Fewer than half of its teachers are licensed in their teaching assignment. The state auditor found that financial “mismanagement” included not using competitive bidding practices, overpaying the rent, and purchasing a $150,000 certificate of deposit from a failing bank. The bank's CEO also chaired the Hughes Charter School's board. The school's treasurer also worked at the bank. Swan was convicted of, among other things, bid-rigging.
Cronyism and hackery are often endemic in local government–particuarly in cities where there is actually enough money at stake to reward wrong-doing. Hughes, however, raises the question of how much cronyism and hackery are present in these “more accountable” educational establishments. Granted, it is only one school, and even if its board is populated by various Springfield hacks, there are plenty of charter schools in the area that function effectively.
A Stanford University study found extreme variability in American charter school performance with 17% of charter schools doing superior work to public schools, 37% doing a worse job, and the remainder doing about the same. Variability is the norm, when it comes to charter schools. It's time to stop assuming that charter schools are a simple answer to what plagues American education, and that some magical market principle is enough to provide accountability.
Mark
Are ex-cons usually excluded from teaching positions/school administration positions?
just to go on a field trip with my son. Mass.gov information says CORI’s they have to be done every three years. I can’t imagine how he slipped through.
I think he pleaded out and received probation, but I can’t find a conclusive source on it.
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p>I think he got in trouble when the FBI was doing an investigation into the city government. There were a lot of people with mafia ties working for the city in the previous regime, and the FBI has been cleaning them out. They busted people in the Housing Authority, a guy running a homeless shelter, and the Massachusetts Career Development Institute. MCDI gave a no show job to the sister of the now deceased mafia boss Al Bruno. She did time.
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p>I don’t mean to say that Swan was somehow linked with the mob, just to show that corruption isn’t limited to Springfield’s African American political class. Both Hughes Charter school and New Leadership feature prominent people from this class on their boards.
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p>The Swan family is pretty big in Springfield. Aside from Ben Swan, the state rep, Talbert Swan is pastor of the Solid Rock Baptist Church. Rep. Swan got in some trouble for back taxes he owed for property he owned.
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p>I don’t know of a regular public school that employs or would employ felons as teachers or as administrators.
It is discouraging when every scandal that happens in Springfield is believed to be a city government scandal. Most of the FBI investigations centered on non-governmental non-profit agencies such as the Springfield Housing Authority, the Friends of the Homeless, MCDI, or the Hampden County Regional Training Consortium. To be sure, a lot of this occurred because of players related to Mayor Mike Albano (who left office in 2004), but there was virtually no corruption or theft found within city government — it occurred in nonprofit agencies that received public money but had little oversight. Lack of oversight seems to be the common denominator.
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p>The mafia was not involved in Springfield city government. The city should not be portrayed like that – it is false and harmful when people think that the mob runs the city. It does not. The closest that the mafia got to city government was that the chief of staff of Mayor Albano was a silent partner in a bar with someone else who was in some kind of gambling trouble with someone who was likely in the mafia. Also, in the late 90’s, the son of the local mafia, who operated a number of restaurants, got some forgivable loans to improve the exterior of his restaurants.
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p>The sister of the local mob boss did have a no-show job at one of those non-profits — as a “muffin wrapper”. However, it was never even alleged that this was mob-related – the job was for $12k per year. From the articles I read, it seemed like it was being done for health insurance, probably because she knew the person who headed that agency.
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p>Most of the corruption centered on the Asselin family (son Chris Asselin was a State Representative) and the housing authority, along with an insider named Frank Keough who ran the homeless shelter (and built a million-dollar house in Rhode Island with its funds — and who was just arrested again for breaking into it and removing stuff after it had been auctioned off).
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p>Fred Swan got in trouble because he was the head of a non-profit health care center (which he founded) based in Springfield. As head, he steered contracts to a developer who had previously bought his house out of foreclosure and let him live there rent-free. He was snared because the contractor he steered bids to was also involved in the Springfield Housing Authority corruption. He pleaded guilty and got probation.
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p>Most of the public seems to think that this charter school is a city school, and that the city is again corrupt for letting this happen. People are harping on the mayor and the school superintendent for this. They don’t realize that charter schools are private, and are barely accountable to anyone.
