Mobility Rates In Rogers Park

Here's another clip from WRPCO's "What's Your Public Education IQ?"

Becky Vevea asks the panelists about mobility rates and the special supports that schools need when faced with high student mobility (transferring in and out during the year).

I submitted this question because when I was a teacher in Arizona, I would get new students all the time, particularly after winter break, when the charter schools would lay the hammer down on the behavior kids, who would all return to the neighborhood schools just in time to be included in my test data.



Gabriella Iselin

...parents are interested in “where are the resources? Where are the new schools? So we end up getting...quite a few kids that leave charter schools that have behavior issues, discipline issues that are pushed out. We get a ton. Counselors often say, ‘We feel like the charter school’s alternative school.’ And that all affects our score-- that score that people like to extrapolate on how good a school is. And it is a score but there’s a story behind it, and part of that story is that we service every kid that is in our neighborhood that comes to our school. And that’s different.  And so your comparing apples to oranges a lot of the time.

Craig Benes

What I try do at the network is for us to think more holistically...  that it’s just not one school’s responsibility to serve one group of children, that we really have to work together across schools, across the network, to see that it’s a shared responsibility and a shared opportunity and gift. I think we sometimes use words or language to frame this in deficit-base or challenge, but I think it’s really special and unique in this community, in Rogers Park, that you can  can walk down (to?) most of the schools and see the United Nations.

Josh Radinsky

The key with mobility is stability... The last thing  that kids in high mobility communities need is destabilization. The last thing they need is a chaotic situation at the school, where the school is trying to  adapt to some new random set of mandates that get handed down by the district.

I've done a little research on the Rogers Park mobility data, and the thing that sticks out in the data is that while the mobility for all our neighborhood schools is high compared to the 18.4% rate for CPS in general, the mobility rate at Gale has been trending over 30% for the past several years and was 48% last year.

If you talk to the housing people in the neighborhood, you get a very clear picture of why this is going on, and from what I gather, the principal at Gale is working on a comprehensive communications plan with community housing groups to improve that school's ability to communicate with a parent population that is always changing. So there's that.

But what is clear from the forum is that there really isn't any specifically different support the district is offering to a school like Gale that is any different from any of the other schools. The network chief indicates that he likes to think holistically about this problem, and that high turnover rates are a gift (he may have been referring to diversity rates in general?), but he really can't name any specific thing that the district is doing to support the kind of acute mobility challenges that Gale is facing that are different from any other school.

I can guarantee you that when they eventually come after Gale, they're going to be talking about test scores and test scores alone. It won't matter that Gale's been making slow, steady gains over time. All that will matter is that the test scores are lower than some other unnamed school somewhere. There won't be any talk of shared responsibility or the holistic wonderfulness of the UN. There will be blame, exclusively, shared by the teachers and staff of Gale alone.  My theory is that there just always has to be a scalp.

Anyway, some other observations:

It's hard to determine the mobility rate of a charter school, because the way laws have been written, it's hard to find out anything about a charter school. But the system-wide mobility rate for UNO is 5.7%. At one point late in the forum, the charter school person asserted that charter schools are facing the same mobility rates as traditional public schools. It just isn't true.

Comments?

Josh Radinsky and Gabriella Iselin at Devon Bank

Tip o' the hat to West Rogers Park Community Organization, which put on a forum called "What's Your Public Education IQ?" last night at Devon Bank. By the way, tip of the hat to Devon Bank. I sat in the front and filmed. If you want to see the whole thing, here it is. The remarkable Becky Vevea from WBEZ moderated.

Over the next few days, I'm going to pull out clips from the evening and comment on them. Please feel free to chime in in the comments.

First off, Josh Radinsky from UIC.  There are few people with his experience or scholarship. I'm trying to think of anyone else in the room with similar credentials, and I'm drawing a blank. Take a listen.

"I think it’s crucial that we have schools that are mandated to serve the kids in our neighborhoods.” 

“The charter schools do  serve some kids with special needs, and I know that that’s true. More than 80%  of those kids in those charter schools, though, are ‘LRE-1 kids' (Least restrictive environment #1), which means that they have less severe disabilities. Those are kids with learning disabilities. Kids like my son, in general, are not served, and I feel that the charter schools would be hard-pressed to serve kids with severe disabilities, given that they are small independent operations, and we’re in a gigantic city.”

                                                                                              ----Josh Radinsky

The charter people almost always continue to point out that they have similar numbers, only slightly fewer, of special education students, but they gloss over the point that Josh makes about the types of special education students included in the numbers.  In my observation, it's just another data point in a graph that begins to look like a picture of creaming. Creaming away the easy-to-teach, and leaving the neighborhood schools with the kids who have the most challenges.

By the way, I work in a school where profoundly differently abled kids go to school in the same building as everyone else. The whole idea is based on a rather antique notion that we're all in this together. 

Here's Mather teacher Gabriella Iselin introducing herself. I'm old enough to realize that I'm living in remarkable times; there's this bizarre, bipartisan attack on the schools occurring, and yet there are also all of these amazing, powerful leaders emerging from the ranks of everyday teachers and everyday parents. Almost all of them are women. 

"Despite this tremendous pride that we have, there’s also tremendous frustration and anger with CPS. 

It’s hard to work for an organization that imposes policies that are harmful to kids by way of curriculum, instruction, and budget initiatives that are foisted on us with little to no planning or foresight of any kind. You would think sound planning would be the bedrock of a school district but I have found that this is not the case at CPS." --- Gabriella Iselin

When I think of people like Gabriella Iselin, I think of the importance of tenure, or as it should probably be known as in the K12 world, due process. Without the protection of due process, a person like Ms. Iselin could never say these words in the presence of a network chief in a vindictive district in an unelected environment where the mayor is who he is.  And yet she doesn't even flinch to do so. I wish more people were like her; I wish I had been so when it was my turn.

Much, much more to come over the next few days. Please, go ahead and comment. 

See You At Devon Bank?

Here's an event sponsored by West Rogers Park Community Organization; we'll be there.  Come join the conversation!

We're Having A Little Event

Won't you join us?

Look at the great folks we're working with here:

The Pilsen Alliance

Teachers For Social Justice

Diane Ravitch on NPR

Diane Ravitch on NPR.

I've never heard Tom Ashbrook before, and I have no opinion. But I like to hear Diane Ravitch's voice, and I'm looking forward to reading Reign of Error. This is a good interview; she knows what she's talking about, to say the least.

Occasionally you encounter people who have genuine expertise and legitimate experience, and they're remarkably at ease with their arguments, and there's no artifice, no facade. Diane Ravitch is one of those people, and I think Karen Lewis is, too.

We should get a book group going on Reign of Error.

Passages Charter High School Incoming!

Heads Up!

1. Take the survey. 

2. Go to the meeting--- there's one Tuesday morning. It's at Passages, 1643 W. Byrn Mawr.  I'll try to make it to the one on the 17th.

AHS High School Community Meetings! All community meetings will take place in the new cafeteria and are scheduled as follows:

1. Tuesday, 9/10/13 from 9:00-10:00 a.m.

2. Tuesday, 9/17/13 from 5:00-6:00 p.m.

TIFs in an Era of School Budget Cuts

BGA held a forum on the TIFs last night; they were smart enough to get it on tape. If your community group is working on school funding, this topic is a must. Here's the entire video.


I wasn't there, but I was following the Twitter feed, which is in itself pretty interesting.


Tweets about "#Tifforum"

RPNPS is gearing up for the fall. We're having our first meeting  of the season on Sept. 22. Email  us if you want the location/time.  New members are welcome! Come work on strategies to support our neighborhood public schools.