Thank
you for having these hearings, and for allowing me to testify today.
My
name is John Lerner, I'm a BPS parent and I'm here to try and open
some eyes to the reality of many, if not most, of Boston's charter
schools.
It
seems that I can't go for more than a few days without hearing about
how Boston has the “highest preforming charter school sector in the
country”.
That's
a pretty incredible statement. In studies all over the rest of the
country charter schools have been shown to be: some better than the
local public schools, some the same as the local public school
average, and some worse than the local public school average, but
Boston, Boston's different. Our charter schools are better than all
the rest, and not just a little better, they're leaps and bounds better. Our
charter schools are miracle charter schools.
Except that they're not. Most of Boston's charter schools, if not all, cheat. The
ones that don't cheat, or cheat less, struggle, and sometimes they actually get closed down.
They
cheat by who gets in to their schools, and they cheat by skimming the
cream of the crop of those that do get in.
We've
been hearing a lot about English language learner populations (ELL)
in Boston's charter schools lately. Entry into Boston's charter
schools is by lottery. One would assume that with a lottery entry
system that the charter schools student population would reflect the
population of BPS. It doesn't. BPS has an ELL population that hovers
at around 30%, yet I see charter schools (Brooke Charter, Roslindale, for example) that has an ELL population that is consistently below 1%, and in some years falls to as low as 2/10 of 1%. I'm not cherry
picking data here. I looked at Brooke because they just became the
highest preforming district in the state, so I looked at them, and I
saw that how they got that statistic is, they cheat. They skim.
Two
new studies, one by an MIT economics PhD candidate, and another by
Boston's very own think tank “The Pioneer Institute”; tell us how
well Boston's charter schools are doing with increasing ELL
populations. The new Pioneer Institute study specifically cites Excel
Academy in East Boston as an example of how charter school
populations of ELL's are rising. Well... the fact is Excel Academy has an ELL population that is 48% lower than the BPS average. The
Pioneer Institute would like you to believe that 48% lower is apples
to apples - and that this is a good example of how charter schools
are playing on a level field and doing a better job. They're not.
Study after study that I see leave out small details - like
populations that have a difference of 48 percent or more.
I
could go on and on about the different ways Boston's charter schools
cheat, because that's what it is when you claim you're the same as,
but better than, and you're not, but this hearing is about attrition,
namely, charter school attrition.
First,
I'd like to point our that the attrition numbers on the DESE web site
are useless. A direct quote from the DESE website:
This
report provides the percentage of attrition by grade from the end of
one school year to the beginning of the next for students enrolled in
public schools, including charter schools, in the state.
AKA,
over the summer.
The
thing is, over the summer is not when the kids leave. The kids leave
during the school year, and from what I hear, most leave right
before testing in March. The fact that there's such a huge
discrepancy between that the DESE website states as attrition, and
the results you get by actually tracking a cohort through, is direct
evidence that the students leave during the school year - and not
over the summer.
I've
tracked the true attrition of Boston's Charter High school cohorts, and I've tracked the attrition of some Boston Charter middle
and elementary schools. The number I'm coming up with for an average
is 13.49%. From what I've seen, Boston's charter schools lose an
average of 13.49% of their students, each year. That's 40% of all the
charter school kids every three years - 67.45% every four years.
With
Boston having a charter school population of 8,500 - that would mean
that somewhere around 1,150 children are returned to BPS, each year.
It
goes without saying that some schools are better than that, and some
schools are worse. The absolute worst I've seen (and I'll call them
out on this because I think it might actually be criminal) is City on
a Hill Charter School, Dudley. In 2013 - 106 children entered 9th grade at City on a Hill, Dudley. Only 55 of those children remained to return to school the next year. That's a
loss of 48% of the cohort, in one year.
I'd also like to mention that
the out of school suspension rate for City on a Hill, Dudley was sky
high that year, at 49%. For comparison, the state average for the
same year was twelve times less than that, at 3.9%.
I
call it “Punish/Push Out/Rinse/Repeat”.
That's one way you get the “Highest preforming charter sector in the country”.
I
wouldn't care about this as much if this scam weren't hurting the
vast majority of the children in Boston, but it is. The charter
schools are now taking $122 million a year (nearly $1 million per
school) away from BPS, and that harms 57,000 BPS school children, one of which
happens to be my daughter.
I
hope today's hearing marks the beginning of a much higher level of
scrutiny of the Think Tanks and Economics Majors
claims of the superiority of Boston's charter schools. I hope that
myself and the other people testifying today are able open some eyes
to what I consider to be nothing more than a house of cards. I hope
that someday soon, possibly today, we can start to focus on what's
necessary to actually educate Bostons children and not simple
privatize education at the expense of Boston's children.
Thank
you for your time and for your service.