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p>This is a huge weakness of charter schools. Public money goes to these schools with no potential for local input. The only way to affect these schools is via the state Department of Education, and as far as I can see, the only thing they can ultimately do is revoke the school’s charter — a very serious step. The “free market” has little effect here, because people aren’t using their own dollars on these schools — they simply pick them and city Chapter 70 money gets transferred to them via the state.
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p>Corruption can be found wherever there is a big pot of money that isn’t being watched closely.
It’s simply not true that “virtually no corruption” was found in Springfield city government. The mayor’s former chief of staff Ardolino was one of the biggest hit for the Feds in their investigations.
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p>Also you left out, IMHO, the most notable mob/Springfield situation whereby the DA Matty Ryan played a weekly racquetball game for DECADES with his good buddy Al Bruno, who happened to be head of the mob. This situation was a particular disgrace and incredibly lasted well into the 80’s.
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p>I agree Springfield often gets a bad rap. No doubt there is corruption in many place, but Springfield has far too often somehow had more that it’s fair share. Let’s not kid ourselves.
but I think you’re being a little naive.
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p>Gerald Phillips who ran the Massachusetts Career Development Institute is a close friend of former Mayor Mike Albano, who had received a target letter from the FBI. Besides Luisa Cardaropoli, who was Genovese crime boss Al Bruno’s brother before he got wacked, there were several other mob associates, including
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p>- The sister of Anthony J. Delevo, the Westfield man described by federal prosecutors as the region’s top mafia capo.
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p>- An employee who was indicted for beating a homeless man at a city shelter and later paid the victim to settle the case out of court.
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p>- A mayoral aide’s cousin who kept his job after receiving a one-year jail sentence for an assault charge.
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p>- A former patrolman who resigned from the force after pleading guilty to cocaine charges.
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p>Mark A. Pandolfi, an Albano campaign worker, who pled guilty to gambling related charges, was also mobbed up.
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p>There was the whole Asselin family at the Springfield Housing Authority.
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p>There was Frannie Keough.
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p>The Mayor received a target letter from the FBI, but was able to dodge the bullet.
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p>I don’t mean that Springfield is particularly corrupt or that it’s not changed, but you’re fooling yourself if you didn’t think the mafia had worked its way into the city government.
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p>Do you know where the Mayor got his hair cut? Carmine the Barber.
I’m not being naive. I just understand the difference between the government and non-profit agencies. You don’t seem to see the distinction.
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p>First, to respond to the earlier post about the DA, the DA is not a Springfield municipal position. It is an elected position for Hampden County. That shouldn’t be hung around Springfield’s neck.
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p>The story you linked to refers to a job training center called MCDI. It was a quasi-municipal operation, receiving its money from both the city and from federal grants. It served students who had dropped out of high school. The head, Gerald Phillips, was a friend of mayor Mike Albano and was a former member of the school committee. Albano put him in charge of the place, I’m guessing to tap its potential as a patronage arm — plenty of positions for the marginally skilled and barely employable there. MCDI had a history of being run by Italians and stressed giving people job opportunities, so it’s little wonder that some people of Italian heritage were hired there after having minor brushes with the law.
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p>Relatives of known mafia members are a bit of a stretch. The article says:
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p>
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p>Are you implying that she should not have been hired due to who her brother is? Or that she should have been fired because of who her brother is? Or maybe that no one should hire her because of who her brother is? Talk about guilt by association.
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p>The Asselin family were not Springfield city employees. Ray Asselin ran the Springfield Housing Authority, a federal agency, for many years. There was no mob accusation there. He was clearly corrupt, but was not in Springfield city government. That case was basically independent of the city corruption investigation, though Asselin was the top prize throughout it all.
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p>Frankie Keough ran the Friends of the Homeless, a non-profit homeless shelter, and was appointed by Mike Albano. He’s not accused of being a mob member, though he was a big inside player who probably directed a lot of the patronage traffic in the city.
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p>I’m not saying there wasn’t corruption in Springfield — I’m just pointing out that it was not within the city government. It was in non-profits which had little oversight. A few people who had marginal relationships with the mob working for a quasi-governmental agency does not translate into the mob “working itself into city government”. Your statement implies that the mob had influence over city operations. That just isn’t true.
