IPS in tha same period with tens of thousands of students also moved their pas rate on both significiantly, over twelve percentage points.

As far as heritage language speakers go, CH may have a higher percentage of ethnic Hispanic/Latino, but that somehow amounts to being less than 30 actual out of 65 H/L who are categorized Limited English proficient, while two thirds of IPS heritage speakers are limited proficient.

CH, with an open enrollment/ lottery, seems to somehow have missed a measurable Spec. Ed. population and limited English proficiency, as well.

As far as ignoring the story goes, I have never read a headline in this town that heralded the rise in IPS pass rate in both areas, even though that is a lot harder to do with 37,000 students, many who come from our most disadvantaged neighborhoods. I do remember that the Star summarized the mayor’s schools as having no problems in the classroom, just administrative issues (which does not surprise, given the mayor’s performance as an administrator over all).

The report may point to some isssues, but they have never been printed or otherwise publicized here.

Posts in this blog have commented on keeping our eye on improvement. IPS has shown improvement, but with the harsh charter rhetoric savaging IPS, that story gets quashed.

I understand that CH has made gains. But I still don’t see them holding. Their 8th grade last year left with two years to go until GQE and they are regressing as a class, pass rate back to 57%. If the gains don’t hold, what then? And if they were to take that pass rate to GQE without any further slippage, then they would have, after all the fanfare and money diverted from traditional schools, a pass rate that looks a lot like IPS.

If you have data that show Christel House has a significantly lower percentage of limited English proficient students than IPS, please point me to it — the school has nearly twice the percentage of Hispanic students as IPS.

And you really think that the complaints about traditional public schools are NOT based on academic performance? Seriously?

Christel House has a 55.8 percent pass rate on both E/LA and math (not the or, the and) which I find more indicative of a complete education. If I want to find an IPS elementary with a math rate 55% or higher, I would have 34 to choose from. And some of them are near 100% poverty with many more ethnic minorities. Christel House does not reflect the ethinic diversity of IPS. It is nice they teach Spanish, but may want to consider Spanish speakers.

If the art, music, and foreign language get their due, then that is good. But again, the science pass rate is alarmingly low, and with that becoming a new element of high stakes school ratings, look out. It is ironic to hear a charter defense using the public school rationalizing that they teach so much more than what gets tested. When IPS does that, they get told they are wasting time on fads and fluff.

Like IPS, Christel House is stronger in lower grades, and older kids fade. I haven’t spent all day on it, but it appears to me that ISTEP strength wanes. IPS has its best numbers in the lower grades, too.

As for Christel House’s performance, you’re just off base. Its overall pass rate is 72.8% and it had 9.4% improvement. And you’re wrong that the school has a “less urban” population — it has a free/reduced lunch population of 81%. I’d add that if you think the school’s just teaching to the test, go check it out for yourself. My wife just did and came away very impressed with the school’s strong emphasis on art, music, and Spanish instruction.

But let’s be honest here. Most of the complaining about charters (at least in Indy) isn’t really about academic performance. Let’s just ask Al Wolting — he doesn’t like charters because they’re “taking our students, taking our money.” In other words, Al doesn’t fancy the fact that student leave unionized traditional public schools to non-union charters. He thinks those kids and the related funding are “ours” (i.e., his and his membership’s).

Of course, that’s nonsense. The money belongs to the public. And the kids don’t belong to anyone (the 13th Amendment sort of put an end to that). But at least he had a fit of honesty. Really, what kind of celebration would 99% of urban schools throw if they had Christel House’s performance one year. Where would they build the statue of the principal? What would the parade route be? Who would direct the Lifetime Original Movie?

However, while I would like better data on cohorts, AYP is based on students who were with the school at least 162 days the previous year. That is about the best we can do. However, the Indiana DOE website has an accountability section that includes year to year over time. It is possible to track from grade 3 to highest grade in a particualr school. This is imperfect, because we can’t measure true mobility, but it is the best we have.

