"Departures at South Boston charter school raise concerns" was titled correctly and nicer than I would have titled it.

Please note that Mr. Givens cagily failed to mention the Vietnamese SEI Program that disappeared from the Gavin when UP Academy took over, to be explicit Givens said to the MADOE, "The district will not be reserving spots at the Gavin for Vietnamese shelter immersion students anymore.  We create these policies so that all students can be served." *  

The proposal that was submitted by Unlocking Potential and the BPS to the community was that UP Academy would be taking ALL the Gavin students!  Not just students that would not bring down UP Academy's MCAS scores!  What school were the Vietnamese SEI students moved to?  Matt Wilder said that the multi-handicapped students in the UP building appear on the Murphy School roll!  Will the Murphy Schools AYP plummet down now, making it ripe for takeover too?

To be clear, it is not the building that gets the test scores that define if a school is "quality," it is the students taking the test. UP Academy was allowed to draw students "citywide" and the Boston Public Schools is required by state law to pay their transportation!  If UP Academy saw any improvement over the Gavin School this year, is it because last year they heavily recruited 5th grade Advance Work Class (AWC) students citywide to attend UP Academy in September?  Nothing will bring up AYP scores faster than AWC students and small class sizes! Note if the AYP scores of the traditional schools with AWC classes, those children would have attended, went down.  What is the breakdown of neighborhoods that UP Academy students are coming from? What is the demographic?  How much is transportation costing?

Let me pose this, if the Gavin School did not have the Vietnamese SEI students, and the multi-handicapped students, would it have been underperforming enough for UP Academy to take over? UP touts a high sped population but what are the SPED designations? There is a big difference between a multi-handicapped student or .4 LAB (Learning Adaptive Behavior) student and a Resource Room student who needs a little individual help in math or English. Then there is UP's Out-of-School suspension rate, first year 38%!  How many days can a parent afford to take off work?  If they can't take off work, that means a child, who is already in trouble, is left at home alone unsupervised!  The BPS suspension rate is only 5%!  When that came to light UP instituted "in-house suspension!"

UP Academy receives $600,000. from BPS to "manage" 476 kids, this is quite a bit of money considering Boston pays Dr. Johnson $323,222. and she "manages" 57,000!  Paid this amount of Boston taxpayer money, UP Charter School need to keep their problems!

*p.5  http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/docs/0211/item2_uacsb_interview.doc

http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/profiles/student.aspx?orgcode=04800405&orgtypecode=6&leftNavId=303&

With a shrinking student population, due to withdrawals, viewing success by the allegeldy increased percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on standardized tests is misleading.    The same number of students, scoring in the same ranges, with a smaller pool of students overall could make it appear that there was improvement, even if there was no increase in the actual, absolute number, of students with proficient or advanced scores. 

No comment has been made by the UP Academy advocates that indicates that they backfilled their classes with students from the BPS district schools.  Nor did the advocates indicate where the funding for the BEST Program went.  Is it still at the "Gavin Building" or did it go to the Murphy?

In his letter, McConnaughey sidesteps one of the questions critical to the original article: 19% of UP students left during the school year. How many of those empty seats were filled with new students, as they are in regular BPS schools? If few of the seats were filled, then we have no way of comparing the success of UP's educational program with that of most Boston schools - we'd be comparing apples and oranges. Also, he failed to address the troubling comment by Paul Mahoney of the McCormack School. For a BPS administrator to go on record with an anecdote like his takes courage. “I know UP Academy is successful and God love them, but the bottom line is only a certain type of kid can go to school there,” Mahoney said. “We are a whole different world than UP Academy. We have to educate everyone.’’ Could McConnaughey please respond?

I have the recipe for "school turnaround". Firstly, two "low achieving" (according to MCAS) programs were cut from UP Academy. They can peddle spin about why, the fact is UP academy is not equipped to service them. Kids from the Vietnamese SEI program and the multi handicapped program were not actively recruited, as was kids from AWC programs - like the the one I work in currently. The Gavin's enrollment for SY '10-'11 was 497, 21 more than UP. Charters do not like "excuses", so why is it ok that ALL of the neediest students were not enrolled at UP for SY '11 - '12? Like it or not that "improves" test data, but not the school. Why were kids suspended at a rate of 38%, which is over 7 times the district average? I would like to know how many of the 19%, or 91 kids, that left UP academy were suspended. How many of the 91 kids that left UP were replaced by other kids (the answer is 0). The evidence points to a systematic attrition rate designed to improve data, and also show evidence that the 600,00 dollars payed to UP for services rendered were worth it. I contend that roughly 75-100 less students took the MCAS at UP last year than at Gavin the year before. Of the students who did take the MCAS, I contend that the percentage of students at a .4 level, SEI ELL, and multi capped students is marketably less. Charters know that there are "no excuses", so maybe they should stop spinning them. Indeed UP academy only teaches, recruits, and keeps a "certain type of kid". How come the McCormack can't drive students over to UP that they boot? Lastly, using test scores as a metric for school quality is nonsense, and so is our federal policies that enable this travesty to continue.

OOOPS I almost forgot! I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Pride Comes Before the Fall".