Comments on: Staff Lunch Snapshot

By: mike milton

mike milton — Thu, 06 May 2010 04:20:00 +0000

thanks for this post mate. hope you have a good day. thanks.

By: Maddie

Maddie — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:14:53 +0000

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your generous thoughts about our literacy program

Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions about our middle school, and send my best to your team.

All the best,
Maddie

By: Anony

Anony — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:27:20 +0000

Aren’t there some good high school charters out there that don’t lose, dump, or misplace their students? What’s attrition like at YES and at Noble Street, for instance? How about the KIPP high schools? Same deal?

By: GGW

GGW — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:16:03 +0000

Yes, dumping! Always a popular theory.

By: Caroline

Caroline — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:32:11 +0000

And here’s another point of view still: What an easy way for the “miracle” charter schools to dump low-performing or otherwise troublesome kids.

By: GGW

GGW — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:05:14 +0000

Hi Anon, I’m not sure what their numbers are. But what you describe are roughly the numbers at our school, MATCH, in Boston.

One issue that many charters face is, from the kids’ perspective, they’re offered automatic promotion if they transfer back to district schools.

Ie, Consider a kid in our school who makes big strides over baseline, but is not promoted from, say, Grade 10 to 11 in our school. If he chooses to transfer to the nearby traditional school, he is automatically moved up to the next grade.

Currently, our choice is to either to overrule teachers and promote students, or hold them back but to know that they will be offered social promotion elsewhere, and often will choose that.

It’s not a great choice. We are trying to work with the district so they apply the same standards to our schools as they do to their own: if a kid is held back in School A, then School B should not offer him automatic promotion.

But that’s our point of view. My buddy who runs a traditional school nearby has another. He says: “Let’s say one of your kids is held back, but has now reached a level where he’s ahead of our average students academically. He can do really well in Grade 11 with us. Why should I keep him back in 10?”

By: Anony

Anony — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:05:51 +0000

Hey Mike, I’m curious: what’s the legit grad rate at North Star High? The numbers I’ve seen make it appear that attrition is rough there. Hard to tell from their website, because they claim 100% go to college, but to your point, is that 100% of the 50% who made it?