My choice of words was poor.
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p>But I think you’re wrong to downplay MCDI; it might have been federal funds they were ripping off, but the mayor and his chief of staff were “connected” as we say and their good buddy Gerald Phillips was taking good care of the mob. According to this article, MCDI was part of city government:
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p>
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p>I don’t think Phillips was appointed by Albano, but he was police commissioner who employed a boatload of mobsters and their relatives. One mobster at MCDI was a golf partner of Albano. That’s city government. I don’t care where the money is coming from. Albano fought to keep Phillips in his job. The mayor is city government.
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p>
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p>I assume you know how the mafia works. I’m beginning to doubt you live in Springfield because most of the fact that these people are connected is common knowledge. I don’t live in Springfield, but I know people in the area in all age groups.
Phillips was definitely appointed by Albano. The article several posts above references that fact. I don’t know what you take “connected” to mean, but there were never any allegations that Albano or Ardolino were members of the mafia. I don’t doubt they knew some mafia members, but saying two Italians are “connected” because they know some mobsters is really stretching things.
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p>MCDI wasn’t really “part of city government”. The article speaking of them getting “independence” really only refers to the fact that MCDI was getting city funds for its operation, and I think the employees were on the city’s health insurance. This was relatively common until Albano’s replacement came to office — for example, the director of the non-profit Spirit of Springfield used to pull down an $80k salary from the city. I think that the librarians in those days also got city health care even though they worked for the non-profit Springfield Library & Museum Association.
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p>Basically, MCDI was a training center for people not on the college track and who didn’t fit into the vocational school. It focused on people in their early-to-mid 20’s who, after kicking around for a while, realized that they needed a skill to support themselves.
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p>I don’t think it’s fair to say Phillips was “taking care of the mob”. The guys who were swept up in this were not “mobsters” the way people picture them. They were, at best, low level flunkies with gambling problems. They were working there because MCDI was run by someone who was Italian, and they traditionally hired a lot of Italian immigrants. Illingsworth, for example, may have had mob ties, but the tie to MCDI was that his father-in-law — Polmeni — ran the place. The MCDI guys were basically flunkies, not bone crushers. Phillips was just an idiot who hired people for patronage reasons and who got his jollies from young Hispanic girls. He went from a “bingo inspector” to the head of MCDI because he was childhood friends with the mayor, and the mayor could depend on him.
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p>I do in fact live in Springfield. I was cheering for the FBI to nail Albano with something. However, in the end, the entire investigation was kind of a bust. Yes, the Asselin family was taken down — but they were corrupt long before Albano came to power. That was kind-of a surprise. And it was great that Frank Keough was taken down too, he was a big inside player. But there were no real bombshells. People are portraying it like these guys with pinkie rings had set up shop in city hall. That just isn’t close to being true. The mob angle touched some of the people in the administration, but the contact wasn’t related to their official duties. In the end, the corruption was basically people in charge of pots of money with little oversight.
Any way it can make money.
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p>I know people who know people, if you know what I mean. Friends, relatives, etc. I won’t say who I know on here, but this stuff is pretty common knowledge. Do you know a big restaurant in Chicopee is owned by connected people? A major place for gambling? When Al Bruno was on trial for attempted murder (Nettis took the fall), he had a fundraiser there.
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p>”Connected” means you have mob connections that are mutually useful. It means people are actively using those connections for benefit. Albano is connected, through his aide, through Phillips, and through Carmine “The Barber” Manzi. Being connected doesn’t mean working 40 hours a week doing crime.
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p>I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this.
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p>With Al Bruno dead, his kid in Florida, and (is?) Arilotta still in jail, I’m not sure what kind of shape the Springfield mob is in. I have a feeling that the Albano administration was the last hurrah of that kind of influence.
is not is city government? You clearly have a lot of knowledge on this subject, yet keep overlooking this prominent and well publicized outcome of the lengthy corruption probe.
