After presenting the first Transparency Watch, PURE received information that the following information about CEP/Clayton was available on the PPS website:
http://www.pps.k12.pa.us/14311059122535553/lib/14311059122535553/ClaytonAcademyEvaluation_v19.pdf
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Several things jump out at me when reviewing the powerpoint presentation regarding CEP/Clayton Academy:
1) Two years into the program and the enrollment is still about 1/2 of what was contracted by the PPS (not sure of exact numbers but there are 206 students enrolled now and we contracted for about 450 students).
2)The extremely small number of students that "completed" the CEP program (out of the 438 students enrolled in the last 2 years, only 59 completed the program).
3)The percentage of student receiving A/Bs in core subjects while at Clayton was 55.6% compared to 11.2% pre Clayton and 10.6% post Clayton. Suggests that there is some type of grade inflation at Clayton.
4) The percentage of students receiving Es for core subjects, according to this presentation was cut in half after attending Clayton. Could this be due to the 50% policy that was enforced during this school year?
5) there were still 58 events that required calls to the police at Clayton during the first semester of 2008-09.
6) I am disturbed by the number of students quoted in this presentation that seem to have been "scared straight"
7) In the "Next Steps" section, it states that "PPS will conduct quarterly quality reviews that will include data analysis, classroom observations and a team meeting with Clayton Academy leadership". How much classroom observation has been happening over the last 2 years?
I realize that the students that are referred to Clayton are the ones that are constantly disrupting the classrooms at their home schools. I understand and completely agree that something had to be done to address this problem. My only question is "What cost are we willing to pay and if we are going to pay a huge amount of money, should the results be better than what we are getting from CEP?"
We are paying CEP $5.7 million/year. That is $27,700/student/year!
Students at Clayton do not fall under the 50% rule, Clayton teachers are not board employees.
A very important piece of information is, of the students who do manage to complete the Clayton program, what are their results in terms of behavior when they return to school?
For example, how many of these students receive suspensions after they return, and how many days of suspension? Page 16 of the report shows that the 18 students who finished the program in June 2008 had 42 suspensions during the first sememster of 2009.
The report seems to indicate that these students had 76 suspensions in the semester before Clayton, but during this time frame there has reportedly been pressure on schools to reduce the number of suspensions. And in any even, is a reduction to 2.3 suspensions per student just in the semester following Clayton a result that justifies this very expensive school?
The reference to the decrease in E's received by Clayton students refers to the time after they returned to their home school's, where the 50% grading policy is in effect.
PG article on the CEP report:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09082/957616-298.stm
58 calls to the police during Fall 2008 means that on 2 of 3 school days the police were being called.
This statistic suggests a chaotic environmnent. It may also be a sign that concentrating troubled students in one location actually multiplies problems.
Yet another brilliant idea to take the idea of educating OUT of the hands of teachers and place it into the hands of the incompetent. Why is none of this a surprise???
Lack of trust in teachers; lack of trust in parents; centralized control. These are themes that come up again and again.
Someone asked me today, "When will some principal have the guts to get up and tell Roosevelt or one of his brainwashed, goose-stepping cohorts to take a hike? When they tell him that his administration is out of touch with the needs of our kids?"
Yeah, nice idea. Unfortunately, principals with gumption are dinosaurs and were shown the door by this guy. There are none left. Like administration, just young folks with years before retirement.
Yeah--they'll get up, all right.
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