Charter school cooks the books
A Chicago charter school sent 100 percent of its graduating seniors to college--by not counting the 43 percent who didn't go to college, explains Rachel Cohen.
July 15, 2010
URBAN COLLEGE Prep Charter Academy--the nation's first all-boys charter school--has found an ingenious new way to boost its stats: cheating.
A Chicago Sun-Times article last week heralded the success of the school's 100 percent college-bound rate for its first class of graduating seniors. If it were true, the achievement would have been a very impressive feat.
The school was established in 2006 in the notoriously neglected neighborhood of Englewood on Chicago's South Side. The first year's inbound freshman class of 166 students, drawn from the 98 percent African American neighborhood, was required to wear uniforms of suits and ties and pushed to raise test scores fast.
The school reported in its very first year that it had broken its fundraising goals, attracting plenty of corporate funding support in addition to its allotment from the Chicago Public Schools system.
Yet according to the Interactive Illinois Report Card, the school failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress standards in 2009, with only 15 percent of students meeting or exceeding grade level proficiency in all areas of standardized testing, well below the Chicago district's 62 percent.
http://socialistworker.org/2010/07/15/charter-cooks-the-books