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p>As for disgraced former DA Matty Ryan, you’re right of course that he was not an employee of the city of Springfield, but he was one of the most powerful figures in government in the city of Springfield for the 1960’s through the 1980’s- it goes to Mark Bail’s point about corruption in Springfield not being limited to one political group.
The mayor’s chief of staff was not a good person. He was convicted of tax evasion from to a bar he part-owned. He also had a reputation for being a first class jerk who pushed a lot of people around, and who played ball with his friends and hardball out his enemies. I don’t think that he was ever alleged to be a mafia member though. The best I can find is that the bar he part-owned was sold to a mafia member. But he was not convicted of using his office for wrongdoing, and even the things he was alleged of using his office (patronage hires, lobbying for his developer friends) for were not mob related.
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p>I have never said that there wasn’t corruption in Springfield. However, portraying the city government as mobbed-up is just not correct. A lot of people believe that Springfield’s financial problems were the result of corruption. That is just not true. The corruption was almost exclusive to non-profit agencies that received federal money for their operation.
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p>I really don’t get your second point. Matty Ryan was a county elected official, and was not part of city government. I’m not sure why you’re saying he was part of “government in the the city of Springfield”, except that the county seat is located in Springfield. If the county seat was located in Agawam, would that point to Agawam being a corrupt town? Are the Finneran and Dimasi scandals signs that Boston government is corrupt?
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p>A lot of the stuff being alleged is guilt by association. Like the sister of a mafia member working for an agency that got city dollars. Or that the wife of someone convicted of racketeering donated some money to the mayor’s campaign. I can’t blame you — that is how the newspaper reports things. But the result of the corruption case really turned up a lot less than people expected.
the best way to curb this type of behavior is to make it public.
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p>That 11 year old boy who committed suicide, ugh, what an incredibly sad story. Sending kids into a perpetually tormenting situation everyday is abuse. So often the adults
(parents and teachers) turn a blind eye because it’s easier to do so than to address and protect.
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p>Convicted felon, can you believe it?
I would say “lack of oversight breeds abuses” once again.
No requirements, no oversight, no accountability.
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p>This is a poisonous recipe for service delivery in health care, military, agriculture, or any other field. We’ve seen it over and over again — the only people who benefit from such a regime are those whose fortunes are tied to the bottom line. Give charters the same requirements, oversight, and accountability as all schools, and let’s see what happens in a fair contest…and let’s watch all the students of the Commonwealth benefit.
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p>
It is difficult to give charters “accountability” without eliminating charters, because that is one of their proclaimed selling points — “free from government interference and regulation”.
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p>The main problem I see is that the current “accountability” is too broad and blunt, and therefore less likely to be used. If there is corruption at a public school, the public complains to the school committee, the school committee steps in and fires the people involved, and if they don’t, the public can vote the school committee out of office. In a charter school, the DOE can do two things — politely request that they stop the bad behavior, or close the school. And since the DOE is a state agency, not a local agency, if they don’t step in, the voters of the state are most likely not going to hold the governor accountable for problems with one charter school in one community. The public impact is therefore infinitesimal.
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p>I can see why charters are desirable to people — they can have many qualities of a “private” school, but parents don’t have to pay tuition. However, I think upon deeper review, those benefits are often at the expense of other students left behind in the public system, and they are largely illusory, created by a process that self-selects students who would have achieved similar success in a public school under similar circumstances (i.e. being away from needy, disruptive students).
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p>I think there are several larger problems:
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p>1) We assume that every student is capable of the same level of education, and claim failure when every student does not perform. This is exacerbated by the national economic shift that has devalued unskilled labor to the point where it has been moved overseas, or pays wages that do not facilitate generational class ascent.
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p>2) We have pursued a residential economic segregation system (particularly in Massachusetts under Proposition 2.5) that is a good proxy for student performance. In other words, it’s pretty likely that someone who can afford a $400,000 house will make sure their children do well in school, and it’s pretty likely that someone who can only afford subsidized housing will not make sure their children will do well in school. It isn’t absolute, but it’s very correlated, particularly since “the schools” is the reason many people choose a community for their home.
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p>3) Even with Chapter 70, we still have differences in school funding between rich and poor communities. Rich communities usually fund their schools above the foundation (i.e. minimum) level, whereas poor communities usually fund their schools exactly at the foundation level.
