A sampling of lawmakers suggests there is no consensus on whether or not to lift the cap on the number of charter schools in the state. Gov. Patrick has argued that doffing the charter cap will help the Commonwealth garner federal Race to the Top funds.
“Even without this bill, I think Massachusetts can put in a spectacular application given everything that’s been going on in this state,”
Rep. Joyce Spiliotis (D-Peabody) said the pressure to get a bill done in time for a Jan. 19 may cause more harm than good. She said that even if the bill wins Massachusetts federal dollars, those funds would dry up in a year.
“Boston will probably get about $30 million,” she said, noting that the rest of the state would receive far less.”
Mark
Please share widely!
No new Charter schools should be funded until the Circuit Breaker is funded at FY 2007 levels (about 70%)or higher. The Circuit Breaker is the complicated formula that the state uses to reimburse local school districts for Special Education costs. That reimbursement has gone from over 70% in FY07 to about 40% in FY10 and it’s heading down. That doesn’t mean that Special Education costs have gone down. They’ve gone up over the past few years, and it’s a state mandate to fund these increases. Imagine that, an unfunded state mandate. And you thought that wasn’t allowed. The result of this is that non-mandated programs (like teacher’s jobs) get cut instead.
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p>What does this have to do with Charter Schools you may ask. Well, Charter Schools have been busy siphoning off the non-special education and non-ELL (English Language Learner) students from the public schools. They like these students because it keeps their test scores higher, and frankly they don’t have programs that allow them to deal with these students successfully. The result is that the public schools must educate the most needy children with fewer and fewer resources, while the increasing number of Charter schools educate a very different population of students that they skim from the public schools.
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p>Just for the record, I’m in favor of any type of school, public, private, charter, religious or any combination of these, that shows it can teach all kinds of students so that they learn at a high level. When I say all kinds of students I mean regular education students, special education students, ELL students, students of color, students of poverty and immigrant students.
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p>When Charter Schools are mandated to reflect the population of the community in which they exist, and they can demonstrate student learning at at a level at least commensurate with the local public school, then they should be fully funded. Not until.
wanted to respond to your comment, but thought maybe some perspective on where you’re coming from and what you hear at the kitchen table would help…
for over 30 years in many different kinds of districts ranging from the South Shore to rural Western Massachusetts, to the Worcester area and the MetroWest suburbs.
so when you worked in the worcester public schools, which is certainly a high poverty district, did you think that the typical school there was doing a good job?
Some of those schools are doing what I consider heroic work with student populations of enormous need. Others less so. Overall the Worcester Public Schools is a decent urban public school system. Seven Hills Charter by comparison is a disaster. Worcester could be better. The model, I think, for an urban district is Richmond, VA.
The DESE’s new Growth Model (http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/mcas.aspx)shows how well the Worcester Public Schools perform when measured against similar populations of students. Growth Model scores are expressed in percentiles and are a measure of how well a school district’s population grew in comparison to students at similar achievement levels. Worcester Public Schools students grew at an above average rate, 55% in English Language Arts and 54% in Mathematics. By comparison Seven Hills students grew at 34.5% in ELA and 42% in Math. Wellesley students also grew at the same rate as Worcester (55% in ELA and 54% in Mathematics). Now this is only one measure of how well a student population is doing, but it’s the best way to compare schools in Massachusetts to one another.
and thanks for the link.
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p>i followed it and looked some stuff up.
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p>there were several charters that did pretty well on the growth model.
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p>for example, in grade 8, out of several hundred middle schools in massachusetts, 8 of the top 10 were charters.
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p>same with grade 7, grade 6….in fact, just click on “SGP” twice and you’ll see that charters absolutely dominate this stat.
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p>high schools too.
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p>if you think “growth model is the best way to compare schools…”, would you cede that at least some charters in MA are stellar?
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p>got no reason to assume anything negative about you, jim.
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p>in other bmg exchanges, though, with folks with their minds made up against charters, my experience has been if they state a measurement they’re comfortable with….and then it turns out to show charters did well on it…
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p>boom suddenly that measurement is HUGELY problematic and really means NOTHING at all.
But what you failed to notice is that many of the schools that score outside of the 40-60 range do so because of a small sample size and select student populations.
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p>What is most informative is when you compare Charters that exist within a district such as Global Charter and the New Bedford District which serve somewhat of the same population. Both the Charter and the public district had similarly below average growth scores.
the growth model also suggests something good seems to be happening in newburyport public schools….worth examining…
ridiculous. Most of us know the limitations of state tests, but they were created in large part to compare schools. We all fall back on them, mostly because they are accessible and other factors are less than tangible.
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p>Charter schools were created in part to make public schools look bad. That may have not been your mission, but it was etched in stone law that they are innovative. Early proponents argued that charter schools would provide “competition” that would lead public schools to better performance.
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p>I just read a decent article in Kappan based on Linda Darling-Hammond’s new book. I think she does a good job of pointing out that there should be standards for learning, standards for opportunity to learn, and standards of practive. She calls for effective assessment, tests that don’t lead to the perverse incentive to dumb down the curriculum, which happens now.
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p>She also says, as I have said before, that we have to pay more attention to the inputs of learning, the kids and the communities that produce them, and stop pretending we get a complete picture of everything.
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p>She also started a charter school or two, if I’m not mistaken.
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p>What I wanted to know was: is the proposed charter funding system better or worse for anyone? Would the lower payments in later years harm charter schools with almost 2/3 attrition.
My wife doesn’t teach.
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p>What I know about urban schools, which is limited, and about area schools such as those in Springfield, comes from people I know and hire and college students I have taught.
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p>Uh, no. We had to trim over $1 million dollars last month. One. Million. Dollars. Chapter 71 reimbursement, for us is currently at 29 percent. Our transportation costs are roughly $4 million a year, half of which is associated with special ed.
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p>So, no, the state did not “put money back” at all–and refuses to acknowledge that a cut in Chapter 71 is, in real effect, a cut in Chapter 70 funding.
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p>There is legislation pending that would roll 71 into 70, which would help as long as the funding formula for regionals approximates the historical transportation reimbursement percentage of about 85 to 90 percent. Remember, the state is responsible for 100 percent of these costs. We do not, however, favor an amendment that Sen. Brewer is supporting that would allow districts to charge parents for the difference.
live, but we were turned down by area schools. My town has 7,000 people,and we are surrounded by growing communities twice the size. Given the eventual prices of fuel, and the (un)cooperation of the state, it may be better that we aren’t able to regionalize.
but I think what you’re saying is you were interested in regionalizing with a neighboring district but solicited no interest. Yeah, I have to say until the Commonwealth starts actually putting dollars behind their pro-regionalizing rhetoric, you folks are better off.
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p>Interestingly, my district, the largest region in the Commonwealth, has had an invite to “chat” from another neighboring town of about 7,000 interesting in finding a mate. We’ll be looking at the pros and cons after the holidays. It’s immensely, extraordinarily, horrifically difficult to think about adding a town to our five-town region, but there may be benefits…… We’ll see; it’ll be interesting.
I remember the Silver Lake-Pembroke “divorce” ended up with a great deal of bitterness, and was caused by the unwieldy reality of making four towns happy…can’t imagine doing that with six.
but we’ve been at it a long time–the first region ever in the state established in 1950. It’s hard but we’ve managed to make it work with student performance in the top 10 percent in the state and PPE in the bottom 10 percent. This will be an interesting ride if it amounts to anything. I can see some advantages and some room for creativity, but I’m not sure my brand of innovation is exactly in keeping with the District’s….