Paul Reville's Fumble

This story appeared Saturday in the Gloucester Daily Times.

Please read to the end of the story to view Mr. Reville's e-mail in its entirety. It's time to call the whole thing off--this charter school and its tainted application process.

Start over. Do it for the sake of a fledgling school. Do it for the sake of the Charter School Office and its credibility. Do it for the sake of schoolchildren in Gloucester. Do it for the sake of the future of charter schools in Massachusetts. Do it because it's the right thing to do.

Charter OK based on 'agenda'?
E-mail shows education chiefs' mindset on Gloucester school deal
By Patrick Anderson

Gov. Deval Patrick's office lobbied the state education commissioner to endorse the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School out of a fear that its rejection would alienate powerful allies and potentially derail the administration's school policy agenda, according to documents obtained by the Times.

Secretary of Education Paul Reville, Patrick's top aide on schools, asked Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester in an e-mail to support the Gloucester charter, which faced vehement local opposition, eight days before Chester gave it his thumbs-up Feb. 13.

Chester's endorsement of the school came against the advice of charter school experts in his own office, which had recommended that the Gloucester application "not be approved," along with the two other charter bids this year.

In his request to Chester, acquired by the Times through the state's public records law, Reville warned that rejecting all three charters would get the Patrick administration "permanently labeled as hostile" to charter schools, something that would "cripple us with a number of key, moderate allies like the (Boston) Globe and Boston Foundation,"

"My inclination is to think that you, I and the Governor all need to send at least one positive signal in this batch, and I gather that you think the best candidate is Gloucester," Reville wrote in the e-mail, sent Feb. 5 at 11:54 p.m.

Then he asked: "Can you see your way clear to supporting it?"

The other two charter applications, for schools in Waltham and Worcester, were not recommended by Chester and never voted on by the state's Board of Education.

Finish reading article here.

Charter Schools See More Attrition

Fewer students are graduating, union study finds

By James Vaznis
Globe Staff / September 16, 2009

Fewer than half of the students who enrolled in Boston charter high schools as freshmen over the past five years made it through to graduation, usually departing for other schools, according to a new study that will be officially released tomorrow at a legislative hearing on charter school expansions.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, which conducted the study, said the exodus reinforces its longtime assertion that charter schools systematically push out academically weak students in an effort to boost their college acceptance rates and MCAS scores.

“This is outrageous,’’ said Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, who had been briefed by the union this week on the findings. “You are not bringing kids to their full potential if you are cutting them loose.’’

Most charter school leaders did not dispute the numbers yesterday, but disagreed with the union’s conclusions about what they meant. Many students, charter leaders said, choose to leave to dodge high academic standards, returning to city-run schools where getting a diploma is often easier. Only in rare circumstances, they said, did a charter student quit school without subsequently earning a diploma.

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