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p>4) In part due to the above factors, we have disparities in teacher ability between districts. Some districts just can’t attract high-quality teachers because the job that the teacher has to do isn’t worth the compensation the district can offer. That’s why you see wealthy districts with 100% of their teachers certified, and poor districts in the 80s.
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p>Because of those things, we have districts whose schools are labeled “underperforming” because they have a certain mix of students in them, and because they aren’t spending at the same levels as other communities. We view the schools as structurally bad, we view the teachers as all failures, and we treat even the good students as potentially suspect.
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p>Charter schools separate out students more likely to succeed, and put them in an environment where more money is spent on them than in the public schools. Teachers can be paid more, and students can be tossed from the schools — back to the public schools, which generally can’t refuse such students.
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p>This formula could be replicated within the public realm, probably with better results because of more accountability and less skimming of “profits”. But for some reason, the public is content to allow charters to operate with one set of rules and public schools to operate with another.
Disclosure – i work for a charter
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p>1. Mark, you cite the national Stanford study (which I thought was reasonable, there is enormous variation).
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p>But never the Boston study (which showed gigantic advantage for kids who win charter lotteries vs kids on waiting lists who didn’t win random admission lotteries).
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p>The Stanford authors LIKE the Boston study, thought it was great, with BETTER design than their own study. As did many economists around the nation.
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p>2. Your link showed that DOE in 2008 put the school on probation, with one year to get it right. (By Jan 2010).
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p>If the charter is indeed revoked, would you agree that charter accountability is INDEED higher than traditional schools?
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p>(Unless we know of traditional schools that, when hit by improprieties, get shut down).
GoldsteiGoneWild, do you think it is possible that the positive effect for charters in the Boston study — which purported to get around the “selection” problem by looking at both kids who got into charters and those who applied but did not get in — can be explained by the following:
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p>1) Students “left behind” have to settle for less educational attention paid to them because of more attention paid to the needier students in the public schools who did not enter the charter lottery.
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p>2) Since funding of charters is based on the district average, skimming off a certain percentage of students who enter the lottery, and who are presumably not as needs, results in a positive (for the student) mismatch between the funding of the student and his needs. In other words, if the district average is $10k, and the charter school takes a bunch of students who “cost” $8k to educate, (leaving behind kids more who cost $12k to educate and who are responsible for the higher district average), that these students benefit from having more spent on them, but the “left behind” students are in worse shape because there is less available to them?
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p>Do you know of any instances of charter schools who have had students randomly assigned to them, and who do not have the ability to dismiss students for behavioral and other problems? Wouldn’t that be true equality for comparison purposes?
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p>I don’t disagree that charter school students perform better. I just don’t think that the methods which produce the higher performance can be replicated across the district.
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p>Doesn’t this all come down to a fundamental question? Should we optimize public schools for the performance of all students, or should we optimize public schools for the performance of individual students? Choosing the former means that some students will be “held back” to allow others to “catch up”, choosing the latter means that some students will rise higher while others sink lower.
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p>Keep in mind that these schools are public, not private.
NP
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p>1. No I don’t know of any charters where parents are required to enter the random admissions lottery.
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p>2. Actually, BPS spends $17k per kid, they lose $12 when a kid goes to a charter, they then get back about $3k per kid. Net loss = about $9k per kid.
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p>3. You’re right that the Boston study found the charter kids were slightly better off than the district kids. Slightly.
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p>BPS kids were about the 20th percentile in the state. Charter kids in Boston were about the 25th percentile in the state. Ie, both INCREDIBLY low.
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p>4. Interestingly, pilot schools run by the district ALSO had the exact same level of students as charters, 25th percentile. So if it were true that charter gains were simply because of which students were there — which it’s not — then you’d expect to see the same gains in pilots.
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p>But those didn’t exist.
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p>5. Fair fundamental question. The theory of Obama et al is that a BETTER WAY to optimize public schools for ALL kids is to include charters. The leading reform districts in the nation are able to change, in part, b/c of the existence of charters.
