Keep going down the list, and check out how many charters have suspension rates above 11%. I wonder if this aggressive use of suspension as a punishment has anything to do with claims that charters tend to counsel hard-to-educate students out of their schools and back into the public school system.
By the way, the statewide rate is 6.0%
North Central Charter Essential School 27.2
So Middlesex Voc Tech Reg 26.6
Northampton-Smith 26.1
Holyoke 24.9
Ralph C Mahar 22.0
Northern Berkshire Voc 21.6
Southern Worcester Cty VT 21.3
Franklin County 20.2
Cape Cod Region Voc Tech 19.1
Upper Cape Cod Voc Tech 18.8
Fall River 18.6
Boston Collegiate Charter 17.5
Brockton 17.0
Shawsheen Valley Voc Tech 16.2
Murdoch Middle Public Charter 15.9
Boston Renaissance Charter 15.7
Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter 15.6
Tri County 15.5
Greater Lawrence RVT 15.3
Lynn 15.1
Four Rivers Charter Public (District) 14.7
Sabis International Charter 14.4
Montachusett Voc Tech Reg 14.2
Northeast Metro Voc 14.0
Springfield 13.7
Old Colony Reg Voc Tech 13.7
Minuteman Voc Tech 12.8
Nashoba Valley Tech 12.7
Freetown-Lakeville 12.5
New Bedford 12.3
North Adams 12.3
Lawrence 12.1
Gill-Montague 12.1
Silver Lake 12.1
Ware 11.9
Greenfield 11.6
Wareham 11.6
Pittsfield 11.5
Greater Fall River 11.5
Roxbury Charter High Public (District) 11.5
Chicopee 11.4
Southeastern Reg Voc Tech 11.4
Seven Hills Charter 11.1
City On A Hill Charter Public (District) 11.0
First off, it could indicate that these schools are more agressive at suspending students or that they have more discipline problems. Really, though, it’s more likely to be that you’re comparing schools to districts. In a district you generally have several schools and things average out. In a school you can have spikes. If the school is really small, one incident could move it way up the list. I couldn’t find the full, list, but my guess is that most of the bottom ten are charters as well. Not defending charters here, I just don’t think this means much. If you could compare the charter rate to the district rate you might have something.
This is more than just a spike. These numbers are six times the state average, and just so far out of the order of magnitude for other schools. BTW, many of the other districts listed are small, one school districts.
And are most of the “districts” at the bottom charter schools?
The link to the Department of Education website is in the original post. You can also click here.
Wow, I looked for the link twice before my first comment and somehow missed it. It definitely looks like charter schools are disproportionally represented near the top of the list. It’s still hard to draw any concrete conclusions without knowing more.
<
p>
I’ve never really understood the purpose of out of school suspensions. It seems to me like problem kids should be kept in school as much as possible. When I was in high school kids who skipped school were suspended. Isn’t that like kicking people out of jail for trying to escape?
It’s always amazing to see an out-of-school suspension for cutting classes or truancy.
The chart lists in-school and out-of-school suspensions. In an ideal world, many of these issues are addressed by some other means, including in-school suspension. You don’t always know what is happening when you see this kind of data, but it certainly is a red flag.
<
p>
Yes it is. Out-of-school suspensions should only occur in the most egregious of violations that involve school safety. In public schools, the kids who get OOS suspensions are most often the kids who don’t want to be in school anyway, and these little hiatuses become mini-vacations. The loss of instructional time is particularly problematic in these at-risk students.
<
p>
These charter school numbers seems off the charts and call into question their dedication to educating all children. The only way to educate a child is to keep the child in school. OOS suspensions for anything less than the most severe rule violations is irresponsible.
who has an Autistic Child. In the child’s former school, they sent him home every time he acted up. So the child learned that if wanted to go home…. act up.
<
p>
In his new school when he acts up, he goes to a “safe room” but he doesn’t get to go home. It has dramatically changed his behavior at school.
<
p>
I’m all for keeping misbehaving students in school unless they are a true danger to others.
<
p>
My own personal reaction to the high suspension rate is that the charter schools want these difficult children to be someone elses problem – especially if that child is going to lower the MCAS average for the school….
<
p>
Are we starting to see the down-sides of high-stakes testing?
