Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Charter school waiting list is a myth

By

Charter schools under-enrolled,

waiting lists exaggerated

Boston – A majority of commonwealth charter schools in Massachusetts are under-enrolled, according to data recently released by the Department of Education, raising serious questions about the accuracy of claims that these publicly funded, privately-run schools have extensive waiting lists.

According to Department of Education figures, 34 of 48 commonwealth charter schools have fewer students than they claimed they would on “confirmed enrollment” reports filed with the state last spring. Yet all but five schools say they have students waiting to enroll.

State-wide, there are 803 fewer students enrolled in charter schools than claimed on enrollment reports filed with the Department of Education in March of last year. Charter schools are required to notify the department by March 18 each year of their “confirmed enrollment” for the coming school year.

“If waiting lists figures were accurate, there would not be so many empty seats at so many charter schools,” said Marilyn Segal, director of Citizens for Public Schools. “Waiting lists appear to be little more than cooked up numbers served to the public for political gain.”

The legitimacy of charter school waiting lists has been increasingly called into question. Charter proponents repeatedly claim that some 15,000 students are waiting to enroll in commonwealth charter schools, and have cited the figure as evidence of “demand” for more schools.

Public school advocates have said the figures are grossly inflated, noting that they include students with only a passing interest in a school as well as students who may have been interested at one time but have since enrolled elsewhere. Also students names may be on waiting lists for several charter schools and counted several times in the total waiting list figure.

The 48 commonwealth charter schools operating this year reported to the DOE in March a combined “confirmed enrollment” of 18,536 students. However, only 17,733 students actually attend the schools, according to data recently released by the education department.

One charter school in Somerville, Prospect Hill Academy, has 110 fewer students than it claimed on its “confirmed enrollment” report in March. The school reported to the state it would open in September with 842 students. Instead the school has only 832 students. Yet it claims to have 172 students on its waiting list. This is the third year in a row that Prospect Hill’s enrollment has fallen more than 100 students short of its pre-enrollment report.

Correction of tpyo:: Obviously there was a misprint here. When I go back and review the figures from 2005-2006, I see the school claiming it would enroll 852 but finishing the school year with an enrollment of only 752, meanwhile claiming a waiting list of 199. I believe the school actually open the year (2005-2006) with 742 students, which is how the figure 110 fewer students than claimed was derived.

The controversial Roxbury Charter High School for Business and Finance reported to the Department of Education that it would enroll 175 students in September, and that it had 118 students on its waiting list. The school opened with fewer than 110 students. Enrollment has since fallen to about 100. Last year the school claimed it would have 93 students. It ended the year with fewer than 55 students actually enrolled.

The Benjamin Banneker Charter School in Cambridge has 61 students fewer than it reported would enroll. Yet the school claims a waiting list of 494 students.

Boston Renaissance has 27 fewer students than it reported would attend, even though the school claims to have 1,695 students waiting to enroll.

The Sturgis Charter School in Barnstable has 21 fewer students than it reported would attend. Yet the school claims 56 students on its waiting list.

The five charter schools with no waiting list are: Foxborough Regional Charter School , the Murdoch Charter School in Chelmsford, the North Central Charter School in Fitchburg, Lowell Middlesex Academy, and Smith Academy Leadership Charter School in Boston.

“Waiting list figures have gone unquestioned for too long,” said CPS policy analyst Paul Dunphy.

“Finally, many policy makers are catching on to the exaggerated claims. There is a growing skepticism about all aspects of the charter school initiative. It is increasingly seen as a billion dollar mistake.”

Citizens for Public Schools is a coalition of more than 50 civic, civil rights, religious, labor and education organizations committed to public schools that are democratically accountable and open to all children.
 

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    1. First, disclosure: I’m in the tank for charters. 

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    To aid my friend Pablo with his disclosure: works for one of the lowest-performing districts in MA – good for him, but may understandably be tired of people asking why charter public schools outperform, particularly for low-income, black, and Hispanic kids?

