Boys Preparatory Nashville

"Case of Boys Prep shows charter schools face same startup challenges."  The City Paper (TN), 6/21/2013

Dozens of students have left the school. Parents have accused the executive director of assaulting two students. And although the year-end test scores have yet to be released, school leaders say they won’t be pretty...

Rivalries within the leadership at the school shifted attention from the kids in the building to the adults in the boardroom. Meanwhile, handling the school’s 100 seventh-grade boys — a third of whom have some form of learning disability — proved tougher than the founders fathomed...

The Boys Prep board also began hemorrhaging members. In the charter’s short history, 18 people have left the board, some of whom said they felt forced out or were exhausted from dealing with the school’s internal politics.

University Preparatory Academy (Florida)

“Pinellas: Students are leaving new charter school voluntarily.” Tampa Bay Times (FL), 9/11/2013

... Dot Clark, the partnership schools coordinator for Pinellas, said that 23 children had been withdrawn from University Prep since the school year started.

D.U.E. Season Charter School

“Former teacher files lawsuit against Camden charter school.” Courier-Post (NJ), 7/20/2012

CAMDEN — A security worker charged with assaulting a special-needs student in April has faced repeated allegations that he manhandled youngsters at D.U.E. Season Charter School, the school founded and led by his mother.

Lawrence Carpenter’s alleged actions at the K-8 school came despite a history of complaints from parents, students and staff to his mother, Principal Doris Carpenter, a Courier-Post investigation shows.

Now, a former Season teacher has sued the school and Doris Carpenter, saying she was retaliated against after complaining last October about alleged mistreatment of students by Lawrence Carpenter. In a letter to the principal, fourth-grade teacher Stacy Sampson described seeing Lawrence Carpenter, the school’s security leader, grab a boy by the collar and “slam him into a wall.”

Her civil suit alleges Lawrence Carpenter, who continues to work at Season, was responsible for a hostile work environment at the school. It also depicts Season as a “dysfunctional school,” alleging it has too few books and desks, and that fourth-graders struggled to count to 20 or to spell a simple word like “talk.”...

K12, Inc.

“Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP Announces Investigation of K12, Inc.” Press Release: Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, 12/16/2011 

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, a leading national securities law firm, is investigating potential securities fraud at K12, Inc. (“K12” or the “Company”) (NYSE: LRN - News).

The investigation focuses on whether the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws by failing to disclose that: (1) according to various academic benchmarks, K12 students were chronically underperforming their peers at traditional schools; (2) K12 has aggressively recruited students to their schools, regardless of how well-suited they might be for the Company’s curriculum; (3) as a result of K12’s haphazard recruiting process, the Company experiences student retention problems resulting in high rates of withdrawal; (4) K12 schools often have far larger student-to-teacher ratios than the Company advertises; and (5) K12 teachers have been pressured to allow students to pass regardless of academic performance, in order to receive federal funds.

On December 12, 2011, after several months of research, the New York Times published an article entitled “Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools.” The article raised serious concerns about K12’s business practices, alleging that Company schools inflate their student rosters, are underperforming academically, have detrimental student-to-teacher ratios and gain wrongful access to public funds. On this devastating news, K12 shares collapsed almost 24%, closing at $22 per share on December 13.

Request more information now by clicking here: www.faruqilaw.com/LRN

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“Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools.” New York Times, 12/12/2011  

By almost every educational measure, the Agora Cyber Charter School is failing.

Nearly 60 percent of its students are behind grade level in math. Nearly 50 percent trail in reading. A third do not graduate on time. And hundreds of children, from kindergartners to seniors, withdraw within months after they enroll.

By Wall Street standards, though, Agora is a remarkable success that has helped enrich K12 Inc., the publicly traded company that manages the school. And the entire enterprise is paid for by taxpayers.

Agora is one of the largest in a portfolio of similar public schools across the country run by K12. Eight other for-profit companies also run online public elementary and high schools, enrolling a large chunk of the more than 200,000 full-time cyberpupils in the United States...

