What's it like to be in a new charter school in its first year?
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Anonymous
OP, please don't give up on Charters based on one bad apple. Only one school is producing these issues. There are several very good charters that don't have this type of strife. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
I'm a parent at a first year charter (IT) and I don't see sniping. Or if there is, I'm not involved. I focus on my child and classroom and ignore the politics. I see much more potential for change and excellence at the charters than I do at the DCPS. With leadership IN THE BUILDING, it's easy for changes to be made and voices to be heard. Not so much for a system as populated, historic, and expansive as the DC Public Schools. |
Anonymous
It's actually a great apple! The downside of attracting high-performing children from high-expectation families is that it's a highly demanding situation. This school is comparable to a private school in many ways - and "parent management" is one of them. Have a look at the private schools forum to see what you're wading into. Hyper-competitive... At the end of the day, there are only a handful of schools in the country that offer this kind of experience. Plus, the vast majority of families are wonderful. Good luck to you, OP. |
Anonymous
| Why would charters have a higher percentage of high-performing kids (if that is indeed true)? They are open to all residents on an equal basis, and most are not in the tony parts of town. |
Anonymous
| PP here, with a p.s. Does it really make a big difference in the early years if your bright kid has two vs, ten high-achieving classmates? I had read that studies had shown that bright kids do well regardless of the context. |
Anonymous
What does this question have to do with this topic? |
Anonymous
| 12:27, first year charter schools are rarely able to fill all slots in all classes so to some degree you get a self-selected group of families. |
Anonymous
http://tcf.org/publications/pdfs/pb571/kahlenbergsoa6-15-06.pdf The highly regarded Coleman Report of the 1960s found that, after the influence of the family, the socioeconomic status of a school is the single most important determinant of a student’s academic success. The basic findings of the report—that all children do better in middle-class schools—have been affirmed again and again in the research literature. In 2005, for example, University of California professor Russell Rumberger and his colleague Gregory J. Palardy found that a school’s socioeconomic status had as much impact on the achievement growth of high school students as a student’s individual economic status. Throughout history and throughout time, low-income students typically have performed less well academically than middle-class children, but there is a striking exception: low-income students attending middle-class schools perform better, on average, than middle-class students in high-poverty schools. Scores from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) among fourth-grade students in math indicate that low-income students in more affluent schools score eight points higher (more than half a grade level) than middle-class students in high-poverty schools. All students—low income and middle class—perform relatively poorly in high-poverty schools, but are middle-class students hurt by the presence of some low-income students in majority middle-class schools? The evidence suggests that they are not. Research finds that the numerical majority of students set the tone in a school; so long as concentrations of poverty do not reach above the 50 percent level, the academic achievement of middle-class students does not decline. Research also finds that middle-class students, on average, are less affected (for good or ill) by school environment than low-income students. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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This is 12:27/12:33. Thank you, 13:35, for the link. I don't have a reference handy (I could try and dig it up later), but I had read something that suggested quite the opposite: that bright students excelled at all kinds of schools. This seemed right to me on an intuitive level, given how many self-taught or very minimally schooled geniuses grew up on the American frontier, for example. And I personally know several very smart people who went to terrible schools and nevertheless excelled.
In the case of this report, my immediate thought was that a lot of the stats being quoted are a matter of correlation rather than causation. Some statements in the report itself seem to bear that out: "While a small portion of high-poverty schools that have charismatic principals and especially dedicated teachers have proven to be successful, the overwhelming majority of high-poverty schools struggle." and "Most everything that educators talk about as desirable in a school—high standards, good teachers, active parents, adequate resources, a safe and orderly environment, a stable student and teacher population—are more likely to be found in middle-class schools than in schools with high concentrations of poverty." So, in other words, if a school with a poor population is blessed with a high-caliber principal, good teachers and/or more active parents, for example, the academic disparities are mostly or entirely erased. |