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    His frustration may be rising now b/c DP, like John Kerry, like Bill Clinton, like Barack Obama…is increasingly clear that he views charters as part of the solution.  Not the whole solution.  But part of it. 

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    Anyway, this is a portable cut-and-paste disclosure on BMG so readers can take us both with a grain of salt. 

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    2. That said, Pablo’s charge is about as accurate as Healey’s TV attacks on Patrick.  (Cue excited news anchor).  And now to incredibly boring technical details! 

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    He’s conflating three numbers which the DOE requires from charter public schools. 

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    One is “how many kids are the most you will serve in the coming year – the max?”  This helps DOE to help prepare superintendents.  Superintendents specifically WANTED the “max number.” 

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    The second is “average daily enrollment” which is how the state funds charter public schools. 

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    The first mathematically has to be higher than the second, which is why actual enrollment always exceeds “max possible enrollment.” 

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    3. The third number is wait list.  DOE requires this number on the annual reports of charter schools.  The admission lotteries themselves are public events. 

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    Last year in Boston alone, according to the publicly available annual reports, 4996 parents applied for 1303 slots.  That happens each year.  Virtually all of these parents are black and Hispanic.  Most live in poverty.  Many are single mothers. 

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    So that’s almost 2,700 wait list IN ONE YEAR.  Over several years, some families drop off the waiting list as they find other options, lose interest, or move away.  But it’s easy to see how Boston ALONE would have 10,000 families over some years.

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    And Boston has less than a quarter of the state’s charter public schools.  The statewide wait list number has not been updated recently and when it is, I suspect it will exceed 20,000. 

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    These families celebrate when they get a phone call from a school like Neighborhood House or Roxbury Prep or Boston Collegiate to say “A spot opened up.” 

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    You should hear it.  it’s a religious experience. 

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    By the way, the wait lists are also long for pilot schools in Boston, and for Metco (buses from Boston to suburban schools), and for tuition-free Jesuit schools like Mother Caroline Academy, and for certain traditional schools like Timilty. 

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    Inner-city parents want options!  They deserve them. 

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    In fact, if you’re a BMG-er who would like to actually see a charter lottery, let me know and I will arrange it. 

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    My experience is that once progressives see who these families are and hear their stories, they become charter advocates, and start to filter out the sound machine of the status quo crowd. 

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    4. “Report”?

    Check out the following report from Citizens for Public Schools.

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    By the way, I followed your link, expecting to see a “report.”  All I found was a press release, which you pasted in entirety in your post. 

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    Is there really a “report” that I couldn’t find?  Please provide the link.  Or is that just another way you mislead the BMG community? 

    • By the way, the wait lists are also long for pilot schools in Boston, and for Metco (buses from Boston to suburban schools), and for tuition-free Jesuit schools like Mother Caroline Academy, and for certain traditional schools like Timilty.

      Inner-city parents want options!  They deserve them.

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      Everybody wants options… Everybody deserves them.

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      In fact, if you’re a BMG-er who would like to actually see a charter lottery, let me know and I will arrange it.

      My experience is that once progressives see who these families are and hear their stories, they become charter advocates, and start to filter out the sound machine of the status quo crowd. 

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      I’m an advocate of quality education.  If this can happen in the charter schools then I say “Bully for that!”  But you come perilously close to saying charter schools are the only place in which this can happen.  You’re line of reasoning, too, borders on the condescending: as a progressive I have a great deal of faith in the power and efficacy of unions, the teachers union included, and don’t subscribe to the ‘status quo’ argument that the unions are the source of the difficulties in public education.

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      Seriously, though, what about the charter schools, and their mechanism of funding, leads you to believe they are the optimum solution to the question of quality education?

    • First, look at the charter school exchange at the debate:

      > Healey: Every child has the right- how many kids do you think are on waiting lists right now, Deval, waiting to go to charter schools.

      Patrick: A lot.

      Healey: 15,000. There are only 17,000 kids in charter schools and there are 15,000 kids out there who are waiting to get in. We need to create those schools. We don’t need to be putting up blocks to getting those schools, we need to be promoting them. And you know what? It’s all the public’s money.

