¿Cómo se dice ‘hardest-to-teach?’ A look at what Clinton said about charter schools.
Hillary Clinton recently made some comments about charter schools that upset charter school advocates. She said, to be exact:
“Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them. And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.”
Clinton, the former secretary of state who is the front-runner in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, became a target for her comments from charter supporters who, as blogger and public education advocate Jennifer Berkshire noted, did not respond her actual words.
So what does “hardest to teach” mean? It could include students with the most severe disabilities, which traditional public schools enroll in bigger percentages than charters on average. It could mean English Language Learners, students with long disciplinary records, or any number of things. Berkshire, who worked for six years editing a newspaper for the American Federation of Teachers in Massachusetts and who now writes the livelyEduShyster blog, decided to do something others had not done in reaction to Clinton’s statements: look at the data around this issue. Here’s a version of a post she wrote about charter schools in Boston. I am republishing it with permission, and you can see the original here. Berkshire is funny, so be aware that some of what she writes is sarcastic (such as the comment about Boston’s friendly driving customs.)
By Jennifer Berkshire
¿Cómo se dice “hardest-to-teach?”
In Massachusetts, “hardest-to-teach” often translates into “students-who-don’t-yet-speak-English,” of whom we happen to have a great many. You see, ever since the Mayflower touched down at Plimoth Rock, groaning with Thanksgiving “fixins,” the Bay State and its cities have served as a gateway for wave upon wave of immigrants who come here to enjoy, among other attractions, our friendly driving customs. In fact, at last count there were 84 different languages spoken in the Boston Public Schools. EIGHTY FOUR. I’ve written before about the underrepresentation of said students, beginning with “Pssst: Los Escuelos Charteros Have a Secret!” But a recent study shows that I’ve been substantially underrepresenting this underrepresentation.
Who is being served?
The study, conducted by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, digs deep into state data collected between 2009 and 2014 in order to answer the question, “Who is being served?” The study turned up serious disparities between charters and their sending districts when it comes to students with disabilities (a subject for another post), but it’s to those English Language Learner numbers in Boston specifically that we turn our ¿Cómo se dice ‘hardest-to-teach?’ A look at what Clinton said about charter schools. - The Washington Post:
The study, conducted by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, digs deep into state data collected between 2009 and 2014 in order to answer the question, “Who is being served?” The study turned up serious disparities between charters and their sending districts when it comes to students with disabilities (a subject for another post), but it’s to those English Language Learner numbers in Boston specifically that we turn our ¿Cómo se dice ‘hardest-to-teach?’ A look at what Clinton said about charter schools. - The Washington Post:
