Charters dragging APS down

In his monthly Journal column this morning, link, APS Supt Winston Brooks argued that were it not for Charter Schools, APS' graduation rate would be higher;

This year for the first time, the graduation rate included the district’s locally authorized charter schools. Had the charter schools not been included, our rate would have improved by a couple of percentage points.

Consider for a moment those charter school students who are not graduating from their charter schools. Where would they not be not graduating from if there were no charters? They would be not graduating from APS. They would be part of APS statistics either way. It's smoke and mirrors.

Brooks' statistical slight of hand will not be challenged by the newspaper that printed it; nor will it be challenged in the newspaper that printed it.

Nor will there be any examination of the old chestnut Brooks ran out to cover dismal growth in graduation rates

The state Public Education Department, which calculates the graduation rate for school districts across the state, changed the formula.

Public Education is well known for re-norming statistics and for good reason. If statistics show no improvement year after year after year, and they do, the failure can be hidden by re-norming data. If you can't graduate enough kids in four years; add a fifth. If the numbers don't improve on their own, drop students from the cohort, link, who have previously failed the first year of high school.

Brooks hit the nail on the head when he illustrated both the failure of APS and the root-cause of the failure, by comparing his leadership to piloting a ship;

"... making changes in public education is like turning an ocean liner – it takes a long time and the shifts often are imperceptible."

APS' failure to engage students is rooted in the belief that children can be educated en masse. It is perpetuated by people who enjoy large scale spending power and resources.

APS is an ocean liner only because the leadership like the idea of standing on bridge of an ocean liner; not because an ocean liner is in any way better than a fleet of smaller and more agile runabouts carrying students more directly to their individual destinations.




photo Mark Bralley