In 41 cities, charter students learn significantly more than similar students in traditional public schools, according to a new report by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO. The average gain was the equivalent of 40 more days of learning in math, and 28 more in reading.If you talk about the achievement gap but don’t support charter schools despite their proven success, you’re really just interested in touting your liberal bona fides rather than actually having children learn.
Disadvantaged students — blacks, Latinos, English Learners, low-income and special-education students — gained the most. Whites did worse in urban charters than in traditional schools.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Do You Really Care About The Achievement Gap?
From Joanne:
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We were told in the faculty meeting that we will be working toward "cultural sensitivity" in our application of rules and expectations. This led my African American coworker to go nuts because she said it's the worst kind of racism to assume that black kids just can't meet behavioral standards. The problem is that we have a demographic groups of black males who are in trouble and (no surprise here) failing classes and standardized tests. We have provided free tutoring, after school snacks, transportation and now have even adapted the schedule where tutoring can occur during our block lunches in the middle of the day. Guess what-those kids WILL NOT COME. All they want to do is hang out and listen to rap songs and fight. Sorry, but that is the case. Other kids say this, including other African American kids. They are tired of the situation and of these students who are perpetually in trouble and who disrupt classes daily. Yet instead of using some more serious discipline, our solution is to not punish black kids for the same things other kids do wrong.
The same is true for some black parents - those whose kids' education is harmed by the disruption and the ridicule directed at the whole concept of academic success. One of my son's friends was in this unhappy situation, at a school in an affluent suburb which had a SES-integration program which brought in "families" from the inner cities. The son of affluent professionals who owned their home in the district, he was targeted as an "oreo" (and worse) - and he adopted the "willful defiance", bad language, lack of cooperation with rules and refusal to do academic work to such effect that his parents sent him to a Catholic school. He had also been kicked off his elite soccer team for the same behaviors. Fortunately, the new school got him back on track - but his parents were most unhappy that their efforts to buy a house in a good school district, even though it made their work commute longer, came at such cost - in money, time and family harmony.
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