS. No one would mind if you left the grammar police at home.

[HiPointDem]

14. Then there's the kind that selects the students.

But this spring, that very office found that Green Woods and 17 other charters seeking renewal imposed “significant barriers to entry” on families. Some, like Green Woods, went to extraordinary lengths to limit access to applications. Others, like Eastern University Academy in East Falls, made onerous and sometimes illegal requests from applicants for everything from typed book reports to proof of U.S. citizenship.

The findings are detailed in previously unreleased district documents obtained by Pennsylvania’s Education Law Center (ELC) under the state Right to Know law. At best, said ELC senior staff attorney Jennifer Lowman, the barriers found by the district violate the spirit of Pennsylvania’s 1997 charter law, designed to give families more high-quality school options.

“Unfortunately, some of these extensive application requirements flip that choice on its head,” Lowman said. “It becomes the school that chooses, not the family.”

http://thenotebook.org/blog/125141/district-details-questionable-application-processes-green-woods-other-charters

[formercia]

11. "Segregated Charter Schools."

..for racist assholes who think they are wealthy but can't afford the cost of tuition to get their spawn into well-connected schools.

Rich people send their kids to exclusive schools so they can network with the new Generation of other wealthy kids. Being rich doesn't always cut it. Pledging the right Fraternity or Secret Society will do wonders for the career of a budding sociopathic little asshole.