More On What "Superman" Left Out--SEED attrition rates

[Starry Messenger]

http://shankerblog.org/?p=1078

by guest blogger Diane Ravitch

In my recent article for the New York Review of Books about “Waiting for Superman,” I praised the SEED Charter School in Washington, D.C. (one of the schools featured in the movie) for their high graduation and college acceptance rates. I also pointed out, however, that they spend about $35,000 per student, three times as much as normal schools spend. This fact was not mentioned in the movie.

Nor was the school’s incredibly high attrition rate. Take a quick look at the graph below (hat tip to Leigh Dingerson). They start out with about 150 students in seventh grade, but their enrollment slowly declines to around 30 in grade twelve. This level of attrition is alarming, and it makes any simple evaluation of SEED’s results impossible.

(note from Starry on the chart, I resaved as a jpeg because it was reading as a bitmap image and I wanted it to be web-friendly. It is otherwise untouched.)

A D.C. public school could not have this kind of attrition – they must take what they get – and they are criticized for poor results. This is not fair.

Diane's notes from the comments:

The graph is grade-by-grade enrollment in SEED in 2008-09. For the grades in the graph, during this time period, SEED only accepted students starting in seventh grade. That means that each grade in the graph represents a cohort of students who started in 7th grade. If the size of the incoming cohorts remains relatively stable each year, then the decline in enrollment between 7th and 12th grade reflects high attrition (rather than differences in the sizes of cohorts). Here is the 7th grade enrollment by year (from NCES):

2003-04: 130
2004-05: 145
2005-06: 140
2006-07: 145
2007-08: not available

For example, the 12th graders in the graph are the students who entered SEED for the 2003-04 school year. There were 130 of them. By the time they reached 12th grade, there were fewer than 20. The vast majority of 12th grade students may have graduated, but that’s only because most of their cohort was gone by the time graduation rolled around.

Comment by Diane Ravitch
October 22, 2010 at 12:45 PM

[kickysnana]

1. K&R

[Starry Messenger]

2. kick

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[senseandsensibility]

4. k an r

Please read this, DUers.

[Starry Messenger]

5. Thank you senseandsensibility.

:thumbsup:

[senseandsensibility]

37. You're welocme

Another kick for the week-end crowd.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. So they have an 80% dropout rate

Good lord.

[Starry Messenger]

7. I was quite shocked as well.

I'm not sure why it is being touted as a solution to the "dropout problem" when its own dwindling population rivals Survivor in attrition.

[Starry Messenger]

12. k

[LWolf]

8. Why aren't more DUers outraged about drop out rates?

As another thread asks.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. why do you think?

they're waiting for the RW blast fax that will "explain" this inconvenient truth, no doubt involving some teacher union coercion

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. Because they support taking poor African American kids from their homes

and putting them in boarding schools. Like we do with juvenile delinquents.

The SEED school in WFS was sterile and gross. It reminded me of a mental institution. Blows my mind that anyone would think this was good for any kids.

[mzteris]

26. maybe what you consider "sterile and gross"

is a blessed relief from squalor, crime, and desperation . . .


"Beyond the fence, the scene is a different one. Despite some recent development, Southeast’s Ward 7, where SEED is located, and neighboring Ward 8, remain the most impoverished parts of the city, with more than their share of tired liquor stores and low-slung public housing. In all of Ward 7, the 70,000 residents have just one sit-down restaurant, a Denny’s.

. . . By Saturday morning, she would be at her aunt’s apartment in Northeast, . . . past the drug dealer in the stairwell on his cellphone, down the street lined with two- and three-story brick apartment complexes, including the one where a man killed his girlfriend and her children, until she landed at her friend’s house. There, she would sit on the front porch as her friend, who graduated from high school last year, braided her 1-year-old son’s hair.

Other SEED students stuck closer to home on weekends. They drifted away from the old friends who didn’t want to hear about their SAT scores or the eight college campuses they visited with SEED staff members. Those friends probably faced a different future: Maybe they would graduate from high school or get a G.E.D. They might land a cashier job at CVS or Safeway or find something more lucrative in the drug business.

