I found it odd how these 6 schools were chosen.  First, they were not on previous lists.  Schools that were, are listed as follows:

priority schools

Since then a couple of things have happened.

  • The educational building in Rodney Square was turned over to become a mega-building of charters
  • Existing charters had reached saturation point;  no one wanted to sign up, Many were panicked as deadline approached that they would not meet their barest minimum.

Raising a valid business question:  if there is no market for charters now, how we fill the 15 new ones we plan to open across the next several years?

Since all six MOU schools are in walking distance to the new charter building, and would be prime candidates to matriculate over to their charter schools, one cannot help but be curious as to why 6 new schools were picked, all within one mile of  Rodney Square, and not Glasgow High, Lewis Dual Language, MarbrookElementary, Dover High, Stanton Middle, and Laurel Middle?…

Once a question gets asked, one must find answers…

Transparent Christina today released documentation explaining why…..

They were using a  research-based  school  level diagnostic tool .

If you are unaware of corporate language, that is basically corporate-speak for what we call bullshit.  This phrase is code for “I just made it up” and is dependent on the unsaid following social plank:  “As executive I get to do things like that because… I’m the boss”.. Although my wording is different I tend to use this line, “tools at our disposal” as a vague way of saying I decided basically on a whim of “whatever”… (It’s not lying!  My brain is a tool and it is always at my disposal.)

But for such a phrase to be included in this document, allows us the reader to understand that one knows that a  secret communication is being made from Delaware’s DOE’s Secretary to the USDOE saying with a wink, “yeah, I just made it up.”

So absence of any real tool (there is none since none was mentioned) we are now all aware that not for reasons of poor learning were these schools selected, but for something else.  We then have to fill in the blank and most likely as outlined here, it was for their GPS coordinates.

Focus Schools

The focus groups are selected on their largest achievement gap between low and non low income English and Math scores…  70% of selection weight was given to the 2010-2011 school year.  30% was given to the range over the 5 years previous…

low income math

A school like Warner has 95 to 93% of low income students.  Therefore there are only 5% non low income students.

When its past history is perused and as pointed out by Pandora, in 1999 it had only 34% low income until its smart white population went to Brandywine Springs beginning in 2000, before that, it was an award winning school.

Today it is deemed to be failing because the dominant culture of the school is 95% low income.  Often comparisons are made against charter schools in the same demographics with the same low income levels.  However as Exceptional Delaware released today, those schools get quite a few political favors….

  • Thomas Edison: $857,377
  • Kuumba: $166,965
  • Eastside Charter School: $366,302

Often receiving nice monetary gifts which public schools do not…

Basically with these six schools, the rich kids were carted out of school, the private schools received major inflows of funding and raised scores by kicking out the lower scorers, (something public schools cannot do), and those public schools remaining are now 95% of low income. So when comparing apples to oranges, the oranges look better.

Bottom line, it is apparent that his was set in motion a long time ago with the sole reason to put charters into Wilmington, not for the student’s sake, but for the financiers’….