"There are schools all over the country, hundreds of schools where 90 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunch, and 90 percent are going math and reading at proficiency.There are core things they do very well. And I find that very hopeful."Cami AndersonSuperintendent, Newark Public Schools
"Show me the money! Show me the money!"
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well, hundreds of schools...
I am looking at NCES.gov, which says there are about 125,000 schools (in 2007). About 98,000 of these are public schools (can we say 100,000?) It looks like about 50% of them are Title 1 schools (which have 40% or more of students in poverty)So I would think that there must be maybe 10% of those schools with 90% of students in poverty - 5000 schools? And I can see that about 10% of those might be magnet schools that take the top 10% of students in a district (we have some of those in our district), so that would give us about 500 schools country-wide. No special magic, just group the high-achieving poor kids together. Of course, not every school can do that, as the high achieving kids are all taken. The UK did a study and found that the only think high-achieving schools had in common was a low-achieving school within a 5 mile radius.
This does not help the low-achieving school to succeed, any more that my knowing people who are 6 foot tall makes me suddenly taller than 5 feet.
Dear Anonymous,
A few things, though let me first state the obvious--after poring through the data, wouldn't it be nice if a simple question like this could be answered?
Even granting you your numbers and your premises (particularly that of glomming the best students for magnet schools and such), I still want to see a list of the "hundreds" of public schools that have both 90% free or reduced-price lunch AND 90% proficiency on the NAEP in both math and reading.
How many times have we heard of this miracle or that, only to learn of fraudulent erasures or forced withdrawals of students?
So I am asking Cami or Arne or anyone else with a big deal title and a cute name to give us a list.
Until I see it, I'm calling bullcrap.
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