Reneka’s boyfriend last year was that kind of neighborhood boy — a low-life, in Reneka’s estimation, who skipped school too much, smoked too much weed and would never amount to anything. I asked if he had ever visited her at SEED. Never, she said. SEED was her refuge from the drama of the neighborhood, the bridge between home and the bigger world, the place that would help her be the first in her family to go to college.

. . . By the time she was 12 and her number was picked from the annual SEED admissions lottery, Reneka had moved several times, including into foster care for a year, while her mother struggled with a drug addiction. Once, she was playing double Dutch when a guy began shooting up the street. Another time, she was washing her mother’s hair when they heard the pop-pop of gunfire and dropped to the floor. Three of her half-brothers have been killed in gun violence.

. . . Reneka was 12 the first night she stayed in SEED’s four-story, 77-bedroom girls’ dorm. . . She kept her door wide open and barely slept. She wasn’t worried about the neighborhood. She had lived in worse. She didn’t even miss home much — as the oldest child of a single working mother, she was relieved not to be caring for her four siblings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27Boarding-t.html?pagewanted=4&_r=1

[LWolf]

35. The kids are the heart of our profession.

They are the reason we keep showing up. It's sure not for the mythical pay, benefits, or, laughably, easy hours.

My student teacher is nearing the end of her time with us; she has a few more weeks. She's gotten attached. She will be moving on to the high school for the next trimester. She already feels that "teacher" instinct; doesn't want to leave the students behind when the year isn't done.

We had a crazy, but productive week. We had an "artist in residence" come in to do a week-long art project with our kids. I gave up my class periods for the art project, since it included poetry so they'd still be getting language arts. It was a great meld of creativity, using visual arts and carefully crafted figurative language for self-expression, and my kids were completely, intensely focused on their work. I wish we could do projects like that more often; I'm not an artist, and I don't have the specialized and pricey equipment the artist brought, but there have to be more ways to tap into their desire to create.

It also gave me some time to meet with our sped teacher, and we developed plans to further adjust what we are doing with a bunch of our kids who need it. We talk every day, but an actual whole planning period together was great.

We also had our first turn out on our high ropes course this week during PE. Academics, creativity, community and team building, and physical challenge. Mind, heart, and body. Whole people growing and developing. That's the way education should be.

It's not about removing kids from their culture, but celebrating who they are while we learn together. It's not about narrowing focus or applying authoritarian structure. It's about helping people find their own strengths, potentials, and voices as learners and coaching them in challenging themselves.

If the nation wants to improve the condition of the poor, we can focus our resources on building and maintaining an economically and socially just society instead of bullying the rest of the world. We don't need to remove a few from their homes, leave the rest, and pat ourselves on the back for disenfranchising all of them.

[Starry Messenger]

36. Wonderful post LWolf.

You capture the feeling so well. I love your writing.

It's not about removing kids from their culture, but celebrating who they are while we learn together. It's not about narrowing focus or applying authoritarian structure. It's about helping people find their own strengths, potentials, and voices as learners and coaching them in challenging themselves.

+100,000

[mzteris]

10. information about student attrition, Seed, and costs

from 2007
New Figures Show High Dropout Rate
Federal Officials Say Problem Is Worst For Urban Schools, Minority Males

"Seventy percent of students nationwide earned diplomas in four years as of 2003, the latest data available nationally, a much lower rate than that reported by the vast majority of school systems. According to the database, Washington area graduation rates ranged from 94 percent in Loudoun and Falls Church to a low of 59 percent in the District, with most other systems falling in the 60s, 70s and low 80s.

. . .Most states, including Virginia, Maryland and the District, continue to report graduation rates by a method that, while accepted by the federal government, has been rejected by much of the academic community and was roundly criticized yesterday by federal officials. They estimate the graduation rate based on the number of students known to have dropped out. The problem is, few public high schools track every student who drops out.

. . . The District reported a graduation rate of 71 percent for 2003. The new database calculates the true graduation rate at a dozen points lower, with a steady exodus across the grades. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902411.html


****
January 2010

In the Washington, DC metropolitan area, an estimated 18,200 students dropped out from the Class of 2008 at great cost not only to themselves but also to their communities.

