Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional NYT article: lack of disabled students at charters

Yep. There is very little in that (admittedly somewhat biased) piece which is technically untrue.

I'm not sure that the overall effect is fully truthful, because the author has (IMO having spent the past 6y looking at the gears and being part of the machine) done just as much cherry-picking as those that she's spearing.

But yes, I think that more careful scrutiny of some practices in this particular genre of charter school is in order. Long overdue, in point of fact.

When your marketing and lobbying expenses exceed your budget for professional development for your teachers... uhhhhhh... yeah. Something not right about that.

A list of textbooks used at the Basis school in Tuscon is at https://www.basisschools.org/phocadownload/2011tucson%20book%20list.pdf . They look suitable for gifted children, not the general population. In 12 grade there is

Angels in America by Tony Kushner

Cat On a Hot Tin Roof by Tennesee Williams

Death of a Salesman by Henry Miller

Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen

Fundamentals of Differential Equations and
Boundary Value Problems, Volume 1

Gravity, by James Hartle

Introduction to Electrodynamics

Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill

Miss Julie by August Strindberg

Principles of Quantum Mechanics

Rent by Jonathan Larson

South Pacific by Rogers and Hammerstein

Top Dog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks

Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee

West Side Story by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard
Berstein

That doesn't seem that out of line with fairly average AP offerings, though.

(I say that as a parent who has just seen the AP Literature list for next year.)

HowlerKarma-

The charter movement was originally intended as a way to free up public schools from some of the requirements that kept it from experimenting with new educational styles. By allowing a school to hire, as an example, an accomplished artist or a professional research scientist, rather than someone with a BA and a credential, schools could tinker with some changes and be free from some Ed.Code rules. They could try an adapted Montessori model, or Waldorf, or focus on group projects or IB, what have you. It was designed as an experimentation model to find successful other ways that could then be applied to traditional schools. It was never intended to be an us vs. them or an either or model.

For example, I spent two years as a teacher trainer at a technical high school that was specifically designed to take kids coming out of juvenile hall or probation and to give them a career. They were not kids who were going to college (for the most part) or kids who had big hopes and dreams. Our entire goal was to give them a GED and skills that paid better than selling drugs. Our Construction Management program was run by a guy with 40 years in the industry and he had his own company, hiring most of the graduates out as an apprentice.

It worked and it worked well. In the 4 years the school was in existence, every single kid passed the CAHSEE (exit exam in CA) or got their GED and not one of them returned to juvenile hall in the time we tracked them. In a tragic turn of events for these kids, the district shut us down because our AYP was not satisfactory. Moving a bunch of kids from far below basic to basic and giving them jobs, does not help AYP. You need kids in proficient and advanced to do that.

I don't think that experimentation, creativity and student focus is coming out of most for-profit, nationally run charters. It defeats the entire purpose of boots on the ground local control. If the principal has no budgetary control, the teachers report to someone in another state and there are 15+ schools in the network it is just a large, bureaucratic school district.

That's not to say it doesn't work for some kids. I have heard great things about Connections for being flexible with gifted kids, compacting and accelerating students as necessary. (Not so much with k12). But they also seem to have local hands-on people that are more in touch with the kids, in addition to the upper levels of bureaucracy. I don't know if it's a sustainable financial model in the long run. I got offered a job with k12 and just about died laughing when they offered me $23,000 to work full-time in California, with several years of experience and three credentials under my belt.

The often left out dialogue of the charter debate is that the schools are often non-union. This gives the teachers' unions fodder to fight against new charters, even if the school is helping kids, doing well and serving the population better than their current employers. Some charters pay horribly (example above!) while others pay the same or better than their neighboring school districts. My long-time employer pays 6% less than the district. However, when you add in the union dues that we don't pay, the matching 403B account my employer provides and the $500 gift card for class supplies at the beginning of the year, it comes out pretty close. In good years, my school has also paid for conferences, teacher training, units beyond your credential at the university level and stipends for mentoring new teachers.

Charters are like gifted kids- if you've seen one, you've seen ONE. And that's the intention.

This is absolutely the case at my daughter's charter school. The entrance requirements are already pretty high, FSIQ 130+ to even be considered for the lottery. They have a sibling policy, but the sib has to also have minimum scores to get a spot.

My DS is 2E . His processing speed was so low that he missed the FSIQ. His GAI was much higher than the minimum, and he had previously diagnosed LDs that would clearly effect the low subtests, but they still refused to consider him. The tester, a 2E specialist, said she thought he was HG and an intelligent reading of the subtests supported that. But according to this school, if you have fine motor problems so severe that you can barely hold a pencil and as a result, you can't make marks in boxes at a high rate of speed, then you are not gifted enough for their precious program, Sigh.

