THE PERIMETER PRIMATE: AIPCS

Showing posts with label AIPCS. Show all posts

Thursday, January 24, 2013

A trip down memory lane with Oakland’s “American Indian” charter schools & Ben Chavis

Last evening Oakland Tribune education reporter Katy Murphy sent out this tweet: Oakland school board just voted 6-1 to issue "notice of intent to revoke" to three American Indian charters. Final decision in March.

It seemed apropos to take a look back at some memorable news stories about these schools.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

American Indian Model Schools enrollment trends: student retention and demographics

STUDENT RETENTION

American Indian Public Charter School School Code #6113807 3637 Magee Ave., Oakland, CA
	Total Enroll	5^th	6^th	7^th	8^th	9^th	10^th	11th	6^th>8^th	Student retention
2011-12	255	4	121	80	50				71>50	70.4%
2010-11	179	0	82	57	40				66>40	60.6%
2009-10	193	1	71	52	69				77>69	89.6%
2008-09	182	0	66	72	44				62>44	71.0%
2007-08	190	5	77	59	49
2006-07	174	11	62	54	47
2005-06	196		55	55	55	31
2004-05	150		59	59	32
2003-04	132		56	29	26	21
2002-03	162		27	31	28	76
2001-02	106		28	28	50
2000-01	34		11	13	10
1999-00	18		12	0	4			2
1998-99	65		21	6	16	14	8
1997-98	68		15	19	15	19
1996-97	42		12	13	17

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The Ben Chavis / American Indian Public Charter School saga continues

Ben Chavis’s crooked charter school reign is finally being exposed. A preliminary investigation into his management has found evidence of fraud and multiple violations of state laws. As a result, the Oakland Unified Office of Charter Schools is recommending a denial for the renewal of one of Chavis’s three Oakland American Indian Model charter schools. The school board is scheduled to vote tomorrow night (April 4, 2012).

Chavis has been held up as a hero by Washington Post columnist George Will and rabid charter school advocate Whitney Tilson. He's been promoted by the Los Angeles Times, John Stossel on 20/20, the Cato Institute and many others. Chavis was on a Education Nation panel called "About our Children" with Michelle Rhee and Ben Austin. Watch him raging on MSNBC here.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Not all it’s cracked up to be

California uses the Academic Performance Index (API) for its school rankings, with a score of 1000 considered to be perfect. Scores over 800 are viewed as excellent. The API is annually derived from a complex calculation which uses schools’ scores on state tests. From year to year, this is how California measures its public schools’ academic growth.

The American Indian Public High School is a high-performing charter school in Oakland that opened in 2006-07 as an offshoot from the notorious American Indian Public Charter School, a middle school. A second middle school, AIPCS II was opened in Oakland in 2007-08.

These “American Indian Model” (AIM) schools use the “no excuses” model of education and were included in David Whitman’s Chester Finn-promoted book “Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism.” Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the original AIPCS school in 2006 and called it “an education miracle”. All three AIM schools consistently rank at the top of California’s API school rankings. The school leaders are not to shy to say that their goal is that 1000 score of “perfection.”

However, when it comes to AIPHS's SAT scores, the school's ranking is nowhere near outstanding. The other local high schools with comparable APIs (> 900) all have substantially higher SAT scores. One could speculate on the possible reasons.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

OUSD Expenditures Per Pupil: Charter vs. Traditional Public Schools

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This is a comparison between per pupil spending at Oakland Unified School District’s charter schools and its traditional public schools. The figures were obtained from the SARCs (School Accountability Report Cards) currently posted on the OUSD Web site, section VIII - School Finances.*

OUSD Charter Schools
Expenditures Per Pupil (Fiscal Year 2006-07)	Expenditures Per Pupil (Basic)	Expenditures Per Pupil (Supplemental)	Total Expenditures Per Pupil
MEDIAN	$6950	$1200	$8764
RANGE	$5113-$8757	$276-$5505	$5931-13290
AVERAGE	$7063	$1693	$8740

OUSD Traditional Public Schools
Expenditures Per Pupil (Fiscal Year 2006-07)	Expenditures Per Pupil (Basic)	Expenditures Per Pupil (Supplemental)	Total Expenditures Per Pupil
MEDIAN	$5015	$1613	$6492
RANGE	$4126-$6354	$241-$2899	$4630-$8886
AVERAGE	$4973	$1533	$6506

Charter Schools: Highest Expenditures Per Pupil (Fiscal Year 2006-07)
1. Oakland Military Institute	$13290
2. Oakland School For the Arts	$11000
3. Millsmont Academy	$10454
4. American Indian Public Charter School II	$9954
5. Monarch Academy	$9712

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Inform yourself about the Gulen movement!

