Charter School “Midyear Dump” Tactics
February 15, 2014 by TeacherReality
This is an interesting must-read comment by one of Diane Ravitch’s readers. He talks about the “midyear dump” that often occurs in some charter schools as a means to improve the odds of school test scores. This is one of the games being played in Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top, and it’s his SLAM DUNK on devious ed reform tactics. It is ruining many students’ lives, mischaracterizing teachers, administrators and schools. It is causing the doors to public schools to be slammed shut, and it is crippling communities. My, how deeply those ed reformers care about the education of children….just warms my heart.
“Case-in-point: AUDUBON MIDDLE SCHOOL, out here in the inner-city of LAUSD, in Los Angeles, California.
Dr. DeWayne Davis, the principal at LAUSD’s Audubon Middle school, wrote Dr. Diane Ravitch a letter which Diane posted on her site. In this letter, Dr. Davis condemned the “midyear dump” of students from the nearby charter schools. Every year, just after winter break, there are about 168 or so kids that have left those charter schools—either kicked out or “counseled out”. I can’t recall the exact figures, but he said about 162 of those are FBB (Far Below Basic)—kids who score low because of being innately “slower”, non-cooperative, “Special Ed”, newcomers to the country who are brand new to English, those students just plain not willing to work hard, from distressed home lives, foster care, homeless, etc.
Davis tells about the great difficulties that teachers have in their efforts to absorb these charter cast-off’s into their classes. For the next month or two—or for even the remainder of the school year—teachers and the pre-existing students report varying states of chaos as a result of the nearby charter schools engaging in this despicable “midyear dump”.
Of course, think of the effect this has on Audubon’s scores—they go DOWN—
Education “Reform” with David Sirota
Corporations are making BIG money off of school children. “The truth is that the largest funders of the education reform movement are…cut-throat business people making financial investments in a movement that is less about educating children than about helping education reform funders make a lot of money for themselves.” Journalist, David Sirota, explains what’s really going on in education “refor
by TeacherReality / 1min