Conservative Funders Target S.F. Schools – SF Weekly
How SFUSD’s failure to close the achievement gap for Black, Latino, and Pacific Islander students left it vulnerable to an interloper.
Beth Winegarner / Thu Jan 18th, 2018
Alison Collins talks about the false promise of charters in the SF Weekly:
“…KIPP schools, like many charters, make their sites look good by nudging low performers out, she says. Education policy analyst Diane Ravitch agrees. “Charter schools have never closed achievement gaps,” she says. “They get high scores when they winnow out most kids and boil the school down to only those who get high scores.”
Charters that don’t cook their numbers don’t really serve Black students better than public schools do, says Julian Vasquez Heilig, education chair for the California NAACP. Citing a 2015 study on urban charter schools from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Heilig says, “both charters and neighborhood public schools have had a negative impact on African American students.” Margaret “Macke” Raymond, director of CREDO, called that interpretation a “gross misrepresentation” of the center’s research.”