tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9025948832913694345.post7765933693140964173..comments2024-03-22T02:15:56.280-07:00Comments on Jersey Jazzman: How The Charter Cheerleading Industry Is Abetting The Destruction Of Public SchoolsDukehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16535645107179796099noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9025948832913694345.post-72420820457602001392016-08-02T11:05:41.486-07:002016-08-02T11:05:41.486-07:00Hi JJ, thanks for the alert that the blog posting ...Hi JJ, thanks for the alert that the blog posting has been recovered. <br /><br />Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that you and Julia Rubin and Bruce Baker sometimes look at charter school enrollment data and jump to conclusions about how many students are "lost" without paying adequate attention to grade-level retention. I wonder whether any of the 5th graders Julia cited as having been "lost" might instead have been retained, bumping up those 5th grade numbers, and successfully graduated in 5 years instead of 4. If your analyses do pay attention to the effects of grade-level retention, where do you find the NJ school-based grade-level retention data? I discussed this issue with a Colorado-based opponent of charter schools in the comments here without getting a convincing explanation of the validity of her calculations: https://themerrowreport.com/2016/03/18/evas-offensive/<br /><br />BTW, if you haven't read the Angrist and Setren papers I quote from below, I think you'll find them of interest; while focused on Boston schools their findings may have some helpful relevance to your analyses of what's transpiring in Newark.<br /><br />"Stand and Deliver: Effects of Boston’s Charter High Schools on College Preparation, Entry, and Choice" - Joshua Angrist, et al<br />http://economics.mit.edu/files/9799<br /><br />“Charter schools are sometimes said to generate gains by the selective retention of higher-performing students — see, e.g., Skinner 2009. In this view, charter effectiveness is at least partly attributed to a tendency to eject trouble-makers and stragglers, leaving a student population that is easier to teach.”<br />[…]<br />“These results suggest that positive charter effects cannot be attributed to low-quality peers leaving charter schools. If anything, selective exit of low achievers is more pronounced at Boston’s traditional public schools.”<br /><br />"Special Education and English Language Learner Students in Boston Charter Schools: Impact and Classification" - Elizabeth Setren<br />http://economics.mit.edu/files/11208<br />“Charters generate academic gains even for the most disadvantaged charter applicants. Special needs students who scored in the bottom third on their state exams in the year of the lottery experience large positive effects of over 0.22 standard deviations in math. English Language Learners with the lowest baseline English exam scores have the largest gains. Students with the most severe needs–special education students who spent the majority of their time in substantially separate classrooms and ELLs with beginning English proficiency at the time of the lottery–perform significantly better in charters than in traditional public schools.”<br /><br />“I also document striking differences in special needs classification practices in Boston charter and traditional public schools. Charter enrollment nearly doubles the likelihood that a student in special education at the time of the lottery loses this classification by the beginning of the following school year. Moreover, charters are three times as likely to remove an ELL classification. Charters are also three times more likely than traditional public schools to move special education students into general education classrooms."<br /><br />Best wishes. I thoroughly concur with your desire for the NJDOE to release far more detailed data. <br /> - StephenStephenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03647198428780707207noreply@blogger.com