This article from the NY Times tells about just such a "counseled out" student. It happened three years ago, and the mother is speaking out. The article is from this week. Her son apparently has gotten the needed care and concern in the public school he is in now.
It's not so hard to brag about your test scores and discipline when you have this option.
Message From a Charter School: Thrive or Transfer
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Matthew Sprowal and his mother, Katherine. He left a charter school for a traditional public school, where he is flourishing.
By MICHAEL WINERIPThe mother admits that her son is bright, "but can be disruptive and easily distracted."
In Matthew’s three years of preschool, Ms. Sprowal said, he had never missed time for behavior problems. “After only 12 days in your school,” she wrote the principal, “you have assessed and concluded that our son is defective and will not meet your school criteria.”
Five days later, Ms. Sprowal got an e-mail from Ms. Moskowitz that she took as a veiled message to leave. “Am not familiar with the issue,” Ms. Moskowitz wrote, “but it is extremely important that children feel successful and a nine-hour day with more than 23 children (and that’s our small class size!) where they are constantly being asked to focus and concentrate can overwhelm children and be a bad environment.”
The next week, the school psychologist evaluated Matthew and concluded he would be better suited elsewhere: “He may need a smaller classroom than his current school has available.”
.."Three years later, looking back, Ms. Sprowal said she felt her son had been done an injustice. Matthew, who has had a diagnosis of an attention disorder, has thrived at P.S. 75. His second-grade teachers, Johanny Lopez and Chanté Martindale, have taught him many ways to calm himself, including stepping into the hallway for an exercise break. His report card last month was all 3s and 4s, the top marks; the teachers commented, “Matthew is a sweet boy who is a joy to have in the classroom.”
Moskowitz' spokeswoman said that though he was kept after school after a nine-hour day to practice walking the halls...that it was not punishment.
“Practicing walking through the halls is the opposite of a punishment,” she wrote. “Just as in math, when a child does not get a concept, we re-teach. We don’t let the child fail. We ensure he gets it. We take the same approach with behavior. If a child is struggling, we re-teach. This is an example of when the school went out of its way to help Matthew be successful.”
More about Eva Moskowitz and Harlem Success charters from the NY Magazine.
The Patron Saint (and Scourge) of Lost SchoolsThey seem not concerned about special education students. In fact the principal once admitted it.
At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word. “I’m not a big believer in special ed,” Fucaloro says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are “maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house—usually mama—and I reverse that right away.” When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. “Eva told us that the school is not a social-service agency,” says the Harlem Success teacher. “That was an actual quote.”
Taking the cream of the crop.
In reality, as Moskowitz will tell you, students are sorted in traditional schools in every district of the city: by Zip Code, by gifted programs, by admissions rigged to cream strong students off the top. But when charters exclude high-cost, high-needs children in charter-saturated neighborhoods like Harlem, they are also dumping those needy students on beleaguered zoned schools. In East Harlem’s District 4, the proportion of ELLs rose more than 40 percent between 2004 and 2008. As those schools become overburdened, the downward spiral accelerates, and education historian Diane Ravitch fears its implications. “In the future as it is now developing,” she wrote by e-mail, “there will be neighborhoods that have no public schools, only privately managed schools.” Whatever the virtues of high-performing charters, or the tarnished reality of public education, the prospect of ceding large swaths of the city to a model that can’t accommodate every child—and that exists at the mercy of philanthropic hedge-funders—is a gamble with very high stakes.
Neighborhoods with no public schools, only privately managed ones? Where will they send their rejects. That's a shame.
And about those called ELLs, English Language Learners? Our district calls them ESOL..English as a Second Only Language. Well, there's a problem there.
English Language Learners (ELLs) are another group that scores poorly on the state tests—and is grossly underrepresented at Success. The network’s flagship has only ten ELLs, or less than 2 percent of its population, compared to 13 percent at its co-located zoned school. The network enrolls 51 ELLs in all, yet, as of last fall, provided no certified ESL teacher to support them. After a site visit to Harlem Success Academy 1 in November, the state education department found that the school had failed to show evidence of compliance with its charter and with No Child Left Behind, which mandates ESL services by “highly qualified” teachers. The matter is currently under review. (According to Sedlis, the network hired an ESL teacher in January.)
Under investigation or not, the school still gets permission to
move into public schools and share their space.More often than not the charter takes over the best spaces. Other classes have to move elsewhere.
The "Eva" Empire has expanded to the Bronx, bringing a Harlem turf war for school space into the borough. Eva Moskowitz, the City Council member-turned-charter school CEO, has opened two new academies from her charter school franchise, Success Charter Network, inside Public School 30 in Mott Haven, and PS 146 in Morrisania. And Bronx Success Academies 1 and 2 are already ruffling feathers with district school staffers.
..."Staffers at the district schools say their new neighbors have booted them from classrooms and stairwells, while sharing the libraries, cafeterias and playgrounds.
...."Staffers at PS 30 say Bronx Success 1 sealed off the third floor to its staff and students - even taking over a stairwell - so Success students don't mingle with their district school neighbors.
"We are not allowed there," said one PS 30 teacher, noting the classrooms taken over by Success were formerly used for tutoring children with special needs. Now we have to do therapy sessions in the hallway."
Not allowed in stairwells, classrooms, libraries..in their own school?
I remember once when Diane Ravitch told of meeting with members of congress about the attacks on public education. Those words told a sad story.
Ravitch on the words of Democrats in congress.They say they can not stop the education reform.
A) I was recently invited to meet with high-level administration officials in the White House. I told them my concerns. I told them what I have heard from teachers and parents. They told me I was misinformed. I think they should listen more to the grassroots, not just to the think tanks and the media. Over the past few weeks, I have met with many Democratic members of Congress. I have met some really impressive members who understand how destructive the current "reform" movement is. Many agree with me that the emphasis on evaluating teachers will simply produce more teaching to the test, more narrowing the curriculum, more gaming the system. They have heard from their constituents, and they don’t like what is going on.
But frankly, these same Congressmen and women tell me that they are probably helpless to stop the President’s agenda. The Democratic leadership will give the President and Secretary Duncan what they want, and they will have the support of Republicans. That leaves the Democrats in a quandary. They were not happy to see Secretary Duncan campaigning for his approach with Newt Gingrich. Maybe it will turn out to be a winning strategy for Secretary Duncan. He may get what he wants. It just won’t be good for American education or our kids.
They don't like it, but there is nothing they can do? Really?
And that is the mindset that is leaving the fate of education to "reformers" like Eva Moskowitz...whose school officials believe that keeping a student after a nine-hour school day to practice walking the hallways is not punishment.
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