Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Monday, October 7, 2013

Daily News Shills Play Fast And Loose With Facts On Charter Schools

The neo-liberals at the Daily News have an editorial today supporting Eva Moskowitz's walk across the bridge protest for charter schools.

As usual with the DN, they play fast and loose with the facts:

The innovative approaches, longer school days and longer school years they offer — almost always carried out by teachers working outside the union contract — are undeniable. Just one example: On the tough new state tests, about 26% of public school students citywide were proficient in English, and 30% in math.

At the Success Academy Charter in the Bronx, 97% got over the bar in math; 77% did so in English. Across the entire Success network, 82% of kids were proficient in math, and 58% in English.

See the sleight of hand here?

The DN shills are using stat wide stats and comparing them to just one charter school chain to declare the charter school sector a rousing "success" over the traditional public schools.

But if you compare city traditional public schools to city charter schools, here is what you get:

Across the city, about 25% of charter school students rated proficient in English, compared with 26% of traditional public school students. In math, 35% of charter school students rated proficient, compared with 30% of traditional public school students.

That's a report from the Daily News on August 8, btw.

Notice how strikingly different the numbers are from the DN charter shillery today.

Why not be honest and say "Hey, charters outperformed traditional public schools on the math tests, traditional public schools outperformed charters on the ELA exams?"

Because the Daily News editors have an agenda - to promote charters and choice over the traditional public schools, to promote school privatization and to destroy the teachers union.

They never let facts or truth get in the way of their agenda - whether it's Ben "Where Are The Perverts?" Chapman doing a smear job on rubber room teachers or the Daily News editors using misleading stats to sell charter schools.

The public backs charter schools - as the DN shills point out, the latest NY Times/Siena poll shows this.

But the reality is, the public has been fed a bunch of lies and deceptions over the supposed superiority of charters and nowhere is that more evident than in today's DN editorial that plays fast and loose with the facts and stats.

If there was accurate reporting over the charter sector, over how the test scores are not better than those in traditional public schools, over how charters don't accept every student and often counsel out the "problem" children that will bring their scores down - I bet the charter school polling would look a little different.

8 comments:

  1. Newsday has a terrific editorial written by the Rockville Center Superintendent and high school principal. It refutes the emphasis on testing and quotes for reign of error. Worth a look,

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    1. Do you have a link on that. I couldn't seem to find it.

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  2. "At the Success Academy Charter in the Bronx, 97% got over the bar in math; 77% did so in English"

    The Daily News also failed to point out that last year Bronx Success was only serving students in K-3 meaning only 3rd graders (Likely about 50 students) took the state exams. So not only are you comparing city-wide statistics to one school, you are actually comparing city-wide statistics to one grade in one school.

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    1. Great points, NYCDOEnuts. Just another example of the kind of deception the DN neo-liberals engage in over this charter issue.

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  3. There were 97 third-grade test-takers at Bronx Success 2. That cohort started with 106 kids. Despite all that unmet demand for charters and the huge wait lists, I guess they couldn't find 9 replacement kids who weren't a risk to score a 1 or 2 on the math test.

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    1. And you have to wonder what this cohort will look like by the sixth grade. Bet it's well below 97 by then...

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  4. One of my buddies told me today that the charters throw out all the kids after the October 15th federal funding reports are filed. That way we get the kids and they get the funding.

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    1. I believe Juan Gonzalez wrote something about that at the DN. I don't have the time to search it out, I have to write a few things this morning, but if you find that link, repost it if you would.

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