Washington, DC’s metro area includes
the city, sixteen counties, and six other
independent cities (see map above).

• The Washington, DC metro area is
home to 157 high schools. Sixteen of
these are considered dropout factories,
i.e., schools where fewer than 60
percent of freshmen progress to their
senior year on time.

• Twenty-five percent of high school
students in the region do not graduate
on time with a regular diploma.

http://www.all4ed.org/files/WashingtonDC_leb.pdf


***

NY Times article on SEED attrition:

"Some kids don’t last beyond the first year or two at SEED. Until recently, the school lost about 20 percent of the student body each year — mostly in middle school and mostly boys. The incoming class of 70 students slowly dissipated each year so that by senior year, the remaining students barely filled a gym bleacher. The high attrition made the school’s much-lauded college acceptance rate less impressive: If a class of 70 seventh graders fell to 20 students by the time of graduation, those remaining 20 students were arguably among the best — at least in terms of self-discipline and a willingness to stick it out — of the original class. Adams, who became the head of SEED two years ago, has been improving the attrition rate by reducing the number of staff members with authority to dismiss students and taking a more nuanced view of dismissal-worthy offenses. During this past school year, the attrition rate dropped by more than 50 percent." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27Boarding-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=3


***
more detailed information on SEED - it's attrition and costs:

"the Times also points out that the school
has a very high student attrition rate, and that
many of the separations are not voluntary, a reality
that diminishes the impressiveness of the
school’s college-going rate. “SEED unapologetically
expels more students than day
schools,” about 20 a year, journalist David
Whitman wrote in Sweating the Small Stuff
(Fordham Institute, 2008), which profiles highachieving
urban schools. One-third of SEED
students repeat 8th grade, Whitman reports,
and only about half of the school’s 7th graders
will graduate from SEED. The Times puts the
school’s graduation rate even lower, at about
30%. Last year, SEED reduced its attrition by
limiting the number of staffers permitted to expel
students. But high student attrition afflicts
many high-achieving charter schools, including
the well-regarded KIPP schools, and studies
show that it’s the weaker students who leave.
The accounts of SEED and other schools
also reveal that it’s extraordinarily expensive to
surround struggling inner-city students with
the supports they need, making the schools
difficult to replicate. The Times points out that
SEED now spends $35,000 a year per student,
or about four times the average federal, state,
and local spending per public school student.
It required an act of Congress to establish the
school’s funding at that level. When SEED
opened a second school, in Maryland, in 2008,
it again required a special funding stream, provided
by the Maryland state legislature." http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v91/docs/k0912toc.pdf

***

One last bit of info about falling attrition rate and $$ spent per student (worth reading, I think):

Meet SEED, DC's one-of-a-kind public boarding school

Aside from the possibility of demographic advantages, SEED skeptics have pointed to two main causes for concern in the school's model. First, as a 2009 New York Times Magazine article points out, SEED's rate of attrition hovered between 20% and 30% for much of its first decade, rendering its near-perfect graduation rates a little less impressive; if only the most determined students make it to the end of twelfth grade, it's no surprise they all graduate. The school has made great strides in addressing this problem, and the attrition rate fell to 11% in 2008, among the lowest of any charter school in the city.

The other potential problem some point to is the cost of a SEED education. The SEED Foundation relied on private donations for the initial start-up costs of the school, but since it's been up and running the DC government has contributed 94% of the SEED School's operating budget, with the remainder coming from the federal government (Title I funding) and the private sector.

The District's contribution includes about $10,000 per student for day school, plus another $25,000 per student for the boarding program. (The city's education budget was amended in 1998 to allow for funding boarding programs, thanks to lobbying by Adler and Vinnakota.)

That extra $25,000 per student means SEED costs DC more than twice as much as a normal charter school. But O'Connor argues that day schools aren't the right point of comparison. "SEED's $25,000 is low when compared with other costs for serving many of the same children, such as foster care ($25,129 per child), Job Corps ($40,000 per young adult) or the $87,961 that states spend on average to incarcerate a juvenile per year," she points out. Compared to those alternatives, sending a child to SEED seems like a downright bargain.