Indy Charters show weakness over time, particlularly in grades 6 and up, and you know from other data that math is often the culprit.

Indy only has one truly urban district, IPS. Some of the surrounding townships have urban issues, but mostly form a suburban ring around old Center Township.

One of the oldest charters n town is Christel House. It has a demograhic that most would agree is less urban than the surrounding IPS schools. After six complete years in operation, its pass rate for all grades is only 55.8%. 8th grade pass rate in E/LA is 67%, math is 61%, but those who were with the school 162 days the prior year only passed at a rate of 57% in both. Since these charters have waiting lists, is it safe to assume that their students aren’t as mobile? I don’t know, but I can see new “underserved students” raised their numbers and helped keep them out of AYP or PL 221 trouble.

And if you check the seriously low numbers on the new ISTEP science test, you can see that one could be suspicious that they teach heavily to the test and are flumoxed by a new science exam (or other things could be going on, but the concern is legitimate).

This charter school is well funded by one of Indy’s deepest pockets. It has no measurable Special Ed. nor heritage language speakers. It has had a good amount of time to work its magic.

If the excuse for this performance is too many new students, then what happened to the old ones? Why did they leave? If this school keeps its students, then why are its weakest NWEA results in the higher grades? And if the charter is intended to attract the underserved, then why does it get a boost from its most recent additions? And why does it show no advantage or disadvantage in 67% of the categories measured by NWEA?

I accept that NWEA averages come from districts outside IPS, too, but charters here have laid a clear rhetorical guantlet down that they are better choices academically than public schools, period. But there is strong evidence that in a few years, they will not show better results than publics, and maybe not better or only marginally better than IPS itself.

Because charters have political support and unmerited glowing reports, there is no true accoutablity. We stand a good chance of having two failed systems in this city. It is a bad idea to link education and politics directly. Schools are political footballs as it is. An Indy mayor does have political points to score and will reprot on performance without intellectual honesty and an eye on vote getting.

I hope Peterson’s example is a warning to the next mayor on this issue.

and I do look at the data and see what is at best a mixed bag. so do other teachers. Not in IPS, but in charters. Almost half of them would not recommend a charter to a neighbor. I trust the insiders know something that the mayor felt was not worth adding anecdotal commentary to in an election year.

1. Teaching is fundamentally about improvement: There is not much we can do with the very real issues/challenges/previous academic skills kids come with…but their very lives hinge on how well we teach them once they come. Any teacher (and astute policymaker) should tell you that looking at overall pass rates makes no sense…if schools (traditional, charter, private etc.) continue draw students who have been academically underserved or from resource deprived areas, then we should expect overall pass rate scores to remain flat or actually dip. This is evidence that they continue to attract/receive underserved kids. It’s not about overall pass rates. It’s about improvement.

2. Unfortunately previous posts citing data among “non-mobile cohorts” is in error. AYP data and scores from 9th grade to 10th grade (for example) in subsequent years, are NOT non-mobile cohorts. Analysis of a non-mobile cohort would include looking at the exact same group of students over time at the same school, and analyzing how they improved (and actually, the best measure of improvement would be looking at individual students, not necessarily cohorts, over time which I understand Indiana is trying to develop). The data cited by a prior post (showing data for 21 Fall Creek, 21 Fountain Square, and Charles Tindley) are NOT non-mobile cohorts, and neither is AYP.

3. Specific to the current debate then, there are really only two assessment systems that meet the criteria of examining student cohort growth over time: NWEA and the improvement component of Indiana’s Academic Assessment System PL 221 (which preceded No Child Left Behind).

