Reply to Lee Montessori for Black Children

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Bump - still waiting to hear what Lee’s response has been and what they Have planned to address this mess. [/quote]

What's the "mess"? Lee is judged according to its PMF score. Even IF it completely under serves black children or special ed children or any particular group, it will do fine on the PMF because those children are not a large part of its student body. Lee was approved to expand even though its PARCC scores are below average for all kids. Parents value Montessori programs and it may be that test scores for Lee aren't truly reflective of what students know and can do.

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Do you think the way they calculate the PMF score will change after the embarrassment of several Tier 1 charters getting low 3 stars?  [/quote]

The PMF is revised periodically anyway.  I expect it will change to place more empahsis on performance of at-risk kids.  It's embarrassing to the whole sector that at-risk kids at supposedly Tier 1 schools are not performing better.  See the data presented by TenSquare at a recent meeting.

Tier 3 schools tend to lose their high-income parents, especially if they get wind of a possible shutdown, so they are unlikely to still be a high-income school by the time their review year rolls around.[/quote]

Which tier 3 schools are/were high income?[/quote]

I can only think of Breakthrough but I'm not an expert.[/quote]

The churn of low-performing charters opening and closing is not something high-income people will tolerate.  Only low-income families are expected to put up with being experimented upon.  I am aghast at the recent charter failures (Monument, Sustainable Futures for example) and also at the dubious and shaky new starts that have been authorized.  Enough already.[/quote]

Monument was founded for children in foster care and homeless children. Sustainable Futures for dropouts with a focus on high at-risk, unemployed and homeless. The reality is that high income families are not seeking these kinds of schools.[/quote]

That's not the point.  The point is that vulnerable children and struggling young adults were treated very poorly by badly mismanaged charter schools.  So badly that both voluntarily closed because they knew their problems were insurmountable.  People WOTP wouldn't tolerate that kind of mismanagement for their children.  The DCPSCB is willing to entrust vulnerable children to incompetent, under-prepared rookie leaders who have no idea what they're doing.  They wouldn't treat high-SES children so badly.  This kind of experimentation, upheaval, and failure is reserved for the poor.[/quote]

Those poor children and families were treated poorly by the existing system. That's why Sustainable students were at Sustainable because there was no place else for them and when they were someplace else, they weren't served well. The overall results of more affluent schools hide what is happening with the poor and struggling students in those schools. The schools may be considered "well-managed" but if your child is homeless or particularly troubled, they are not. I agree with you that the DCPCSB needs to better vet people who would start charters and do much greater monitoring in the first five years (or longer) but I also believe that the DCPCSB needs to examine what is happening with vulnerable students across all charter schools - including the ones that are considered well-managed and high performing. You are also correct that high SES families don't experience the churn, upheaval and failure of their schools - even if they are badly mismanaged (LAMB) - and certainly not if they are only badly managed as evidenced by results for the at-risk/minority kids (Lee Montessori).

Think about it -- the at-risk results at some of the so-called "highest performing" charters are lower than the results of charters that have been closed. So while you may be right that the DCPCSB is willing to entrust  vulnerable children to rookies, the DCPCSB is also willing to entrust vulnerable children to supposedly competent people who are doing little to nothing for vulnerable children so long as the schools are primarily serving the affluent. 
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