1. WATCH the Gulen Movement 101: Session One webinar presentation (1/22/2014)
2. READ the "Expose the Gulen Movement" report.
3. LISTEN to my interview with At The Chalk Face , slide marker to 32:00 min. (5/19/2013)
4. WATCH the 60 Minutes segment "U.S. charter schools tied to powerful Turkish imam" broadcast. (5/13/2012)
5. READ my response to the 60 Minutes piece.
6. READ my guest article about Gulen charter schools published by The Washington Post. (3/27/2012)
7. WATCH my interview talking about Gulen charter schools, or my presentation at LaborFest (segment between 49:18 min. & 1:07:36 min.)
8. READ my postings labeled "Gulen movement" HERE.

As one observer tweeted, "U.S. media have focused too much on the Islamic nature of the Gulen movement. Real concern is its shady dealings and improprieties."

Please be aware that Gulenists have created a large number of anonymously-operated damage control websites. They started to appear a few months after publication of Greg Toppo's article in USA Today (August 2010).

WE CAN DO IT!

Jim Hightower on populism:

"... what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government."

Jim Hightower on plutocracy:

"Plutocracy and democracy don't mix."

More Jim Hightower HERE.
Read his Lowdown newsletter HERE.

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. In a plutocracy, the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low.

On Bill Gates' ed reform

Joel Shatzky's comment on Huffington Post:

The inferior "test-prep" agenda which bases the pedagogically fraudulent "data" standardized test scores serves as a way of diverting the concerns of working parents who hope that better test scores will lead to better job opportunities for their children. If they realized that they were being given a con job, they might consider other, more "active" forms of political and social protest than simply lobbying for more money for charter and public schools.

New wealth gap report

Research and Policy Brief from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University, May 2010:

"New evidence reveals that the wealth gap between white and African-American families has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation."

You absolutely must click on this link to view the graph.

Now compare that graph to the one you'll see here.

Now read this entry.

And if you are a person who blames the schools, or believes they are responsible for fixing these problems, you can stop that type of thinking right now.

A Keeper

Posted on the Oakland Public School Parents listserv by a member:*

As a public health nurse, I am working with a generation of young parents who were drug-exposed, who are now having children who are drug-exposed, and it's a whole new ballgame. Many who were premature and will carry some deficits for life.

There are also many other families who have several generations of all kinds of abuse, not enough to eat, violence in and out of their homes, as well as chronic exposure to pollution and nutritional deficits. And there are regular people in the same neighborhoods who are just trying to live, but are poor and can't get ahead.

And there is major grief, and continuous LOSS. So many folks have lost so many folks, people around them dying, of one thing or another, every month almost. Young people (cousins, brothers, friends) dying from violent means, the elders dying too young of chronic disease and disparities in health care, among other things.

What we know about learning and development is that stressed nervous systems CANNOT learn, and that's what we have. Children with many major stressors. Abandonment, attachment disorders, fear, post traumatic stress, sadness, inability to trust or sleep. Many children. Many.

Resulting in: Lack of impulse control, lack of executive function, difficulty in expressing and controlling emotions, difficulty in sleeping, holding still, and paying attention, not to mention following directions and prioritizing tasks.

Our teachers will (perhaps already do) need more training, support, and smaller class sizes. They need major support and help with mental health issues. We really need some kind of expanded vocational track for those who can't perform even at the community college level.

We can't expect teachers to undo years and years of living. The availability of universal preschool would help. Sometimes a classroom is the first kindly, safe, structured, stimulating environment a child encounters.

Wise insights such as these are never uttered by people like Eli Broad, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Joe Williams, or any others who are of this type of school reform ilk. And this is why I know for certain that they just don't "get it." Maybe they don’t want to, OR maybe they don’t care.

* Thank you, B.R.

What Children Need

From Playing to Learn by Susan Engel (New York Times, 2/1/2010):

"Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.

…Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on."

And to tag onto that, check out this video about the wood shop at one of Oakland's middle schools.

Pages

Thursday, January 24, 2013

A trip down memory lane with Oakland’s “American Indian” charter schools & Ben Chavis

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

American Indian Model Schools enrollment trends: student retention and demographics

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The Ben Chavis / American Indian Public Charter School saga continues

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Not all it’s cracked up to be

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

OUSD Expenditures Per Pupil: Charter vs. Traditional Public Schools