The success of the SEED School's model over the last twelve years has meant it's no longer the only urban public boarding school in the country. It's now one of two, together with the SEED School of Maryland, which opened its doors in Baltimore in 2008. http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=7702

[woo me with science]

16. Much critical additional information here.

Thank you.

[Starry Messenger]

18. Here's some more.

http://www.classsizematters.org/classsizecharters.html

Larger classes at NYC traditional public schools
due to charter schools
2000-2005

Increases in class size are in yellow.

This data, provided by the Department of Education, reveals that of the 22 schools that currently share space with charter schools, in every borough of the city except for Staten Island, only two schools did not experience a significant increase in class size in at least one grade level, and usually several grades after charter schools were placed within their buildings.

Class Size Matters and many other parent groups oppose the placement of charter schools in existing New York City public school buildings, because in an overcrowded system, this will make it even more difficult to reduce class size or keep classes small at the public schools which currently have them.

Each new charter school, because it replicates administrative, specialty and cluster spaces, takes up considerably more space per student within a building – making it inevitable that average class sizes will increase for students at our traditional public schools if the DoE continues to cram new schools into existing structures.

Smaller classes have repeatedly been shown to improve student achievement, lower dropout rates, cut down on teacher attrition, reduce disciplinary problems and increase parent involvement.

Putting charter schools that have the ability to cap enrollment and limit class sizes into existing school buildings will also lead to sharp inequities, which is likely to fuel resentment and tensions between both sets of schools.

Why is the charter being lauded for its smaller class sizes and "success" whilst public schools are often forced to cram students into classrooms (often to *accommodate* charter schools) and are criticized for their performance as a result?

[mzteris]

22. why isn't something being done

to correct the class sizes in trads?

Don't be angry that charters are doing something right, be angry that traditionals aren't doing the same things!!

I don't understand the desire to punish ALL children because a few have managed to escape the confines of a traditional school system in their district that might not be working for them.

[Catshrink]

25. This is supposed to equal the playing field in education?

Anyone who can't see the farce of these charter schools is willfully ignorant - or a corporate whore.

[mzteris]

27. Or a concerned parent who wants the best for children!! n/t

[great white snark]

33. +1

Man, WFS sure has hit a nerve with the status quo folks.

Wanting students to succeed = corporate whore?

[Starry Messenger]

34. Do you actually read these articles?

Do you think the SEED model is "scalable" as the reformers claim? 20 kids educated to the tune of millions of dollars is an OK use of taxpayer money? Sure the 20 kids are lucky. But ask yourself why all of this money can't go to fixing the public school system. Hitting a nerve? Don't you pay taxes, friend?

[Starry Messenger]

32. Or both! I think those things can go together.

Willfully ignorant corporate whores seem to be running this whole spectacle.

[Hannah Bell]

17. "indian schools"

[yurbud]

13. an earlier thread talked about how they make kids drop to improve their test score average

[mzteris]

23. they don't make kids drop -

what a ridiculous statement.

People change schools for a variety of reasons - it's not always nefarious.

[yurbud]

38. I found the thread link. The Bushies did something similar to goose test score in Texas

by reclassifying drop outs as kids who ''moved away.''

If somebody stands to make a buck if they can show better results than public schools, and they have the power to remove kids who would jeopardize that performance, wouldn't there be a powerful incentive to do so?

This is from Diane Ravitch's blog:

I received an email from Dr. DeWayne Davis, the principal of Audubon Middle School in Los Angeles, which was sent to several public officials. Dr. Davis said that local charter schools were sending their low-performing students to his school in the middle of the year. He wrote: "Since school began, we enrolled 159 new students (grades 7 and 8). Of the 159 new students, 147 of them are far below basic (FBB)!!! Of the 147 students who are FBB, 142 are from charter schools. It is ridiculous that they can pick and choose kids and pretend that they are raising scores when, in fact, they are purging nonperforming students at an alarming rate—that is how they are raising their scores, not by improving the performance of students. Such a large number of FBB students will handicap the growth that the Audubon staff initiated this year, and further, will negatively impact the school's overall scores as we continue to receive a recurring tide of low-performing students."

