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- Garrett Academy, Wando, Military Magnet, School of the Arts, Academic Magnet, and James Island Charter: what are these schools doing right?
- Whatever it is, it is working. All have been recognized with a Palmetto Gold or Silver award for general performance, an honor granted to only 42 schools statewide.
- However, only one of these, Wando, is neither a charter nor a magnet school. Mmm. It's had the same principal for several years--is a lesson there?
- Maybe the state needs two lists--one for "regular" schools and another for charters and magnets. Yet, even though the magnets have skimmed most of the "cream" from CCSD's "regular" high schools, that does not excuse the rest from not closing the achievement gap. Magnets and charters cannot be blamed for failures there.
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7 comments:
Magnet and charter schools actually have to attract students. I think the moment school administrators have to see individual students as something more than statistical data, then students can respond more positively. Students aren't stupid. In Charleston County's regular schools, unlike with the magnets and charters, the administration has just sent out the word to not take individual students seriously. The results are obvious.
That is a ridiculous statement. As is the idea that you can take the top scorers from a particular school and not expect the average scores to decrease.
Facts:
1. James Island Charter school steers problematic middle school students away from enrolling. You may not wish to believe it but it is true. Look at their demographics today versus 8 or so years ago.
2. The Magnet, SOA, and Garrett remove students from their ranks if they begin the process of unsuccessful (Garrett removes students failing more than one class; SOA and the Magnet boot students who get below a B in core classes.
3. Military magnet is actually successful and does not boot their kids to the curb for academics (they do for discipline)
4. Wando has built-in demographics for success.
It is easy to attract the right kinds of students since they have artificially created programs that will, of course, succeed.
This is not to say that the Burkes, Stalls, NCs, St.Johns, etc... do not have work to do to try to catch up, but these wunder-schools are not successful because they are doing something right (and I do believe they doing many things right), but because they are not able to fail due to the conditions under which they operate.
That's reality.
Well said, 5:21 ! I couldn't have said it any better.
Here's the simplified math of reality.
A non-charter school has 20 students who score a collective 1600 points on a particular stadardized test (for simplicity) for an average of 80 per student; three of those students score 95, 92 and 90 and are taken out of the school by parents to be sent to a charter or magnet school. The average has now decreased to 77.7 for the remaining students. A decrease in scores at no decrease in school performance.
Now even if the school can get the remaining 17 students to score a percentage point higher (to 78.7, which is achievement growth), the community points to the school as having falling test scores, which of course it has not. The same students are there scoring the same or slightly better.
Because of the state report card rating decrease, NCLB causes five more students to leave, each which scored 85 (the reality is that higher achieving students leave failing schools since they likely have parental support and effort behind them). The original average of 80 is now 74.8. So if this school can help these students to improve their performance by 3 percentage points to 77.8 (a grand achievement), the school will now be censured for failing to show growth in achievement, while the schools that received the students (likely charters, magnets or already successful schools) will see an increase in scores (they received some of the better scorers in fact), and they did not have to do anything for that success.
Now this poor school goes through the ringer, loses the last group of stable scoring students due to bad press from the lovely P & C reporting, sees a decrease in gifted population and likely an decrease in high performing incoming students out of the feeder schools; which leads to a decrease in the effective skill level percentage of their entire student population.
Oh, and they will likely see an outflow of experienced teachers who burn out, no high-talent principal candidate wishes to touch the job, adn these poor kids are caught in a spiral of increased expectations and decreased resources.
This is why data is a dangerous tool. Those who believe they understand it and spout it do not, and those who do are afraid to call it like it is for fear of reprisal.
I actually agree with Anonymous 1:43 p.m. about the misuse of data.
However, parents who take their children out of a "regular" school to send them to a magnet or charter are not necessarily basing that on test scores.
I can speak only for myself. We moved here from Atlanta in Nov. 2004, and my daughter finished her 3rd grade year at Sullivan's Island Elementary. (This is a school rated Excellent by both CCSD and the state). After a couple of months, we knew we had to look for something better. This wasn't because my daughter didn't like the school - she was quite happy making A and A+ grades there. (As my husband pointed out, "Of course she's making all A's. She covered all this stuff in the 2nd grade back in Atlanta.") We were lucky enough to get her into East Cooper Montessori Charter School starting in 4th grade, and that was a far better choice *for her*. If you look only at the school report cards, you might conclude that SIE is the better school. I say phooey on that. We didn't move her because of the two schools' relative test scores - we moved her because we thought ECMCS (imperfect though it is) was a far better match for what we wanted in a school than SIE could ever be. We were right.
One thing Anonymous 1:43 doesn't mention is one possible concern of parents whose children are in a lower-rated school (it would definitely be my worry). It's not that I'm silly enough to think a lower-rated school has poorer teachers. What does concern me is that those teachers might be completely under the gun to raise test scores, so they'll pretty much ignore higher-scoring students. In other words, if a student makes all A's, does the teacher say, "Whew! I can stop worrying about her!" Or does the teacher say, "Obviously, she needs harder work, so I'll give her some." If they aren't doing the 2nd, then my kid is out of there.
I would agree with Clisby that the guiding tenet of NCLB is no child left behind; in other words teachers often must ignore the needs of the upper echelon to tend to the needs of the strugglers.
In the letter of the law, NCLB treats all students as the same, with the same needs, and they are not. They have different needs.
Just to be clear - I'm not entirely blaming NCLB for this. I'm almost 58 years old, and it was this way when I was in school. I was in junior high before I encountered even the SLIGHTEST academic challenge. I don't want that to happen to my children. Regardless of what their capabilities are, making an A should require some effort. Allowing a child to coast along, making all A's without working for them, is doing nobody any favors.
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