<
p>
I don’t know who said it…
<
p>
<
p>
Mark
And how do they fund this extra person? Aren’t teachers already, um, busy teaching?
it’s primary goal is to mainstream (or remainstream) difficult students. I do not have the details of how the school is run but the father of the Autistic child is quite pleased with the results.
<
p>
If you like, I can get more info…
<
p>
Mark
Perhaps my comment should be directed to those upthread who are appalled by out-of school suspension.
<
p>
While I agree with the “jail” analogy– this makes perfect sense, this is something that requires (i) space, and (ii) funding for a full time person to supervise the “detainees.” Space and funding are not in great supply at most schools; many parents might be a little miffed when AP _______ is cancelled in order to provide this new service to disciplinary problems.
Most high schools do find a way to manage safe room/inschool suspension (ISS), because it is more of an ongoing problem. Unfortunately, it’s far rarer in middle schools in my area of the state at leas, so a bad pattern is set down at the time it could best be averted. One school where I subbed for two years had to get rid of ISS while I was there, and discipline got notably worse.
<
p>
The other benefit of ISS is that it counts as an attended day in school. With 95% attendance being one of the mandates of No Child Left Behind, it is common for some administrators to be reluctant to suspend students because of that 95% mark.
By themselves these numbers are not meaningless, but they don’t stand on their own, either. It’s impossible to compare a charter school with an entire district of schools k-12. There aren’t many out-of-school suspensions at the elementary school level compared to middle or high school, and in larger districts other forms of discipline have priority. But charter schools, for all their innovations, don’t necessarily have a tradition or the knowledge to work effectively with the wide range of discipline problems presented by a population of kids drawn from the general population at large.
I’m not quite sure what to make of these numbers but it seems to me that this is one of many issues charters have. Perhaps with community oversight for public funding of charter schools we would be able to reduce this high level fo suspensions…
<
p>
How much can one learn while on suspension?
They are just names of schools with % of out of school suspensions…but what does this mean Pablo?
This is the ratio of out-of-school suspensions over the total enrollment. It means that the charter schools are doing a whole lot of out-of-school suspensions.
<
p>
One of the criticisms of charters is that they push troubled or troublesome kids out the door, back to the public schools. This very high suspension rate would seem to raise a bunch of questions about what is happening in these schools.
If one criticism of charters is they push troublesome kids back to public schools–should be be looking at research on tht exactly and not interpet a variable that may or may not have anything to do with that. Does the data show that kids suspended are being sent back to public schools?
<
p>
One could argue (as I think someone did) that this is a good stat becuase it indicates that charters instill tougher displine measures than public.
<
p>
I really don’t ahve a dog in this hunt (I’ve never really jumped into the hot charter school debates you’ve had here). I would agree that having charter schools dominate the out of school suspensions means something. But I’m not sure if it is good or bad.
<
p>
2. This comparison is silly because it compares whole DISTRICTS (which amortize all the elementary school kids, who basically never get suspended) to INDIVIDUAL charter middle schools.
<
p>
The right way to do the comparison would be comparing SCHOOLS to SCHOOLS.
<
p>
I’m sure that’s what Pablo MEANT to do, b/c the correct page is in the EXACT SAME PLACE as the page he linked to.
<
p>
You can read the INDIVIDUAL SCHOOL list here and draw your own conclusions.
<
p>
Like you said, one could argue the numbers either way.
<
p>
3. What you’ll see is a lot of urban middle and high schools, traditional and charter, have high suspension rates.
<
p>
Furthermore, some schools (both traditional and charter) only do out-of-school suspensions.
<
p>
If you add up both in-school and out-of-school rates, you get a new list: a Top 20 with 2 charter schools and 18 district run schools.
<
p>
The big picture is you see fairly similar suspension rates among high-poverty middle and high schools.
<
p>
4. Roxbury Prep, the middle school that Pablo cited with the high suspension rate, loses very few students. So the notion that high supsension leads to kids leaving is false.
<
p>
5. Note for any readers following the charter argument on BMG instead of in real life — VISIT ANY OF THE LISTED CHARTER schools and the nearest traditional middle school, and I’ll bet Billy Bulger’s pension that you become a full-stop charter supporter. You can usually arrange visits by phoning up the school.
<
p>
Damn the frustrating limitations of this SoapBlox software system. Grrr.
Now Mr. Goldstein wants to discredit this data, because when you look at it as a district and not a single school, public schools are represented at the top of the list. However, if you look carefully, you find a bunch of alternative schools.