Kids mean money. Agora is expecting income of $72 million this school year, accounting for more than 10 percent of the total anticipated revenues of K12, the biggest player in the online-school business. The second-largest, Connections Education, with revenues estimated at $190 million, was bought this year by the education and publishing giant Pearson for $400 million...

The New York Times has spent several months examining this idea, focusing on K12 Inc. A look at the company’s operations, based on interviews and a review of school finances and performance records, raises serious questions about whether K12 schools — and full-time online schools in general — benefit children or taxpayers, particularly as state education budgets are being slashed.

Instead, a portrait emerges of a company that tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.

Current and former staff members of K12 Inc. schools say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program, which requires strong parental commitment and self-motivated students. Online schools typically are characterized by high rates of withdrawal...

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K12, Inc. / LRN stock price trends @ http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/LRN

Fahari Academy Charter School

CHARTERS 'NIX 23%' OF KIDS / Boys will be boys, but nonpublic schools are quick to expel average little rascals; April 24, 2011; New York Post 

He called a classmate a "spaghetti noodle" because she was skinny. And he led the "Rubberband Gang" that launched pellets of paper across the classroom. But now sixth-grader Tyrique Royal, 12, is facing expulsion from Fahari Academy Charter School on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn -- for being a kid.

The school insists it's simply adhering to a strict "no-bullying" policy parents are well aware of, but student advocates say Tyrique's case illustrates the disparity between how charter and public schools handle difficult kids.

In the public-school system, students cannot be expelled if they are under 17, and principals cannot suspend a student for more than five consecutive days.

For serious offenses like dealing drugs or using weapons, a superintendent must intervene to suspend the student for longer. Only two students in the city have been expelled in the past three years -- and both were ousted for reaching the age of 21, a city spokeswoman said.

But charter schools set their own suspension rules and don't report expulsion data -- although experts believe thousands of difficult students are dumped every year to public schools.

A study of eight middle-school charters conducted last year by the United Federation of Teachers found the average attrition rate was 23 percent. Some of those students were held back a grade, but the numbers indicate that many students were forced to leave or were expelled, according to the report…

[Principal] Venning defended her school's strict anti-bullying rules. The school has a zero-tolerance policy toward name-calling, she said, and students are not allowed to touch each other…

But charter parents complain that school rules can get out of hand.

"Too often, charter schools are quick to exclude students for minor problems instead of giving them the behavioral support they need to stay and succeed in school," said Randi Levine, staff attorney for Advocates for Children.

But charter advocates said one disruptive student can taint the learning environment for an entire class -- and it's the school's duty to remove that student from the classroom.

"A charter has been set up to have a more disciplined and structured environment that's better for learning," said Peter Murphy, policy director for the New York Charter Schools Association. "Good school culture does not allow a persistently disruptive student to negatively affect the learning of everyone else in the class."

KIPP - Knowledge is Power Program (student attrition)

STUDY FINDS HIGH DROPOUT RATES FOR BLACK MALES IN KIPP SCHOOLS; March 31, 2011; Education Week 

KIPP charter middle schools enroll a significantly higher proportion of African-American students than the local school districts they draw from, but 40 percent of the black males they enroll leave between grades 6 and 8, says a new nationwide study by researchers at Western Michigan University.

“The dropout rate for African-American males is really shocking,” said Gary J. Miron, a professor of evaluation, measurement, and research at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, and the lead researcher for the study. “KIPP is doing a great job of educating students who persist, but not all who come.”…

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NATIONAL REPORT SAYS CHARTER SCHOOL HAS HIGH STUDENT ATTRITION; March 31, 2011; Baltimore Sun (MD)

A charter network that has two schools in Baltimore has a high level of student attrition and of private and public funding that have positioned it to be successful, according to a national report published Thursday.

The report on Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), which opened its first school in Baltimore about a decade ago and recently reached a long-term deal to remain in the city for another 10 years, suggests that the national charter school network's high performance is a result of having advantages over its public school counterparts.