4. Given these parameters, I’ll try to provide an unbiased assessment of schools the Mayor has authorized based on the 2006-2007 accountability report:

-As a whole, PL 221 improvement data are impressive: Average growth of 6.7 percentage points compared to a state average of 0.6 growth. One of the previous posts was accurate in stating that given such a small number of schools, aggregate data is more sensitive to individual school changes. Yet, if you actually look at the growth gains in most individual schools, most of them are very high. Two schools showed negative growth gains and that should be of concern. To be intellectually honest, we should also look at the growth gains of individual schools in urban areas of Indianapolis. According to what I was able to find, Indianapolis has 12 school districts, and improvement data for each school within these districts can be found at the Indiana Department of Education website at http://www.doe.state.in.us/pl221/welcome.html (click on Statewide PL 221 Category List). Not much improvement in a vast majority of other urban Indianapolis schools, although there are some exceptions.

-NWEA: Sometimes it is helpful to read chart descriptions so we have a clear understanding of what the data actually say. Previous posts inaccurately (twice) represented these data. To be clear: in 48% of grades and subjects, the Mayors charter schools showed more growth that other schools taking NWEA in the state of Indiana. In another 48% of grades and subjects the charters made the same amount of growth as other schools taking NWEA in Indiana. This means that, compared to other schools taking NWEA in Indiana, in 96% of grades and subjects the Mayors schools did better or just as well. And keep in mind that this comparison is for all schools in Indiana taking NWEA, not just other urban schools, or schools in Indianapolis (this means that this is in comparison to any suburban school system that takes NWEA). I wonder what the results would show if the comparison was only the other 12 urban school districts in Indianapolis. And if growth in other urban Indianapolis school systems is strong, I wish they would make that data easily available to the public. Again, it’s about improvement irrespective of if the school is a charter, traditional school etc. A previous post indicates that there are some schools that did not show much growth compared to other NWEA schools in Indiana. The Mayor should be concerned about those schools and taking steps to understand how they are addressing their issues. But a fair look at each individual school’s NWEA data illustrates that most schools are doing a good job, and some a pretty incredible job.

We can debate the merits/ideology of charter schools until the cows come home. But academic results, more specifically improvement in student learning, are what really matters. Unfortunately, we also don’t have a great way to capture student learning that is not measured by test scores and easily understood by parents. Until then, the best proxy is academic test scores. And if one is honest and takes a clear and unbiased look at the data, it is difficult to dispute that the Mayors schools are making large achievement gains among the students that they serve.

One final point, specific to graduation rates. A couple of previous posts have hypothesized about grad rates in the Mayors schools. Lets wait and see about that. This year (the 2007-2008 school year) will be the first year that any of these schools will have a cohort graduation class. This means that we won’t have official graduation rates for some of these schools until probably December of 2008. Don’t know if the data will look good or bad. But we should wait and see what the official numbers are rather than guess.

It is well and good that 1000 are on a waiting list, but that pales in comparison to the nubmer of students who are not seeking a charter option. Furthermore, until someone seriously studies why people choose charters, it is only self serving of those in the charter movement to say that they want a better academic school. My sense is that they want a school closer to home or work, or a school with a different socio-economic make-up or racial composition. If they are seeking a school with superior performance to traditional schools, they will be sorely disappointed by their charter options in this city.

Beating IPS 52% grad rate will be a moral victory for our secondary level charters. Making the state average is just not within reach at the rate of growth I see. But charters said they could do better than that. Instead, they are finding out what IPS educators have known for years.

06-07 enrollment 245

all grades pass rate for both E/LA and math-53.8% (up from 35% in 05-06)

Non-mobile pass rate ISTEP E/LA
10th grade-74% (up from 59%), math 47 (flat from previous year). AYP pass rates for non-mobile cohort 10th grade E/LA 67 % (up from 59%); math 40% (DOWN from 47%).

60% of 10th graders have not qualified to graduate in Indiana. To avoid being labeled drop out factory, as John Hopkins researcher might, if less than 60% graduate) Tindley will have to add 10% to their pass rates in each of the next two years, but charters only average 6% increases in pass rates, and that only works if this school turns around a regression in passing math.