I came across this today in USA Today.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/02/21/hidden-dropouts-how-schools-game-system-dumping-underachievers-into-alternative-programs/97708866/
I was not aware of this was happening as there are not too many charter schools around where I live. Most are in the larger cites where transporting your child to the charter school is easier.
I am not too surprised this is happening as I feel the rating system(s) have taken on a life of its own and causes colleges and now high schools to try to game the system to rise up in the ranks
Are there any members from Florida who have experience with this?
Thoughts?
Sorry, but I have to ask: where is the parental outrage over this? No one will be a better advocate for your kid than you, the parent! If a parent doesn’t care enough to make some noise about this, then the kids at schools like Sunshine will continue to get kicked around till they are on the dole or in the system (jail) or homeless or dead. And the kids at schools like Olympia will continue to excel, while the Sunshine administrators continue to rob taxpayers. There are many things that need to change here, but the onus is on the Sunshine kids’ parents to get the ball rolling in the right direction. ETA: one of my kids is at a small charter school in CA, and if they ever tried to pull this kind of BS, the parents here would put a swift end to it.
Alternative schools have been around for a long time but often the students tend to arrive there from other less-than-stellar public schools. In Florida, this problem of top schools shedding bad students is a natural consequence of a high-stakes school rating system where schools are assigned a grade and then parents and students make enrollment decisions based on those grades. The schools should have to reveal the statistic about how many students graduate based on their enrollment at that school in 9th grade and what percent of students have left.
At least here in Massachusetts Charter and Alternative schools are two VERY different things. Most towns near me have alternative (or night as they were once called) schools as dropout recovery options but they are by no means for profit. At least in MA Chapter 70 money is retained for these programs so I wonder how it is run in FL? There’s also a program called Gateway to College funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that seeks to returns near term dropouts to colleges to earn their HS credential as well as begin the path to higher education. The model in FL seems to be a huge game that uses students as pawns!
I agree with @Zekesima . I would be very outraged by this. This is just totally junk. Where is the work to bring the kid up? You don’t just case them out!
We’ve always had an alternative high school in the area kids are shipped out to if they are struggling. It’s not a for profit school and part of the district, but for sure the stronger high schools use it to transfer at risk students out and keep graduation rates stellar.
