Comments on: Go back to the Governor’s bill

By: mischievous_blogger

mischievous_blogger — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:10:09 +0000

[salty dog] “fair share”
[ed] “my property tax”

both of you should take some time (if it’s not too much of a burden or too expensive that is), and get yourselves to a lottery.
watch the parents.
watch the children watching their parents.

and leave your:
resentments
bogus data
and prejudices

at the door.

By: Jim Stergios

Jim Stergios — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:32:17 +0000

Salty – Won’t repeat the arguments on performance discussed elsewhere. You know that charters with high levels of poor minorities do better than district schools with similar populations. See 2006 DOE report and the Boston Foundation report from early 2009. You can’t change those facts, so you obfuscate. Some of the charters serving inner city kids in Boston outperform Weston and Wellesley.

Charter operators receive on average $9400 in per-pupil support; they receive $893 per pupil for facilities. District schools which also send students to charters in substantial numbers receive $13,400 per student, in addition to School Building Assistance program support from the Treasurer’s office, which amount on average to much more than $893 per student when annualized. The difference in the amounts is in part because there are more SPED and ELL students in district schools, and in great part because the districts receive 100 percent, 60 percent and 40 percent of the amount sent to a charter school when students select into a charter. That is, they receive funding for phantom students.

You know that very well, so I won’t belabor the point.

By: SaltyDog

SaltyDog — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:07:13 +0000

RE: “The bill goes beyond defining what is a good marketing effort for special needs and English language learners. It establishes, in effect, quotas for these select groups. That is not fair, because charters serve a much higher number of African-American and Hispanic students (50 to 22%) and low-income students (44 to 30%) than district schools.”

These numbers are irrelevant and misleading! The facts are simple: charters enroll many fewer low income students than do the districts in which they are sited (47% vs. 60%) They enroll LEP kids at a very low rate compared to the district from which they draw students (4.1% vs 14.7%). They enroll low rates of SPED(12%vs 20%). And charter enroll minorities at only the same rate as their host district (about 50% in each case; all numbers from 2008-09 DESE enrollment data).

It is perfectly fair and appropriate to ask charters to take up the same special needs burden as those districts from which they siphon tuition revenue. Particularly because that tuition is paid to them in proportion to the additional costs born by these district in addressing the heavier concentrations of poor and other special needs kids.

Here’s what’s bizzare and wholly unfair: charters get extra revenue in proportion to the extra expenditures born by districts with whom they compete: the more traditional schools are required to spend on mandated special needs programs, the more revenue is provided to the local charter school–that is providing for fewer kids that need these same services!

Comparing charters to districts that don’t have charters (wealthier districts) in order to claim that charters are educating a fair share of low income and special needsd kids is pretty pathetic.