DESE's report to the Legislature on charter schools

The memo is here
You heard about the count; there's more
Chuang: required to have lottery
not required to be a mirror image of sending districts, but required to have plans to work towards
"emphasize the complexity of comparability"
"statewide comparisons are tricky...because charters are predominately concentrated in urban areas"
and because of that, you'd expect that statewide charters would have to be higher need than statewide in districts
and the chart gets even messier now that we've converted to economically disadvantaged
Sagan clarifies "this is related to the federal lunch...we didn't suddenly solve poverty"
Wulfson: acceleration dating back to 2010 Achievement gap
Chuang: filtered information for new students
when you suppress to new students, gap closing faster particularly in ELL, Boston and aggregate of Gateway Cities
applicant pool reflective of students in Boston
attrition rate with another crazy graph
"a lot of noise and variability"
attrition is from end of one year to beginning of next; working on mobility, churn, stability
Sagan asks when...they're working on it
Doherty asks about cohort stability: same kids who stay all the way through
haven't done it for some time
question around backfilling (and if it masks urban public district attrition)
also question of who is leaving
Wulfson: comparison of a single school to a school district, doesn't work, as district may mask as student moves from school to school
Stewart: heard you use about five different words: would like to know nuance and differences
McKenna: get information to us and the public
anecdotal concern is that kids leave during the school year: "That information is key to this discussion."
backfilling for half the grades that they serve; must round up if you have an odd number of grades
high school only through grade 9
"have actively encouraged increasing points of access"
all of the expansions "have committed to above and beyond expansions"
have heard a lot in the news about the waitlist data
33,903 updated from fall "consistent with what happens every year as offers are made in the fall"
rollover issue in on the way of clearing out
"allowed schools to waitlists made prior" to updates
75% of schools have decided to completely eliminate rollover
next collection will establish at student level which are rolled at not; several large schools do still roll
Peyser: those parents are still actually on the waitlist, it doesn't mean those families don't want to go anymore
Wulfson: "Well,we don't know"
could take ten or more years for it to clear out
Sagan: "We don't know that the list will be any different"
Chuang: large numbers of fresh names in new report; will make distinction in next report

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