Wonder what the world of private schools in Kansas looks like? You can now download a PDF list of private schools in Kansas. The list contains information from KSDE as well as the web site GreatSchools.Net.
Go to the Private Schools page and look for “Private School Census.”
The group Education Sector has a new report on innovation and learning in charter schools. It’s called A Sum Greater than the Parts. U.S. Charters.Org has a writeup:
A Sum Greater Than the Parts: What States Can Teach Each Other About Charter Schooling
This Education Sector report draws on a series of 12 studies that analyze charter schooling in eight states and four cities. The authors use these case studies to identify key legislative and regulatory changes needed to ensure the quality and growth of a state’s charter sector, including: (1) establishing high-quality “professional” authorizers that are committed to charter school quality and have authorizing as their core mission; (2) relying on effective authorizing rather than regulation to ensure charter school quality; (3) using public oversight and accountability for both charter schools and authorizers; (4) ensuring ample, high-quality student-performance data for both charter and traditional public schools; (5) refraining from placing absolute caps on the number of charter schools that can open within the state; and (6) providing equitable funding for charter schools, including start-up and facilities funding.
Source: Education Sector
http://www.uscharterschools.org/cs/r/view/uscs_rs/2346
From U.S. Charter Schools.com comes this note:
http://www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/CharterSchoolCaps.pdf
Today, 25 states and the District of Columbia restrict the growth of charter schools in some fashion, including restrictions on individual authorizers or limits on the number of charter schools allowed to open. Few of the restrictions address the issue of charter school quality, but rather bluntly limit public schooling options and choices for families. The author calls for “smart charter school caps” that focus on growth and quality help states expand high-quality schooling options for underserved students.
…
We notice that Kansas is not listed in the report. Fair enough. There is no statewide numeric camp in Kansas. On the other hand, the “only districts can authorize a charter school” requirement has crippled the development of charter schools. As a result of this requirement, they aren’t being used to their full potential in the state.
The number of students in charter public schools continues to rise. U.S. Charters.org offers this short write-up of a new report:
There has been an eight percent increase in the number of new charter schools nationwide since last year, according to this new report by Center for Education Reform. Approximately 347 new charter schools opened for the 2007-08 school year. As of September 2007, there were 4,147 charter schools serving 1.2 million students across the country. Since 1992, 560 charter schools have closed.
(The study, in PDF, is here: http://www.edreform.com/_upload/CER_charter_numbers.pdf)
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools offers links to two new reports on examples of charter school success. From their newsletter:
Starting Fresh in Low-Performing Schools
This issue brief compiles highlights from a five-volume series called Starting Fresh in Low-Performing Schools published by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA). The document explains how education leaders are empowering schools to start fresh and gives an overview of the major components of a successful start fresh strategy. Starting fresh occurs when a district enters into a contract or charter with a provider that has authority over all critical aspects of a school’s policies and practices. The document profiles Seth McKeel Middle School, a once chronic poor performer in Polk County, Florida. The district converted it to a choice school and then to a charter school and it’s now one of the district’s highest rated middle-high schools.
Source: National Association of Charter School Authorizers
http://www.uscharterschools.org/cs/r/view/uscs_rs/2352
K-8 Charters: Closing the Achievement Gap
This new U.S. Department of Education publication highlights seven K-8 public charters achieving success at closing the achievement gap. As a group, they have created learning environments where historically underserved children are thriving. Schools featured in the guide are located in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Texas.
Source: United States Department of Education
http://www.uscharterschools.org/cs/r/view/uscs_rs/2353
From the newsletter of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools:
Achievement and Behavior in Charter Schools: Drawing a More Complete Picture
Students enrolled in charter schools behave better than those in other public schools, according to preliminary findings from Scott Imberman, an economist at the University of Houston. Examining disciplinary, performance and demographic data from a large, unidentified school district that has experienced great growth in its charter schools since 1997, he finds that charter schools generate improvements in student behavior and attendance. The largest positive impact is seen in start-up charters rather than charter conversions. Students whose behavior improves when they enroll in charter schools, however, tend to lose those good habits if they return to non-charters.
Source: National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education
http://www.uscharterschools.org/cs/r/view/uscs_rs/2356
Sometimes charter schools do better than traditional schools for all students; sometimes they do better just for specific student populations.The National Alliance for Public Charter schools has the review, in its report, (PDF) “Charter school achievement: What we know, which is now in its fourth edition.
