How Charter schools keep test scores high. By eliminating those children who do not perform at the desired standards.

Courtesy of Wait, What?:  

Achievement First, Inc. the Charter School management company that runs more than two dozen schools in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island is notorious for “out-migrating” or “dumping” any students that don’t fit their “exacting” standards. 

While Achievement First likes to brag that their students do better on standardized tests than students in their neighboring district schools, they fail to reveal that the get those results by refusing to provide educational services to broad social-demographic groups within the community. In virtually every situation, Achievement First educates students that are less poor and they fail to take on their fair share of students who face English language barriers or need special education services. 

The harsh discipline program, which they start at the kindergarten level, is just one example of how Achievement First forces students out of their “public” charter schools. 

Although they claim to be “public” educational institutions, and are in fact funded with taxpayer dollars, no genuine public school would ever try or get away with the dubious education policies and practices that Achievement First engages in. 

In the latest news story about the massive number of suspensions of children aged six and under, the Hartford Courant looked at the data that was released last week by Connecticut’s Child Advocate. 

While suspensions were shockingly high in some urban areas, the magnitude of suspensions was the most extreme at the charter schools run by Achievement First, the charter school management company that was co-founded by Stefan Pryor, Governor Malloy’s Commissioner of Education. 

As the Hartford Courant reported over the weekend; 

“The incidence of suspension of kindergartners and first graders at Achievement First Hartford Academy last year was an estimated nine times the rate in Hartford public schools. 

Put another way, an estimated 11.7 percent of kindergartners and first-graders at Achievement First Hartford Academy were suspended last year an average of 5.4 times each. In the Hartford public school system, 3.3 percent of kindergartners and first-graders were suspended an average of 2.1 times.”

Now remember these are Kindergartners and First Graders we are talking about here. Children at the VERY beginning of their educational journey who are suspended in order to create a disciplinary record with whihc the school can then expel the student a year or two later, or create an atmosphere in which the parent become fed up and voluntarily removes their child helping the Charter school to keep those artificially inflated test scores and use them to advertise themselves as being more successful than the public school system.

Oh, and don't forget that our tax dollars pay them to victimize our children in such a manner.

And where does that now disenfranchised child end up? Right back in the public school system where he is now labeled as a troubled youth and has had the idea of education poisoned in his mind. Now it is up to the underpaid public school teachers to "fix" them.

You know I worked in the public school classroom for three years, and when we had children with behavioral problems we met with their parents and provided supports and sometimes a modified curriculum to meet that child's needs. Early interventions often meant that they were able to be more successful as they continued their journey through academia.

I only remember one child in the Kindergarten room I worked in being suspended and that was for striking another child with an object and hurting them on purpose. And THAT little boy came back and successfully finished Kindergarten as well as the rest of his  time in elementary school.

You know, because for us it was NOT all about test scores. For us it was about the children.

Remember them?