The study, which was published by Western Michigan University and jointly released with Columbia University, "What Makes KIPP Work: A study of student characteristics, attrition and school finance," based its conclusions on publicly available KIPP data measured against districtwide data…

Nationally, the report found, on average about 15 percent of students leave KIPP every year, compared with 3 percent in public schools. Moreover, between grades six and eight, about 30 percent of students drop off KIPP's rolls.

The majority of students who leave are African-American males, the report found, and the schools primarily serve African-American students.

The lead researcher, Gary Miron, called KIPP's attrition a "tremendous drop-off," concluding that he believes "their outcomes would change" without the attrition.

The study also concluded that KIPP's high performance, when compared to public schools, could be a result of serving significantly fewer special-education students and English language learners — two populations that are often less competitive academically and more expensive to educate…

The report's researchers found that in addition to receiving more public funding per pupil than its public school counterparts, KIPP also received $5,760 per pupil from private funding…

"Kids who persist at KIPP do well," Miron said. "But the question is, is KIPP lifting the public schools, or are they lifting the kids who have the support to persist?"

Harlem Village Academies

CATHIE BLACK CLAIMS TO HAVE EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE WITH CHARTER SCHOOL BOARD POST, BUT IT'S MOOT; November 28, 2010; NY Daily

City schools chancellor nominee Cathie Black insists she's connected to public education via a highly touted charter school - but a close look shows she's had no contact with students, parents or teachers there.

Officials at the Harlem Village Academies admit the school's National Leadership Board, which Black joined just five months ago, has never met.

Black primarily advised the school's CEO, Deborah Kenny, on "management, leadership, and the development of a book" Kenny is writing, the school said…

Kenny, who oversees 450 students, is paid $442,000, including a $140,000 "bonus" and $27,780 in "other" expenses.

The schools chancellor gets $250,000 to oversee 1.1 million students.

Many charter schools have a parent representative on their board. Harlem Village does not…

Bloomberg has called the school a national "poster child" for school reform. Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave $5 million toward construction of the new high school.

The school has been lauded nationally for its high test scores, including for pushing 100% of its eighth-graders to pass state math tests.

A look at the overall scores tells a different tale. In the last round of tests, like schools across New York, numbers dropped precipitously after the state made the tests tougher.

Schoolwide English test scores fell from 81% passing to 41%, while math dropped from 91% to 71%. And by eighth grade, the number of students taking the tests is a small fraction of the earlier grades…

An unusually high number of younger students either drop out or are held back. In school year 2003-04, the year the school opened, only 48 of 73 fifth-graders made it to sixth grade. In school year 2006-07, 46 of 68 moved on; in 2007-08, just 40 of 76 fifth-graders made it to sixth grade…

Chicago charter schools (attrition)

ONE IN 10 CHARTER SCHOOL STUDENTS TRANSFERS OUT; November 9, 2010; Catalyst Chicago (IL) 

According to state data, 11 percent of charter students left in 2009. There has yet to be a comprehensive analysis of why students leave charters. But many of these schools have strict rules that are tougher than those in traditional schools…

Noble Street and other charter schools emphasize calm and order as a prerequisite to learning. To accomplish this, many charters have discipline codes that are tougher than the CPS Student Code of Conduct.

But tougher rules are a double-edged sword. Charter critics say these schools routinely push out problem students, forcing neighborhood high schools to cope with more than their share of troublesome youth.

A joint investigation by Catalyst Chicago and WBEZ-Chicago found a complicated dynamic: A higher percentage of students transfer out and are expelled from charter schools than from traditional schools. Yet interviews with parents and students reveal support for tough rules, and do not support the notion that charters are inordinately “pushing out” children with behavior or academic problems.

The Catalyst / WBEZ investigation found that:

About one out of every 10 charter school students (2,700 out of 24,659) who were enrolled in 2009 either transferred to another school or otherwise failed to return in the fall of 2009, according to the Illinois State Board of Education Charter School Annual Report. (That number does not include students who left CPS.)