Even as strong an advocate of charters as the governor was dismissive of it in conversation with me. For what it’s worth, it has a narrower focus, less academic weight, less rigorous vetting and referee-ing, and less longitudinal examination that Stanford’s CREDO. It’s like comparing NOAA data with my window thermometer. As for its internal methodological problems, I went through them here.
many charter critics said it was an impressive study.
The “cautions” section of that post take up more space than the couple sentences of praise for the study. And that’s one person, not “many”.
Mark, I do totally agree with you here, that nobody should assume
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p>”that charter schools are a simple answer to what plagues American education, and that some magical market principle is enough to provide accountability.”
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p>I’d concede that some charter supporters DO believe that, and are mistaken in such a simplistic view.
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p>a. But the bill waiting for the MA State House doesn’t posit charters as such.
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p>The bill says: if some MA charters get great results, and tons of low-income parents want those schools, should those specific schools be able to serve more kids?
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p>And
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p>b. Also, the ballot initiative – to simply use Obama language and eliminate all caps – that’s not driven by a “magical” view of markets.
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p>The view is more that in addition to inner-city kids, some suburban kids currently on charter school waiting lists would also benefit from access.
and left out the Boston study because it is irrelevant. It may be representative of Boston charter schools, but it is not generalizable to charter schools as a whole or even charter schools in another area. As I think you know, valid samples come from either a randomized process or all (or close to all) of a population.
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p>Hughes Academy’s charter probably should have been pulled when its financial irregularities were pointed out. It wasn’t. Had it been a regular public school, parents might have called for the principal’s termination. They could have called their city councilors, the mayor, the superintendent. Instead, they are left hoping the state helps them out. Charters are a little like a quasi-independent agency.
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p>Widespread cheating, incidentally, has been found, and Mitchell Chester is looking to pull the charter. If this had happened in a regular public school, what would have happened? The responsible people would have been fired, their teaching licenses in trouble, I think.
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p>I haven’t heard of many cases of cheating on MCAS. What happens?
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p>(Due to password problems, using a different handle).
but according to the Globe in 2007
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p>
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p>that was a single year.
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p>as for what WOULD have happened in a regular public school? it has happened. there was a case of a worcester traditional school some years ago. i think the principal quit under fire. the test scores went from like nobody passing to a kajillion passing.
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p>in this case, the charter is held to a HIGHER standard, no? the whole school will get shut down (appropriately).
suburban, and I use that term loosely in the Western Massachusetts sense, would “benefit” from entry into charter school.
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p>It’s a lot easier to argue that kids who would otherwise go into the poor environment of an urban school would benefit from a safer, more academically-focused environment. Using test scores, however, which seem to be the main evidence in the charter school debate, it will be hard to prove students leaving a functioning school system would “benefit” from a charter school.
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p>It’s different out in my area (I live in Granby; I teach in East Longmeadow). Outside of the cities, there don’t seem to be a lot of charter schools. A lot of kids in the town where I live go to the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School. Do they “benefit” from that move? They may “enjoy” that move, but there’s no empirical evidence that they receive a better education or that their performing arts curriculum advances them that field.
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p>My friends send their kids to PVPA. I was disappointed to see one of their sons go there. He’s a cool kid, a definite loss to our school community. He’s a talented musician. Our band director said that he’d learned all he could in our town. At PVPA, however, they don’t have a band at all. Is this a benefit? A draw? As a parent, I hope the kid is happy. I don’t expect any damage will be done, and if he is happier, that counts for a lot in my book.
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p>If PVPA were drawing a lot of kids from our school, however, the harm to our very small school system would be significant. Additional charter schools, however, could harm our very small school system.
disagree with not adding charters in certain areas.
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p>I think, for example, it would be pretty obnoxious for me to teach in a decent suburban school and require students to attend a crappy urban school (I don’t mean that all urban schools are crappy; Springfield has at least a couple of decent high schools) to keep my public school world pure.
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p>Like you, I think, I believe we need more honesty and less demagoguery about charter schools. Unfortunately, demagoguery is written into the enabling legislation.
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p>I’d more enthusiastically embrace the experimental aspect of charters if funding issues were resolved and communities had more choice about receiving charter schools in their districts. I’d probably support allowing a few more charter schools in the state or in Boston, but I’d like to see more success than we’ve seen.