<
p>
Mr. Goldstein complains that we are compaing middle charters to districts with elementary schools. However, the list of districts contain sufficient 7-12 and 9-12 districts that the elementary argument doesn’t hold. In fact, the regional vocational districts (9-12) have kids who self select because they don’t do very well in academic settings. Minuteman Voc has a special needs rate around 50%, but nowhere near the suspension rate of most of these charters.
<
p>
You can also look at the charters compared to their host communities.
<
p>
North Central Charter Essential School (7-12) in Fitchburg: 31.8%
Fitchburg High 14.1%
Fitchburg Memorial Intermediate 12.4%
<
p>
Murdoch Middle Charter (5-8) in Chelmsford 15.9%
McCarthy Middle, Chelmsford 7.3%
<
p>
Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter (6-10) in Adams 15.6%
Hoosac Valley High (Adams-Cheshire) 14.8%
Adams Middle 11.9%
<
p>
HERE’S THE TOP SIX CHARTER SCHOOLS IN BOSTON:
Boston Preparatory Charter 74.5%
Roxbury Preparatory Charter 70.0%
Smith Leadership Academy 41.6%
Edward Brooke Charter 38.7%
Uphams Corner Charter 34.7%
Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter 31.8%
<
p>
HERE’S THE TOP SIX MIDDLE SCHOOLS IN BOSTON:
(not counting alternative programs)
Mildred Avenue Middle 34.0%
Thomas A. Edison Middle 32.3%
Martin Luther King Middle 30.9%
Grover Cleveland Middle 26.1%
John W. McCormack Middle 25.5%
Dearborn Middle 23.8%
<
p>
Clearly the distribution of public to charter in Boston is significantly difference.
<
p>
I fail to see the similar rates that Mr. Goldstein discusses.
Can you answer two questions from the Media and Technology Charter School Annual Report? It appears the school played “return to sender” with 13% of its kids. So now they are on someone else’s accoutability list?
What happened to these kids?
When you invite people to tour the school, how do visitors interview these kids?
<
p>
but most of those things are alarming. You’re correct, FrankSkeffington, that more research is required here. These numbers answer nothing definitively. Just to be perverse, one might conclude that public schools are not suspending enough students. Pablo raises an important point, though: if we are concerned with how Charter Schools treat problematic kids, this is red flag. Not a conclusion, but a flag of a very crimson hue.
If I had my kids in those schools, I would be thrilled that disciplinary problems were being removed from the classroom as fast as possible, so that they consume zero classroom time.
But where would they go, just read a report about the dropout rate escalating in Mass, some bigger school systems have alternative schools, what do others do?
as a teacher I’d like the same, the fact is that in a PUBLIC school students are equally deserving of an education. If the advantage of a charter school is that it is not serving all the students a public school must serve, then why should the public pay for it?
Great post, Pablo. You, unlike I’m about to do, gave us statistics to play with, so thank you. I’m only going to produce some anecdotal evidence, so please take this post with a fist-sized grain of salt.
<
p>
I find it just as interesting to discuss WHEN Charter schools kick kids back to the public schools in their districts. First, some background: I believe each Charter school gets $9-10k per student, and the public school in that district loses a corresponding amount for each such student going to that charter school. There is a certain point in each year (or perhaps each semester) where the state figures out which students are in the public school in any given district and which students are in that district’s charter school(s). It is at this point that the funding-per-student is set in stone.
<
p>
I have a good friend who teaches middle school in a public school in East Boston. He swears that, each year, like clockwork, the charter school in his district waits until this funding-per-student calculation is decided, and only then does the charter school kick out its troublesome students. This leaves the charter school with (i) more state money per student than it should have; and (ii) fewer “troublesome” students; alternately, this leaves the public school in that district with (i) less money-per-student than it should have; (ii) more “troublesome” students; and (iii) simply more students over-all, thereby contributing even further to over-crowded classrooms.
<
p>
Again, let me stress that this is just one story I’ve heard, so I welcome any hard statistics on this, or people with other anecdotal evidence supporting or refuting this. However, if what I’ve described is a wide-spread practice among charter schools, well, it’s just disgusting. They are keeping certain kids in their schools just long enough to make some money off of them, and then kicking them back to public schools that are now further underfunded because the charter schools have already taken the money allotted for those children. That’s pretty awful.