      Patrick: First of all, you’re right. It is all the public’s money, and who wouldn’t be on a list for a charter school if we’re walking away from the district schools?

      Healey: Let’s make them all charter schools.

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      Now, look back to Goldstein’s quote.

      So that’s almost 2,700 wait list IN ONE YEAR.  Over several years, some families drop off the waiting list as they find other options, lose interest, or move away.  But it’s easy to see how Boston ALONE would have 10,000 families over some years.

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      If you believe a charter school can have both a wait list and empty seats, and if you believe that anyone who visits a charter school in 1999 should be counted on a wait list in 2006, then Kerry Muffy Healey’s numbers are accurate.

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      Where’s the real wait list?  Check out the proven, successful program that is currently funded at a rate 1/3 of expensive charter schools.  From the Christian Science Monitor, May 11, 2004:

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      Andrea Leonard signed up her son for first grade before he could even walk. The Boston mom didn’t want to waste time, as she’d heard about the lengthy waiting list for Metco, a voluntary integration program that buses children from Boston to schools in the suburbs. She yearned to give her son a quality education, and stories of overcrowding and lack of safety at inner-city schools concerned her.

      That was 13 years ago. The Metco waiting list has since ballooned from hundreds of students to 16,500, and her son, Sean, is now finishing up his seventh year at school in Lexington, Mass. Like the other 3,500 students enrolled in the Metco program, Sean gets on the bus a little after 6 in the morning and returns about 4:30. If he stays for sports, he arrives home just in time for dinner. “It’s a long day,” says Ms. Leonard. “But it’s been completely worth it.”

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      While the Romney-Healey administration was expanding charters by 40%, at a cost to the sending district around $10K, look at their METCO policy.

      Gov. Mitt Romney (R) wants to fund the program at the same rate – a decision that could mean cuts in many Metco services. The proposed increase by the House Ways and Means Committee would boost the Metco rate to about $3,000 per student. For the moment, participating towns continue to make up the difference between the $2,456 allotted for each Metco student and the $7,322 state standard set for all Massachusetts students. Often, the shortfall is even greater, as individual districts might have a higher per-pupil rate.

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      Romney and Healey don’t support charters for choice.  They support charters to privatize public schools.  They have no interest in METCO or School Choice.

        1. Pablo, it seems when someone punches a hole in your argument, you never respond directly.  Instead, you resort to crazy switching numbers around, the statistical equivalent of “Do you still beat your wife.” 

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        Is there a “Report” – as you wrote in your original post – or just a press release?  Yes or no? 

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        If it’s a report, please link so we can debate it.  I tried to search for the report but came up empty.  Maybe my increasing bald spot created some sort of static field rendering Google useless. 

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        2. Geez, I run the numbers to get the waiting list, add em up, and then you twist THAT. 

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        If 14 Boston charter public schools generate 2,700 on a waiting list in a single year, then that’s likely over 10,000 in Boston alone since, say, 2003.  But I’ve already spent too much time doing this!

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        And that’s just 14 out of 57 charter public schools statewide.

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        MCAS question: If 14 of 57 charter schools statewide have, amongst the 14, 10,000 waiting since 2003, how many would you estimate are on the wait list for all 57 schools? 

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        Extrapolate, and we are WAY over the 15,000 number.  I’m not saying it’s 40,000, but it’s way over 15,000. 

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        3. I think we agree that Metco options for Boston (and Springfield) parents – the opportunity to have your kid bused to a suburban school – is a good thing.  I’m glad that districts like yours educate Boston kids. 

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        We probably also agree that the Metco funding should be increased, though we’d probably have different mechanisms to do it. 

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        4. Your single calling card on BMG is your attempt to link anything you oppose to Republicans, Healey, etc. 

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        But charter public schools are a largely DEMOCRATIC idea, one of Bill Clinton’s proudest accomplishment.  That’s why Obama, Edwards, et al reject your rhetoric as you vie to protect the status quo. 

