Ammunition to divide and charter.

Byline: Clive McFarlane

COLUMN: Clive McFarlane

Another year of MCAS tests results again finds the Worcester public schools bringing up the rear in performance standards statewide.

The proponents of charter schools (you can throw in the supporters of school vouchers and other school privatization plans) must be beside themselves with glee.

Their "divide and charter" attack on public schools sure is working to perfection.

First, they separate the richer public schools from their poorer brethren, comparing, for example, the Worcester public schools and its diverse social, economic and ethnic student population, with districts such as Harvard, which is more than 90 percent white and quite affluent.

Using this measuring stick, proponents argue that urban centers should abandon their traditional public schools and get on the charter school bandwagon.

Now, an overall comparison between Worcester and Harvard, which comprises two schools and a total district population of about 1,200 students, is bad enough, considering the Worcester public schools includes 44 schools and more than 23,000 students.

But the most insidious part of the state's accountability system is its division of the student population into subgroups - students with disabilities, LEP (limited English proficiency), low-income, African American/black, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, white - each of which must perform at particular achievement levels if a district or a school is to escape the underperforming label.

For example, if all your students, except those with limited English proficiency, are doing well, you are still considered to be an underperforming district or school.

On the surface - if you can look past the fact that most nonurban schools generally have to worry about just one group of students - this seems fair, even admirable and might even be construed as a moral obligation on the part of schools.

But what are the chances of Worcester having all subgroups in all of its schools meeting the state's performance expectations every year?

Not likely, unless the district gets real selective, like most charter schools, and start limiting the number of special education, limited-English proficient and low-income students it enrolls.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association released a report earlier this week on charter schools in Boston that confirmed what other studies have shown around the country - many charter schools weed out their most challenging students.

The MTA report found that by the 12th grade in 2008 five Boston charter high schools had lost 57 percent of students who had enrolled at those schools in the ninth grade.

In comparison, the traditional Boston public schools lost just 19 percent of ninth-grade enrollment by the 12th grade.

"Far too many charter schools have established enrollment and exclusion practices that have winnowed out students with greater needs," MTA Director Kathleen Skinner noted.

Traditional public schools have no control over their student population. They have to take everyone who walks through their doors.

That is why at the Goddard School of Science and Technology in Worcester you have an enrollment in which almost 60 percent are children with limited English proficiency.

It is ridiculous to think that this is not a major reason why none of the school's subgroups met their improvement targets in English this year.

You can't blame it all on the school and its teachers, because these same teachers, working with these same students have all subgroups at the school meeting their improvement targets in math.

And given the resources, the support and the time, these teachers could perform miracles with their limited English proficiency students.

Unfortunately, the state seems bent on diverting more of its resources to charter schools that will never enroll or educate 90 percent of the students who attend schools such as Goddard.

It's criminal. Contact Clive McFarlane via e-mail at [e-mail]