I've been trying to focus my commentary about why we in Massachusetts should vote no on question 2 and keep the charter school cap on easily-verifiable data. (Find my previous posts on this issue here and here.)
But I want to talk a little about my experience working in a charter school.
I spent 3 years working in a Boston charter high school in the late 90's/early 2000's. Here are some things that happened during that time.
I worked in the English department, and we had two high-stakes assessments that students needed to pass in order to move on to the next grade. One was a timed writing assessment. This was given in the spring, and students had two or three chances before the end of the school year to pass it.
The other was "juries." We would give a student a poem or a paragraph, and they'd have a certain period of time to mark it up, and then they'd have to come in and face a "jury" of a staff member and some people from the community. They would read the poem, and then we would grill them with questions about it.We would score them on a rubric, and if they didn't pass, they would have to go to summer school.
This was true no matter what their grade in my class had been. Does it make pedagogical sense to have summer school hinge on a high-stakes, ten-minute performance on a task that depends at least in part on skills not explicitly taught in the class? I would argue that it does not. But this is what we did. And we patted ourselves on the back for our awesome rigor. And also played havoc with families' schedules.
Because not only were some students who had passed English being sent to summer school, but students who planned ahead for their summers were punished. They would have to move around summer job schedules and family vacations. The school literally would put kids who had successfully passed all the work in my class in the position of having to choose between visiting family in the Dominican Republic (for example) and passing English.
Perhaps this is one reason why our senior class always had half the number of students who had started as ninth graders. This is still true in many Massachusetts charter schools. This is why it bothers me when pro-charter hedge fund guys describing themselves as brave fighters for educational equity: charters subject their low-income students to things that wealthy parents would simply never put up with.
As it turns out, a lot of parents agree with hedge-fund managers that charter schools are not the best choice for their own children. So a lot of students leave.
And, of course, students are also counseled out.
Charter schools will tell you they don't do this. This is a lie. I sat in the meetings and was complicit in this happening. It was done with this veneer of kindness and concern--"we see that you have needs that we're not going to be able to meet here. We know of a great program at West Roxbury High School [or wherever]where they can give you the support you need. We really enjoy having you here, and we don't want you to leave, but more than anything we want you to succeed, and we just feel like you'll have a better chance of success somewhere else."
This, of course, is illegal as well as unethical. It also gives lie to the charter assertion that they are better schools--charters themselves tell certain students that they will be better served elsewhere.
Most importantly, though: this damages children. I know: I watched them cry in the meetings. Just imagine what it does to you to be told that you're very lucky to be in the best possible school, except, actually no, not you, because this incredibly awesome school doesn't serve people as broken as you.
I can't prove this happened. I don't have any records, and though I remember some names of the students in question, it would be neither legal nor ethical for me to reveal them.
But it happened. I would swear to it in a court of law. If anyone on the other side asserts that it doesn't, they are lying.
Please vote no on Question 2.
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