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        To repeat John Kerry:

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        Stop viewing charter schools as threatening innovation….the concept works. I believe it’s time to stop viewing innovative approaches as anomalies or threats to traditional public schools and begin seeing them as part of the future of public education.

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        He’s talking to you. 

        • Michael, you didn’t answer my question.

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          How many kids are currently on waiting lists for Commonwealth Charter Schools?  Let’s not count one or two schools, then do some math to estimate what is going on in the rest of the world. 

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          Don’t extrapolate.  Calculate.

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          How many kids, today,  Saturday October 21, are on a waiting list for a charter school?  How many kids would fill a newly available seat in an existing charter school if it became available?  Certainly, the charter school industry’s lobbying organization could very easily get that information.  The state Department of Education charter school office, where Duncan the Romney Watchdog went on the payroll, could compile accurate numbers.

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          The only things we have been able to discern to this point:

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          (a) clearly, Kerry Healey is lying when she says “there are only 17,000 kids in charter schools and there are 15,000 kids out there who are waiting to get in.”
          (b) Goldstein’s own calculations show the current number of kids waiting to get into a charter school (kid on the wait list today, right now, ready to go to a charter school if a seat opens) is somewhere between 15,000 and 0, and by his own estimate, much closer to zero.
          (c) Deval Patrick understands the problems with the funding formula and addresses the needs of the public system.  Kerry Muffy Healey wants to do away with publicly governed schools and turn everything into charters, and offers nothing for schools run by school committees with voter oversight.
          (d) It’s about privatization, not choice, becasue Kerry Muffy Healey has done nothing to address the other choice mechanisms (METCO and inter-district school choice).

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          When you can deliver the real number of kids who are on charter school waiting lists (and I believe you are close enough to the charter school industry to be able to easily get accurate numbers) then we can debate what meaning these facts have in a discussion of public policy.

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          Duncan the Romney Watchdog: in charge of charter school oversight.

          • I don’t follow.

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            The last wait list # is 15,000.  That’s the number.  I don’t think DP’s people disagree with that number.  Please show me that they do. 

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            DP: “I support charters, let’s work on the funding formula.”  This is a guy who escaped Chicago by escaping their inner-city public schools.

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            I think we agree on definition – wait list is a parent who applied to a charter and would pick up the phone and say “Yes” if offered a charter slot today. 

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            1. Your original point was that you claimed the number is below the 15,000 and cited a REPORT showing that. 

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            2. I asked you to link to the report, and you don’t respond twice, so now I’m guessing you made that up.  But that is not a nice thing to say – that you made it up. 

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            So I’ll ask again – just link to the report.  All I saw was a press release. 

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            3. Then you used a tortured way of twisting words around, which I exposed, where you twist the “Max Number” etc etc. 

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            On the other hand, you do have your patented BMG sock puppet equivalent friend rating method of promoting your comments and low scores for any reasoned comment which disagees with you.  So that’s a plus for you.

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            4. Now you’re saying, I guess, that you don’t have any report, but you want ME to create a report from scratch.  I didn’t claim to have a report on charter wait list.  You did. 

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            I tried to help out, looking up one year’s Boston families – not the wait list, just the people rejected in a single year.  I erred again in thinking reasoned debate could happen.  Anyway, my point is that almost surely when an updated charter school wait list comes out it will be higher than 15,000, because charter demand statewide has increased, and there are more schools.  I tried to use a sample (14 Boston schools out of 57 schools statewide) to show that.  I was not claiming to be publishing a report, I was trying to grab reasonably easily available numbers to extrapolate that 15,000 is low. 

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            And honestly, let’s say DOE issues a report and it has wait list of Whatever.  You’ll then attack that number as “from the pocket of the Pioneer Institute.” 

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            I know, this comment is a “3” or a “0” b/c it identifies the flaws in your argument.  Obama (running?), Patrick, Clinton, Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, Gore – all reject your reasoning.  But you get the last word. 