Traditional schools do not have comparable statistics. But an internal CPS memo provides evidence suggesting that students are more likely to leave charters: Between November 2008 and November 2009, 20 percent of students from traditional schools transferred out, compared to 26 percent of charter students, according to the memo. The memo also states that students who transferred were more likely to have lower test scores.

Charter schools expelled 146 students in 2009, or 5 of every 1,000—a higher rate of expulsion than traditional schools, which posted an expulsion rate of 1.5 for every 1,000 students. (See chart.) In 85 percent of charter school cases, students were expelled for less serious offenses that are not eligible for expulsion under CPS rules. Once expelled, charter students are sent back to their neighborhood school by the district’s Office of Adjudication.

Magnet schools are comparable to charter schools, with lotteries for coveted seats and no attendance boundaries. Charter school operators often boast of long waiting lists; one school says it had a list of about 11,000 students this year. Yet a far higher percentage of students leave charter schools. As of yet, there’s no comprehensive study to explain the discrepancy…

From interviews with charter school officials, students and parents, it’s clear that some students leave—or are counseled out—of charters because they can’t or won’t, get on board with the school’s rules and requirements. Neighborhood schools do not have the luxury to adopt their own discipline codes or force parents to sign agreements that students will comply.

At Noble Street, for instance, credit recovery costs $140 per class, nearly three times the cost at a traditional public school.

“It was ridiculous,” says Rosalla Bernard, who took her son, Christopher, out of Noble Street’s Rowe-Clark Math and Science Academy in Humboldt Park. “$5 for coming late. $5 here and $5 there. It seemed like a lot of punishment.”…

April Goble, executive director of KIPP Ascend Charter, says she has actively worked to eliminate some of the factors that might force students to leave. About 13 percent of students transferred out of KIPP in 2009. (KIPP, for Knowledge is Power Program, is a national network of college prep charter schools.)…

Only 16 percent of students expelled from charter schools are sent to an alternative school, where students from traditional Chicago public schools are sent upon expulsion. The rest of the students kicked out of charters are sent to regular neighborhood schools. The reason? Charter school discipline codes are tougher than the districts, and many of the offenses that get students expelled from charter schools aren’t severe enough to warrant expulsion from CPS…

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CHICAGO CHARTER SCHOOLS STRUGGLE TO HOLD ONTO WEAKEST STUDENTS: Some Chicago charter schools lose 15, 20, 25 percent of students in one year; November 9, 2010 

Charter schools are being talked about a lot lately as a strategy for improving urban education. In Chicago, families line up for the chance to get their kids into these schools, drawn by tougher discipline and academic standards; 11,000 kids are currently on waiting lists…

But a closer look shows that some Chicago charters lose 15, 20, even 25 percent of their students in a year—and these are schools kids are clamoring to get into…

This story was produced with support from the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news source based at Teachers College, Columbia University.

KIPP Tech Valley Charter School

2 VIEWS OF KIPP'S NUMBERS, October 6, 2010, Times Union (Albany, NY)

…By the numbers, KIPP Tech Valley Charter School is Albany's best public school. Virtually every eighth-grader passed the 2009 English and math exams. The fifth-through-eighth-grade school sends graduates on full scholarships to some of the nation's top boarding schools, as well as to the advanced classes at Albany High School. The minimum passing grade on an assignment is 70 percent…
Despite solid test results, critics point to a different number -- an attrition rate of more than 50 percent -- that they say is evidence the school hasn't changed public education but is instead cherry-picking the best students and sending the rest back to the Albany district. Eleven KIPP students have returned to Albany schools since the end of the last school year, and the school does not enroll new seventh and eighth graders.
"The point is to educate every kid," Albany school board President Dan Egan said. "When you set up a different funding system and different rules, it's a diversion from what ought to be our main effort."…

Bay Area KIPP schools

BAY AREA KIPP SCHOOLS LOSE 60% OF THEIR STUDENTS, STUDY CONFIRMS, September 17, 2008, San Francisco (CA) Education Examiner