They did eventually reconsider and offered him a spot, but with the same hemming and hawing that I am hearing from others in this thread..... Well we don't offer OT..... He might not be a good fit for our program, he might struggle..... and my personal favorite, Don't you think you should leave the spot for a child who could really benefit from our program? A person well know on the internet for writing about giftedness (but has zero experience with 2E as best I can figure) is on their BOD and called me at one point. Told me I should just homeschool DS. I am thinking, but I don't WANT to homeschool. I want to send my gifted son to the same school his gifted older sister attends, but I can't because, first, you would not let me and then second, you scared me into thinking the experience would scar the child for life.

So after homeschooling for a year, I sent DS to ANOTHER charter school. This one seems to specialize in quirky kids. When I stopped by to tour the school, I was basically told, yes, quirky is what we do. Bring it on! And they have done a great job. He has an IEP for OT and gets a little bit of one on one tutoring for fluency issues. They use MAP scores for academic placement so he has a two year grade skip for math, close to that for reading and does spelling with the kids a year younger (well not anymore, he is at grade level now. But that is where he started the year.). His achievement scores were all stellar this year, comparable to his sister's, and exactly what you would expect from an HG kid.

So just in my personal experience, I have found radically different attitudes toward LDs from the two charters my family has been involved with. With my daughter's school, they just don't want to bother with 2E kids. Test scores are not even an issue because of the IQ requirement. But they have extensive enrichment programming and my sense is that they want to keep the focus and the money there. The waiting list is long, so they are never hurting for students. So why bother with serving 2E or high poverty students, for that matter? Other than the fact that it is probably not legal, but whatever....

My son's school welcomes all children and attempts to meet them where they are. I think it is hilarious that the school with the mediocre tests scores and no official gifted program is actually better at ability grouping than the school that is supposed to focus on kids with unique and intense learning needs, but that is probably discussion for another thread.

This must vary by area. There are a LOT of charters in my city. I know a LOT of kids in them. None of these kids would have gone to privates or "other districts" otherwise. Zip. I know hmm, I guess two families who use private school. It isn't the done thing in my circle.

There are 100+ students who are supposed to be enrolled in our zoned elementary school of 350ish kids (which is bad, bad, bad) who are not going there, including my own child. This does NOT include kids who are in private schools or in another district (unheard of here--our district is very big and to go to the next one over would never be an option--very rural). No, all these kids are in charters or magnets or their parents have somehow finagled a zoning exemption (rare). They are the kids of parents who have decided to fight for their kids' education. They would probably make a big difference to that school if they went to it.

While I know for sure that we are not "siphoning" anything from anyone...

after all, we'd otherwise be homeschooling--

most of my DD's classmates are NOT from homeschooling backgrounds. Most of them are from public schools in their own districts.

So yeah-- they constitute a loss of $$ for their home district. We're the seeming exception there, in that our enrollment results in a small amount going to our district that used to simply stay as a windfall at the state level.

In that sense, cyber-charters are GOOD for districts if they can enroll previously homeschooled children. But they can be very, very bad for districts which are already struggling (rural ones especially, but also inner city schools that need every "good, rule-following" kid they can GET).

NCMom2, in nearly every state in the country, charter schools are prohibited from discriminating based on ability, academic or athletic etc. there are some schools that have special provisions but they are few and far between and require special legislation to do so. The Davidson Academy, for example, is one that has authorization for ability requirements. However, pilot schools, magnet schools and other school within a school models have completely different state and federal regulations. Here is a definition from NY http://www.p12.nysed.gov/psc/about.html

Ultramarine, I do realize this varies in different areas. However, statistically, in CA where I live, charter school students were leaving predominantly poor performing schools and are leaving anyway, either through demanded parent choice, moving, private school or charters. In addition, the charters in CA that are dependent are required to pay the district a portion of the ADA for students that they have lost. Charter schools get less money per pupil because of this. Also, it is often left out of the discussion that one less, or ten less, kids are not only a loss of funds but a loss of responsibility. The traditional school no longer needs to buy books, pay a teacher or an aide or an administration portion, for that kid.

It has been my overwhelming observation over many areas and years in charter politics that parents don't opt out of successful schools. They leave failing ones, either because it is failing the individual child or the group as a whole. If Traditional schoolsacross the board were doing a better job, parents wouldn't feel the need to seek alternatives. This is equally applicable for students with LDs or 2e issues. People don't fix what isn't broken.

NCMom the school you reference must have a special exemption, is working outside the law or these are old state rules because this is pretty clear that they can't have a preference for IQ nor can they even ask IEP status before the lottery.

http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/docs/charterschools/faq/enrollment-lottery.pdf

Yes, special exemption. My understanding, the school got the charter early on. Once people figured out that it involved IQ testing, heads exploded. I think there was a court case. The resolution was that the school remains, but there will never be another one like it in NC.

They don't ask about IEP status, but it is pretty clear from DS's scatter that he has LDs. I was also asking for them to use his GAI, not the FSIQ, which is the norm, for entrance due to his LD status.