        • 2,700 on a waiting list this year, then that is the number.  What do 2003 numbers and extrapolating backward have to do with it.  You don’t  (or shouldn’t) count wait lists that way.  If you do, then when do you stop counting a kid on a waiting list?  After the kid graduates from another school?  After they die?  Meaningful wait lists cannot extend beyond a single academic year.

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          Using your extrapolation 14 out of 57 = 2,700 out of 10,992.  Still a significant number but to extrapolate back years is silly.  Now, how many of those 10,992 are on multiple wait lists (they realy should only be counted once)? How many have already gotten into a situation they or their parents are happy with?  Then we will know the real number of kids currently waiting to get into a charter school, everything else has not meaning.

        • I don’t understand why it makes any sense to add up waiting list from multiple years.  When someone says there are n people on the waiting list, people expect that to mean that those people are all on the list at the same time and that no one is being counted twice.

          • valid to combine years.  A waiting list is a list of kids waiting to get into a school this year.  Combining years just inflates the numbers.

            • maybe the charter school will open up; they will drop out of UMass, and get into Harvard next time they apply to college;)

    • Charter schools do not outperform public schools.

      The data show, for instance, that charter school students in 2003 were several points behind their counterparts in both reading and math in fourth and eighth grades. Standardized math scores in urban charters also lagged, but reading scores were comparable.

      The results prompted Mark Schneider, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, to comment that the charter school movement is “not doing harm.”

      The report I quoted above uses Federal data from 2003, and data from 2005 shows similar results. 

      • Hi Joel –

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        You’re using a federal study.

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        The state did a 5-year study of all MA charters, in every year from 2001 to 2005.  They used the exact same method as the federal study. 

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        MA charters SIGNIFICANTLY outperformed MA sending districts using EXACTLY the method you just cited. 

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        So you can’t complain about methodology – you just embraced it.

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        The results are indisputable: kids in MA charters consistently outperform kids in their sending districts. 

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        I do think there are quality issues with charters in some states.  But in MA, the charter outperformance level is big. 

        • The state study is based on MCAS scores. The federal study is based on the NAEP scores. That doesn’t sound like the “EXACTLY same method” to me. Maybe the charter schools are doing more MCAS drill instruction? That’s a key problem with using the MCAS as a high-stakes requirement . . . it destroys it’s effectiveness as an indicator of performance. For that reason, I would lend more weight to the federal study.

    • …but may understandably be tired of people asking why charter public schools outperform, particularly for low-income, black, and Hispanic kids?

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      I’d like to address that.

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      In any school system there are kids with many different levels of desire and proficiency, and there are parents whose involvement with their kids ranges the gamut.

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      Schools in urban areas aren’t bad because of their teachers. Their student body — on whole, not every individual student — is simply not the same as a successful system. For example, in Springfield, five parents just sued the district because their kids were dropped from the school roster because they missed 100 out of 180 days! Can you imagine someone in a wealthy district filing that suit?

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      You have to want to go to a charter school. If you don’t give a rat’s ass about your kids, you’re simply not going to do the footwork to sign them up for one. You’re going to find a high correlation between people who won’t make that effort and failure of their kids in school.

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      Now look at the funding. There are kids who are easy to educate, and kids who are hard to educate. On average, it takes $X to educate the average student. Hard kids might take 2X, and easy kids might take 1/2X.

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      If you take away all the kids who are easier to educate, and take away $X apiece for them and give it to someone else, you’re left with a lot of kids who need 2X to educate but you’ve only got X – you have half as much as you need. And the recipient of those kids has X to educate them but only needs 1/2X — they have twice as much as they need.

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      Is it any wonder that charter schools “do better”?

  4. which is so rare these days, would indicate that taking money away from public schools causes public schools to be less appealing.  I have yet to hear ANY argument that leads me to support the charter school concept.  Pablo seems to be the most knowledgeable source of information on this topic, and everything he has written makes me believe that there are serious flaws with this concept of privatizing education.  Charter schools seem to be a band-aid approach that doesn’t address the real problems of underfunding and non-funded mandates.  Anybody got some good evidence to the contrary?

