Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Devos Confirmation

As Val has noted above, it is commonplace for charter schools to elicit information about disability (and about academic ability, too) from prospective students, in spite of the questionable legality of such practices in a public school. Every school-of-choice I ever spoke with asked those questions about my child. Private, charter, out-of-district/zone, and online-- and most wanted to have the conversation in person, even when I'd made my inquiries in writing-- presumably so that they knew I'd have no proof it had occurred.


We have not applied to Davidson, but I expect that the application there has criteria which are rather clearly explained in terms of which students are eligible to apply.

Beyond that, I seriously doubt that Davidson is ignoring the applications of some children who meet those criteria. Charter schools which are run by educators seldom suffer from this type of problem (again, in my experience). It is mostly those in the for-profit sector which do.

Some charters have also been dinged in my own region for cherry-picking students from higher SES, which no doubt helps when it comes time to raise funds. That might explain why some such schools don't seem to struggle with funding the way that their conventional brethren do.

But the big one is that they can exempt themselves from providing pricey "services" to eligible students with IEP's. Well. Not legally. But they do seem to have a disturbing pattern of doing just that.

Let's put it this way-- if your child were attending a "school of choice" and didn't have something very basic, very fundamental-- like a chair, or any learning materials in their own language-- how long would you put up with that before just... leaving? You know-- your CHOICE. That's what I've seen happen to a lot of 2e and disabled students in charter schooling. The student's needs just get ignored, or parents get excuses about poor staffing, so-sorry-too-busy-for-a-meeting-maybe-next-month, etc. etc.

High turnover is the biggest red flag in charter schools-- and it's a figure that most charters are very secretive about, in my experience.




I am curious to learn exactly how the magic of privatization is supposed to result in a functional system of education in a broad sense-- can anyone explain why they think it is an idea with a high chance of success?

Yes, I understand that although her children attended private school, she did not ignore the problems in the local public schools; Members of the family have donated millions to the Grand Rapids public schools over the years.

I see an inherent clash in the requirements being discussed on the forum today:

- On one hand, schools are not to ask for demographic information. (Thank you, Val, for posting this link.)

- On the other hand, schools are to collect demographic information, into the Statewide Longitudinal Data System.

- When demographic information exists for a particular student in the SLDS, the ability must exist to share data from preschool through postsecondary education data systems. Therefore it appears that other schools to which a student applies would have access to this data.

The specific data to be collected and stored is: US DoE factsheet, July 2009.


While DeVos might inherit this, it was created under a different administration.

Asking for demographic data from enrolled students is one thing and is legal. The data is used to analyze student outcomes.

Asking for it from applicants and using it to make admissions decisions isn't legal, yet some charters appear to do so.


You may wish to consider using this as a tagline so as to avoid retyping it every time.

I would want more information, including:
- how does one prove the allegation that information collected for the SLDS was utilized to make admissions decisions?
- what incentive is there for a student/family to provide demographic information for the SLDS, once enrolled?
- is there a law which specifies the timing of collecting demographic data into the SLDS?
- for students whose data already exists in the SLDS, how is that data safeguarded from other schools, when there is a requirement that it must be shared?

In my observation and experience, our local public school district requires this demographic information plus a record of immunizations up-front, even for a visiting homeschool student who would like to shadow for a day. As I recall, school security and knowing who is in the building were the reasons given.

The current US public education system was created under a different administration. It remains to be seen how much DeVos might change the US Department of Education, and how much the US Department of Education might change her.

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2017/01/portland_schools_hit_with_civi.html

Clearer, yet?

Ahh, pet peeve of mine. There is actually a big heap of research about the fact that school quality is directly correlated to the human factor - teachers, students, and to the extent they can be considered separately from students, parents.
The one thing that administrations can control is teachers. Apparently they are making a fairly poor job if it, but there are some system wide problems with that, which I will get to later.
The one biggest determining factor in how a student will do, though, is parental SES level if the student. The one biggest factor in how a school will do, on aggregate, is student SES level on aggregate.
If poverty levels in a school, on aggregate, go up, outcome goes down. Inexorably. Researchers have tried to determine a tipping point, somewhere between 20 and 40%, and the downturn accelerates. Someone's got the statistics for Detroit schools?
(I offer no citations, btw, I'm on a train, feel free anyone to offer up alternative facts).
There is also a huge heap of research on why private schools tend to do better than public schools. Turns out again that if you control for parental SES levels, they don't do better at all. Only they just tend to happen to have higher parental SES, duh.
Privatization as such means NOTHING.
Choosing a good school means, first and foremost, choosing a school with high parental SES levels on aggregate. By residential selection, testing into magnets, going private, whatever you do, that's what you are doing she trying to find a good school.
So if you have a lot of residential segregation, lots of school choice with the attendant power given to high SES parents, high SES families will cluster I one set of schools and low SES levels families will cluster in another. Which is what has been happening for decades in most industrialized countries and which accelerates when power is given to parents who can actually wield that power. Not sure what school exactly a poor family in Detroit should choose, if they are trying to find a school which is not majority low SES. As long as you have a system that creates high poverty schools, you will have poor schools.

There is one systematic factor that researchers have found that high performing national school systems have in common, which is a seamless system aligning content taught in schools, content tested in schools, content tested and or expected in higher education access, content (and the teaching of that content) taught in teacher training. So, for complete local control, every single district needs to design their own curricula, run their own teacher training college, create their own testing, and somehow aligns that for ease of access with the expectations of higher education institutions across the country.

Sounds reasonable? Not to me.
Maybe there IS a place for higher centralized control of intakes, content, testing and teacher training,

Tigirle what is SES level?

socioeconomic status

Interesting reading:

https://www.johnlocke.org/update/why-do-liberals-send-their-children-to-private-school/