A new study of the five Bay Area KIPP schools by the respected research firm SRI International confirms what we already knew: KIPP students overall perform well academically, usually outperforming their peers in other schools.
But it also confirms what those who look beyond the test scores have found: Those KIPP (two in San Francisco, one in Oakland, one in San Jose, one in San Leandro) schools suffer from very high student attrition. .
Sixty percent of the students who enter the Bay Area KIPP schools in fifth grade leave before the end of eighth grade (page ix of the study, repeated in several places throughout). And the study also confirms what some might suspect -- it's consistently the lower performers who leave:
"On average, those who leave KIPP before completing eighth grade have lower test scores on entering KIPP and demonstrate smaller fifth-grade effects than those who stay," the study reports on Page ix…

Urban Prep Academy Charter High School

IT'S A MIRACLE! URBAN PREP LOSES MORE STUDENTS, STILL HAS 100% COLLEGE-GOING RATE!, July 9, 2010, Chicago K-12 Examiner

Today's Sun-Times print edition reports on what must now be called the Miracle in Englewood. Urban Prep Charter School still has a 100% college-going rate with ALL 95 graduating seniors going to college!

Problem is, for the past few weeks, the orgy of happy-weepy media reports about the Urban Prep Miracle was that all 107 graduating seniors were going to college (see, for example, People Magazine, Good Morning America, "Urban Prep Named Person of the Week on ABC World News).

So, since their first self-promotional blitz, they've lost 12 students? And that's on top of the other 50 or so members of the class of 2010 who had also gone missing from the rolls since the school first opened, as PURE reported a while ago:

* According to the Illinois Interactive School Report Card, there were 166 freshmen enrolled in 2007, Urban Prep's first year. Of these original freshmen, the Tribune reports that 107 are graduating seniors. This yields an overall school graduation rate of 64%, or nearly 6 points lower than the average district rate of 69.8%.
* Just as they struggled as entering freshmen, as reported by the school's founder, many of these graduates will likely struggle in college given the school's composite state high school examination results of 15%, compared with the Chicago average of 28%.

With these new figures, the overall graduation rate at Urban Prep goes down to 57%. So, it begins to look more and more as though Urban Prep's real "accomplishment" is refusing to graduate any senior who has not been accepted into college…

Ross Global Academy

CHARTER'S BAD COURSE; December 23, 2010; New York Post 

City officials have documented a host of problems at a Manhattan charter school that they’re seeking to close in June — including shoddy teaching, high staff- and student-turnover rates and low test grades…

Among the school’s problems detailed in the report:

* "In one instance four adults stood talking in a corner while 26 [third] grade students sat at tables with no work to complete.

* "In an [eighth] grade classroom, two teachers repeatedly gave conflicting directions to students about how they would be held accountable for their learning and whether or not they should take notes, resulting in a full class period during which less than a quarter of students completed the assigned task."

* "One second-grade teacher was observed interrupting students’ independent writing six times in five minutes to remind them how to sit in their chairs."

* "In another classroom, four students who were off task and talking in the back of the room during instruction were not corrected by any of the three adults present."

Dozens of parents have complained over the years that the Academy was chaotic, unsafe and offered a poor learning environment.

A whopping 77 percent of last year’s staff didn’t return this school year…

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CHARTER SCHOOL IS AMONG 12 CHOSEN TO CLOSE; December 6, 2010; NY Times

The Ross Global Academy opened five years ago on a raft of promises, like an innovative curriculum that would spiral through different historical eras, small class sizes, yoga, Mandarin lessons, an extended day and organic food prepared by a chef.

Led by a Texas-born benefactress, Courtney Sale Ross, the multimillionaire widow of a Time Warner chief executive, it also had Mary Brabeck, the dean of New York University’s school of education, on its board. It was given a home at Tweed Courthouse, the Education Department’s headquarters, where it was supported by Joel I. Klein, the departing schools chancellor.