Here’s a quick look, from the group U.S. Charter Schools:
This analysis, the fourth edition of an extensive review of research on charter school achievement across the nation, incorporates 12 new studies published in the past year for a total of 70 comparative analyses of charter school and traditional public school performance. It shows that charters are generating strong growth in student achievement, in many cases outperforming traditional schools. Of the 70 studies, 39 look at change over time in student or school performance. Thirty of these studies find student academic gains in public charter schools are larger than those in traditional public schools (sometimes only for specific groups of students, such as at-risk students), and another five find comparable gains. The other 31 studies compare two groups of schools or students based on a “snapshot” of performance at a point in time. Nineteen of these studies show comparable, mixed or generally positive results for charter schools.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is out with a list of the cities which make the most use of charter schools. We did not expect to see Kansas (with its crippled law on the subject) to be on the list, and sure enough, it wasn’t.
New Orleans lead the pack, with 57 percent of students in charter schools there. (No surprise, given that Hurricane Katrina disrupted everything in the city).
Other cities include Southfield, Michigan; Dayton, Ohio; Washington, DC; Pontiac, Michigan; Youngstown, Ohio; and Detroit, (all with rates of 20 percent or more). Kansas City, Missouri, checked in at 20 percent as well.
The cities on the list ranged in size from just over 10,000 to over 200,000, showing that charter schools aren’t limited to any particular size of city. (Of course, many smaller cities also have charter public schools; they just don’t have enough market penetration to make the list.)
You get word that your third-grade student is proficient in math and reading. Congratulations!
Does that mean that Johnny or Suzie will be successful in middle school? You’d like to think so, but of course, that’s not guaranteed. You may find out that when your child gets to eighth grade, the test scores aren’t so good.
The reason may have nothing to do with your child. It may simply be that there’s something askew with the tests.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, with financial backing (in part) from the Joyce Foundation and a few other groups, has looked at state proficiency scores across the country. One of the most troubling findings: states tend to have high standards for elementary school students but laxer standards for middle school students.
From the press release:
Washington–The tests states use to measure academic progress and student proficiency under the No Child Left Behind Act are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades, concludes a major new study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Northwest Evaluation Association. Analysts found that states are aiming particularly low when it comes to their expectations for younger children, setting elementary students up to fail as they progress through their academic careers.
In simplest terms, the percentage of a test that a student must answer correctly to be labeled proficient (the “cut rate”) isn’t consistent in any of three dimensions.
(These numbers are for illustration purposes only.)
So what did the researchers find about Kansas?
“We found that Kansas’s definition of ‘proficiency’ in reading and mathematics are relatively consistent with the standards set by the other 25 states in this study. in other words, Kansas’s tests are about average in difficulty.
Like many states, however, Kansas’s math proficiency cut scores are easier in the earlier grades than in the later grades (taking into account the obvious differences in subject content and children’s development). Therefore, the reported proficiency rates may overestimate the proportion of third-grade students who are actually on track to be proficient in eighth-grade mathematics.
Moreover, Kansas’s reading cut scores are generally easier than the state’s corresponding math cut scores for a given grade.
State policymakers might consider adjusting their math cut scores to ensure equivalent difficulty at all grades so that parents and schools can be assured that elementary school students are scoring at proficient level are truly prepared for success later in their educational careers.
Further, state leaders need to be aware of the disparity between math and reading standards when evaluating differences in teacher and student performance across these domains.”
The report also observes:
“Kansas’s cut reading cut scores are generally easier than the corresponding math cut score for a given grade. Thus, reported differences in achievement between the two subjects may be more a product of differences in cut scores than in actual student achievement.
In other words, Kansas students might be performing worse in reading and better in mathematics than is apparent just by looking at the percentage of students passing state tests in those subjects.”
Getting to the particulars, the proficiency cut scores ranged from the 29th to the 40th percentile (in reading) and from the 30th to the 45th percentile (in mathematics). That’s a variation of 50 percent across grades in terms of how rigorous the tests are.
For reading, here are the cut rates for the reading test:
As far as consistency goes, not the worst though the passing score is fairly low. (Notice that none of the numbers go above 40).
Here are the cut scores for the math test:
You can find the entire report (over 200+ pages, since it contains 3-4 pages for each state, plus a discussion and various appendices) the the Proficiency Illusion page of the web site.
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