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2010/10/are_charters_the_silver_bullet.html

And this is most on point:

School Board member Frank O’Reilly wants district official to start tracking how many students are transferred from charter schools to public schools as a result of their grades, social economic status or behavioral issues. During a work session this morning, O’Reilly read a letter sent by Harold Maready, superintendent of McKeel charter schools, to a parent about their third grader who flunked the FCAT.

“Your child does not meet the criteria to be a McKeel student,” O’Reilly read.

If public schools were to reject students based on their academic performance, then they could be A schools, too, O’Reilly said.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6844

Another thread on this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=9369961

[Hannah Bell]

14. knr

[Starry Messenger]

15. "Fueling the Engine"

http://educationnext.org/fueling-the-engine/

Scrambling for Startup Capital

Eric Adler is cofounder and managing director of the SEED Foundation, a grades 7–12 boarding school in Washington, DC, that has won awards from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and other entities for its astonishing success sending at-risk kids to college. Adler relates how he and cofounder Rajiv Vinnakota struggled to find funding for the initial DC boarding school. At first, Adler explains, “We thought we were going to build a private school.”

After a quick survey of boarding program costs and what it would require in terms of annual funding or raising an endowment, however, Adler and his partner concluded that “it was not economically feasible. We would have been talking about many hundreds of millions of dollars of endowment. Or it would have meant raising money hand-to-mouth year after year.” Instead, Adler and Vinnakota began looking at nonprofit models in which the government might provide startup capital and then SEED would raise money annually to sustain the school. “You get the slug up front because everyone needs some activation energy and some capital to get going and then after that you raise the money year after year,” Adler explains. But, he adds, “We…pretty quickly concluded that that wasn’t going to work, either. Because, again, it was going to involve a level of annual fundraising that just wasn’t sustainable.”

After dismissing those two stratagies, Adler wondered, “Could reverse it? Could go to the private sector and get the upfront slug of money in exchange for getting the public sector to promise the operating costs indefi­nitely?” This led the SEED Foundation to charter schooling. Adler recalls Vinnakota and himself approaching DC and fed­eral officials and saying, “In exchange for the private sector putting up a whole bunch of new facility money, would you be willing, then, to pay the difference between the regular day cost and the boarding cost?” And they were talking simul­taneously to philanthropists and private-sector investors, saying, “Yes, we need to raise a bunch of money from you now, and we’ll still have to raise some in the first few years while we’re getting up to scale. But once we get up to scale, we promise we’ll never come back to you saying we won’t survive unless .” This strategy allowed the SEED Foundation to raise the required $25 million for the 1999–2003 launch of the school.

All those millions of dollars and only 20% of incoming students remain to graduate. Must be the fault of the evil teachers and their unions, amirite?? And their financial model is based on attracting private capital with the promise that the school would be *entirely* self-sustaining with public funds after a few years. Hmmm, what's wrong with this picture?

[donco6]

19. This just gets more and more preposterous.

But they'll keep coming back and coming back and coming back - eh Buehler?

[Starry Messenger]

20. 20 seniors graduated after an outlay of millions of dollars.

Can you imagine the screaming if this happened in a public school?

[donco6]

21. Yes, I say YES I CAN!

And that's not to mention the $25 million in outlay they got to build their shitty school.

[Dappleganger]

24. What a waste of taxpayer dollars!

Jesus H. Christ, if public schools had that high of dropout they would shut it down and go on Oprah to brag about it.

[Starry Messenger]

31. We'd be totally flayed alive.

They are trying to claim that it breaks down as "cheaper" and more effective than welfare dollars to the kid, but I'd want to see some real numbers on that. I call bs.

[Dinger]

28. K & R!

For the truth.:patriot:

[madfloridian]

29. Recommended. Charters must announce attrition rates..

if they brag about high test scores.

They must, it is only fair.

[Starry Messenger]

30. Indeed they must.

The fact that they don't shows the utter lack of intellectual integrity of the entire enterprise.

[Starry Messenger]

39. kick.

Since a Certain Thread is back up.