But on Monday, Ross Global became a cautionary tale for the city’s well-heeled charter backers, among 12 schools the city announced it would seek to close this year for poor performance…

Ross Global, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school with 400 students, faced problems from the start, alarming parents when it failed to come up with a safety plan for evacuating students from Lower Manhattan in case of emergencies, parents interviewed on Monday said. By the end of the first year, it had cycled through four principals; it is now on its sixth… 

More than 40 percent of teachers left each year, and 77 percent left last year, the city said. The situation bottomed out last year, when the school moved into its permanent home, a shared public school building on 11th Street in the East Village. 

Mrs. Ross and her backers spent $3 million making the school look “like an Ikea showroom, with working gas fireplaces, lounges and daybeds in the hallways,” said Mariama Sanoh, 32, who had three children at the school. But in the classrooms, there was often chaos… 

“The middle school was extremely violent,” said Ms. Sanoh, who has since withdrawn her children. “There were students cursing, breaking chairs, out of control, and there was no strong disciplinary action. Children just knew they would be suspended for several days and come back…” 

Ross Global plans to appeal the decision not to renew its charter, arguing that the school deserves some leniency because it is so new. If that does not work, it pledges to sue…

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ROSS GLOBAL CHARTER IN WORLD OF TROUBLE, MAKES EFFORT TO BOOST FALLING ENROLLMENT, October 9, 2010, NY Daily News (NY) 

This is one high-profile charter school that parents aren't desperate to get their children into…

Enrollment at Ross is down nearly 9% from last year, the latest city Education Department figures show. So unlike charter schools that send dozens of tearful kids home from their lotteries, the East Village school has been handing out flyers in a desperate attempt to increase enrollment…

The school has churned through students, losing one out of five kids each year since it started in 2006. Six principals too have come and gone - even though the school is only beginning its fifth year.

With all the turmoil, Ross Global received the lowest score of any city elementary or middle school on last week's report cards.

"They're the worst school in New York City," said Ross parent Mariama Sanoh, New York Charter Parents Association's vice president. "The fact they're trying to recruit students I find appalling when they can't serve the students they have."

City officials called the numerous openings "very rare" for a charter school…

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VILLAGE SCHOOL STUDENTS TAKE CHARTER 'FLIGHT'; February 24, 2010; NY Post

A Manhattan charter school is so plagued with discipline issues and a dearth of academic services that students have been fleeing or have been pushed out in record numbers, parents charge. 

This school year alone, 91 of 410 students of those enrolled at Ross Global Academy have left, according to the Department of Education. 

It continues an unprecedented trend in which the East Village elementary and middle school has shed more than 20 percent of its students -- and at least 42 percent of its teachers -- every year since it was founded in 2006.

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THE ROSS GLOBAL CHARTER SCHOOL GRADUATES FROM TWEED; January 16, 2009; Gotham Schools

After a rocky journey marked by allegations of dystopianism and favoritism and almost too many principals to count, the charter school founded by the millionaire Courtney Ross is moving out of Tweed Courthouse and into a home of its own. That’s happening despite the fact that there is still no resolution to the cheating scandal that hit Ross Global Academy charter school last year, when its principal was pushed out after being investigated for tampering with tests…

A person at Urban Assembly today told me the school is excited to get a new space. “It’s very crowded here,” the person said. “We were supposed to be here for one school year, and it’s already four.”

Ross expects to have more students next year, 384 up from 316 this year, Department of Education spokesman Will Havemann said.

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CHARTER SCHOOL AT TWEED PROBED FOR TEST TAMPERING; June 2, 2008; NY Sun

The city's Department of Education is investigating a charter school housed in its own headquarters building following an allegation that student scores on a state test were doctored.

The person accused of test-tampering, Stephanie Clagnaz, left abruptly as Ross Global Academy's principal in the middle of May. She is at least the fifth head of school to leave Ross Global since it was founded two years ago.

The brainchild of the multimillionaire philanthropist Courtney Ross, the charter school is publicly funded but privately run. It is modeled on an eponymous private school Mrs. Ross runs in the Hamptons.