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p>Thomas Toch was lauding your school’s graduation and college attendance rate in Kappan, but he dismissed the fact that you graduate a little more than one third of the kids you start with. I’d like to no more about that attrition, for example.
u should come visit. u can still rip us a new one in blogworld.
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p>the basic issue is that when our teachers hold back a kid, the district offers each kid the opportunity to automatically move up a grade, thereby neutering our teachers and promotion standards.
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p>ie, anyone held back in our 9th grade is offered 10th grade in district schools, irrespective of transcript.
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p>the proposed new law which may pass the house at least instructs DESE to do something about that.
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p>we have a decent relationship with the district. for example we send 30 of our top tutors, 3 days per week, to work in 4 struggling district schools. (all at our expense). but on this issue, we’ve never been able to make progress. there are legit issues on their side too.
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p>but the net effect is the district exerts enormous gravitational pull on our kids — by offering any kid who isn’t promoted an automatic bump to the next grade.
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p>we tell our teachers to just keep calling em as they see em, but there’s a lot of pressure — and it’s built into the proposed new law — to overrule teachers and just move kids to the next grade via social promotion. that would pretty much eliminate our attrition except for kids moving out of the area.
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p>still — just to give context — our student departure rate for any reason is lower than the district by a wide margin.
There is now a push to revoke this school’s charter:
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p>http://www.masslive.com/news/i…
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p>So instead of the means and ability to fix the problems over time, the public’s option is to kill the school. Is that “accountability”? Maybe. But this school still had similar problems and questions for five years, and without the bad press, would this be happening? Doubtful. No one would have noticed.
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p>Imagine if our criminal justice system had only one penalty — death. Do you think that there would be more or less enforcement of speeding or shoplifting laws?
the normal one is “charter renewed with conditions.” in fact, this is, i think what this particular school got in 2008, according to the link mark provided in his initial post. the “conditions” were to shape up by early 2010. that happens to be now.
To: Members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
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p>From: Mitchell D. Chester, Ed.D., Commissioner
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p>Date:December 14, 2009
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p>With considerable regret, I am recommending that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (Board) not renew the charter for Lowell Community Charter Public School (LCCPS). This recommendation is based on the school’s failure, as a ten-year-old school, to make sufficient academic progress to support a positive renewal recommendation. The school has failed to carry out the component of its mission statement which asserts that the “school’s highest priority is the promotion of academic achievement.”
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p>Student performance on the MCAS has been persistently low and has shown minimal improvement since the school’s first renewal in 2005. In addition, in comparisons of MCAS performance to the district of Lowell, LCCPS did not, in the aggregate, in any instances, perform at a statistically significantly higher level than the district. The student performance data provide grounds for non-renewal of the charter, and a review of the school’s growth data further validates the concern. In fact, in the aggregate and for virtually every student group, year-to-year achievement as well as growth for LCCPS trails that of the Lowell Public Schools and the state by a substantial margin. In short, most LCCPS students are losing ground compared to their counterparts in the Lowell Public Schools and their counterparts statewide. In addition, the school has not yet put in place the necessary structures and systems to support academic progress, and the school’s board has failed to take sufficient action to address this urgent situation.
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p>The accountability process for charter schools recognizes that in exchange for increased freedom, a school must demonstrate results within the term of its five-year charter or risk non-renewal. The charter school regulations state that “[t]he decision by the Board to renew a charter shall be based upon the presentation of affirmative evidence regarding the success of the school’s academic program; the viability of the school as an organization; and the faithfulness of the school to the terms of its charter” 603 CMR 1.12. Consistent with the regulations, recommendations regarding renewal are based on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (Department) evaluation of the school’s performance in these areas.
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p>In its review, the Department has considered both the school’s absolute performance at the time of the application for renewal and progress the school has made during the first four years of the current charter term. The Summary of Review, prepared by the Charter School Office, compiles the school’s record for the term of this charter and is attached. This month, the Board will have an initial discussion of the charter renewal application. The Board will vote on the school’s charter renewal at its meeting on January 26, 2010. The school will be given an opportunity to present at the January meeting, prior to the Board’s final vote.