NEW: Councilman Pulls Support for Achievement First
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Providence City Councilman Davian Sanchez has pulled his support for the charter school company hoping to open a school in the city in 2013.
In a letter submitted Governor Lincoln Chafee and the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, Sanchez officially retracted his support for the Achievement First, which is applying to open a set of Mayoral Academies over the next several years.
“Last month, I publicly announced my opposition to the Achievement First schools proposed for Providence,” said Sanchez. “I was surprised to learn that Achievement First included an outdated letter from me without my knowledge in its new application to the Rhode Island Department of Education.”
In reviewing Achievement First’s record with English Language Learners (ELLs) in NY and CT, the Councilman found troubling information, most notably the charter operator’s lack of ELL programming in New York, persistent under-enrollment of ELL students, and its use of an immersion model to teach this high need population.
Sanchez, the youngest Dominican-American elected official in the United States, was an ELL student as a child.
“If Mary Fogarty Elementary School had treated me like a special education student as Achievement First has done to students in New York, or worse, didn’t give me the support of bilingual ELL programming, who knows what obstacles I might still be fighting today,” said Sanchez. “It’s clear that Achievement First has been ineffective in serving ELL students – this is a critical population that makes up 20 percent of the students in Providence public schools.”
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Comments:
Mike Govern
4:22pm on Thursday, January 26, 2012
Yeah--Better to keep them in the current failed, overpriced schools.
Joseph Fazio
7:53pm on Thursday, January 26, 2012
Yeah, right...dual systems with public schools picking up the cast offs from charter schools. So what do we have when charters come to town? We have a two tiered system of education. Don't let the smiling costumed children singing the company songs fool you. Achievement First schools are not public schools, they select, reject, and put out a product to make politicians and parents say Ohh isn't that cute.
Edward Smith
8:02am on Friday, January 27, 2012
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No news here. Young, inexperienced, impressionable guy with no real position on the issue. Was probably convinced by ed reformers that Achievement First was a great idea, and now has been convinced by labor types that supporting charters will not help his re-election.
Providence Taxpayer
7:51pm on Saturday, January 28, 2012
Finally, someone is actually using his critical thinking skills to look deeper into Achievement First's record.
Tragically, most people don't have the facts about this charter management organization. And, because people are so desperate for an answer to public school ills, they are all too easily turning a blind (or a-critical) eye to this CMO's record.
A serious record. Of under-serving the highest need populations of children such as special education, ELL and poor students. In addition, the NY Achievement First schools are cited by their charter authorizers for not appropriately supporting and identifying special needs and high risk students.
Providence Public Schools have:
20 percent ELL students
20 percent special education students
over 80 percent students in poverty
Many of these students don't make the cut in a "no excuses," zero tolerance education model that Achievement First employs. And yet we are all - highly intelligent leaders in our communities as well as the rest of us who lack access to Achievement First's full record - being led to believe that this charter will help our most needy and at-risk students the most.
It's a travesty in itself, but when you consider it will drain 6 to 9 million dollars a year from the other 22,000+ students in the Providence Public School system, it's unconscionable.
Achievement First's record is weak and troubling regarding these student populations. Sad to say these same populations require more resources, more funding and more support than their non-at-risk peers. Apply the rules of market capitalism to education and this is what you get: a Darwinian approach to educating our kids, which is precisely what a "no excuses" education model equates to.
Do we believe that those students who aren't deemed the "fittest" - our most vulnerable - should have their funding taken by those who are deemed the "fittest". This will amount to a two-tiered system, no matter what you think about Achievement First's pedagogy (which I also oppose for many reasons).
Please RI, Providence, Governor Chafee, Board of Regents, Mayor Taveras and all of our elected officials: do your homework and look into the research out there that is not being promulgated by lobbyists such as RI-CAN, DFER and the rest of them. Our democracy depends on it.
Go to WeCanRI.org's website. Unlike Achievement First, RI-CAN, and RIMA (they are all the same thing when you follow the money and connect the dots of their co-affiliations), WeCanRI is citing all of its primary sources for its research. This group is run by all-volunteer parents and community members (no funding, no teachers, no union - sorry Edward Smith).