A handful of Boston charter schools absolutely blew the rest of the state out of the water, including the wealthy suburban schools you'd expect to see topping the list. I see a couple in here with 100% advanced/proficient in 7th and 8th grade English/math. That's crazy.
Public lottery for admission, so yes, they'll take anyone. Getting in is pretty tricky, though--as you'd expect, the waitlists are a mile long, and most of them only intake at 1st, 5th, and 9th grade.
Spending is the same per student--they're publicly funded (funding comes from state and municipal sources, allocated exactly the same number of dollars per student as the district the kid is coming from), but aren't part of a district and their teachers aren't union.
The charter where my daughter attends is a lottery with Title 1 funding and they purposely don't fundraiser to prove that you can replicate the model with available public funds. Her school is No 1 in many of the grades in various subjects with outstanding scores overall.
When visiting schools, the charter school was the ONLY one who didn't mention MCAS scores. All the BPS talked about teaching to the test - some even had examples hanging on the wall of homework that is MCAS based. Is it so difficult to believe that the focus on highly qualified teachers producing highly qualified students regardless of background is working even with all the evidence?
This list makes me really grateful that my daughter got into one of those Boston charter schools for kindergarten this year. Especially compared to our first choice BPS school.
Comments
Some dismal results for science especially
Boston, Lawrence, Everett pretty bad. Cambridge, hub of the intellectual universe, did bad on science.
Charters cleaned up
A handful of Boston charter schools absolutely blew the rest of the state out of the water, including the wealthy suburban schools you'd expect to see topping the list. I see a couple in here with 100% advanced/proficient in 7th and 8th grade English/math. That's crazy.
That's fantastic. Do they
That's fantastic. Do they have to admit anyone who applies or do they screen? Also, what do the spend per student as compared to others?
Yes
Public lottery for admission, so yes, they'll take anyone. Getting in is pretty tricky, though--as you'd expect, the waitlists are a mile long, and most of them only intake at 1st, 5th, and 9th grade.
Spending is the same per student--they're publicly funded (funding comes from state and municipal sources, allocated exactly the same number of dollars per student as the district the kid is coming from), but aren't part of a district and their teachers aren't union.
The charter where my daughter
The charter where my daughter attends is a lottery with Title 1 funding and they purposely don't fundraiser to prove that you can replicate the model with available public funds. Her school is No 1 in many of the grades in various subjects with outstanding scores overall.
More importantly, what do
More importantly, what do they teach besides how to take the MCAS?
When visiting schools, the
When visiting schools, the charter school was the ONLY one who didn't mention MCAS scores. All the BPS talked about teaching to the test - some even had examples hanging on the wall of homework that is MCAS based. Is it so difficult to believe that the focus on highly qualified teachers producing highly qualified students regardless of background is working even with all the evidence?
This list makes me really
This list makes me really grateful that my daughter got into one of those Boston charter schools for kindergarten this year. Especially compared to our first choice BPS school.
I'm really happy my kid got
I'm really happy my kid got in to Boston Latin.