  5. One charter school in Somerville, Prospect Hill Academy, has 110 fewer students than it claimed on its “confirmed enrollment” report in March. The school reported to the state it would open in September with 842 students. Instead the school has only 832 students.

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    Someone didn’t pass the math part of the MCAS ….

    • and you can knock off the sarcasm in pointing it out.

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      But hey, great way to get your point across, way to sound reasonable (hey, if you’re going to use sarcasm, so can I).

      • However, the problem is very real for Somerville.  The charter school puts in an inflated enrollment report before the start of school.  The state bases the first quarter payment based on the inflated number.  The money is garnished from  the local aid account for the sending district.  Sending district makes cuts.  After the October 1 count, the state adjusts the remaining payments to the charter, but that’s after the public system makes layoffs in anticipation of lost school aid and fewer students enrolled.  So, the public schools have fewer teachers in place when suddenly these kids show up at their door in September.  They do get the money back in the spring, but that’s too late to provide the staffing that should have been in place in September.

        • I just got an email from Citizens for Public Schools pertaining to this tpyo.

          Obviously there was a misprint here. When I go back and review the figures from 2005-2006, I see the school claiming it would enroll 852 but finishing the school year with an enrollment of only 752, meanwhile claiming a waiting list of 199. I believe the school actually open the year (2005-2006) with 742 students, which is how the figure 110 fewer students than claimed was derived.

  6. Most of the students enrolled in charter schools in Boston (thus most charter school students in the state) never went to public schools to begin with.  They were enrolled in private/parachocial schools.  And if it isn’t most than it is many.  So this whole myth about charters as the savior of poor minority families is hogwash. 

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    Like Deval says:  we have to support traditional public schools because that is where the majority of kids from poor families are going to get their break.

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    Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how long the list is because many of the charter schools are de facto private schools – highly selective and exclusive in their enrollment.  They don’t want just any kid at their school, and that is a straight fact. 

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    Also, like any other regular BPS teacher, I can verify this qualitatively.  Last February I got five new students who had all been thrown out of charter schools mid-year because they “didn’t fit in”.

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    All five were African-American boys. 

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    But let’s get to the real heart of the matter: funding.  Deval is absolutely right on the money on this issue (no pun intended).  The funding issue needs to be resolved. 

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    Charters should not be allowed to take their funding directly fromt the traditional schools that are desperately underfunded already. 

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    • “Most of the students enrolled in charter schools in Boston (thus most charter school students in the state) never went to public schools to begin with.  They were enrolled in private/parachocial schools.  And if it isn’t most than it is many.”

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      I admit that seeing the “if it isn’t most than [sic] it is many” makes me think these aren’t actual statistics, else you would know whether it was “most” or “many”.

      • I cannot remember the exact % off the top of my head, but believe me – I would not post such a statement if the data did not exist to support it.  I will get the info and post a more descriptive analysis for those who require it.

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        But the fact remains:  a large percentage of the children taking advantage of the pilot schools in Boston never attended regular BPS schools prior to attending charters. 

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        The BPS administration is aware of this fact as well, and it is one of the central arguments against a funding mechanism that removes money from BPS schools to fund the charters.  Why should the BPS be forced to fund kids who were never BPS students to begin with? 

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        Now, for the really hard-core voucher folks – this is not a problem.  Their perspective is “Yes, and your point is?”.

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        But for those who think that the charters are somehow “rescuing” poor children from so-called blighted traditional schools – this information should make them think twice. 

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        Additionally, the charters are part of a choice system that is resegregating the public schools according to “readiness-to-learn”.  In other words, the most troubled and challenging kids are being dumped via various mechanisms into a smaller and smaller number of schools.

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        One of the best examples of this phenomenom is the recently hailed MATCH school, which was cited for getting all 30 or so of its’ seniors into college.  Regrettably the article failed to mention that the original class had something like 90 kids, but that 60 of them either dropped out or were asked to leave. 

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        So how come all those kids on the waiting list weren’t immediately asked to fill those spots?  Because the entire idea of a “waiting list” is a charade.  No one just “walks” into a charter school.  You have to be “selected”.

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