Boys Preparatory Nashville

"Case of Boys Prep shows charter schools face same startup challenges."  The City Paper (TN), 6/21/2013

Dozens of students have left the school. Parents have accused the executive director of assaulting two students. And although the year-end test scores have yet to be released, school leaders say they won’t be pretty...

Rivalries within the leadership at the school shifted attention from the kids in the building to the adults in the boardroom. Meanwhile, handling the school’s 100 seventh-grade boys — a third of whom have some form of learning disability — proved tougher than the founders fathomed...

The Boys Prep board also began hemorrhaging members. In the charter’s short history, 18 people have left the board, some of whom said they felt forced out or were exhausted from dealing with the school’s internal politics.

While The City Paper reached out to current and former members of the Boys Prep board, many never responded, and almost all who did reply refused to talk about their experience on the record, if at all. That includes Monica Davis, an instructor at MTSU who resigned from the board this month after finishing two-thirds of her three-year term. She, too, refused to comment.

“The turnover that they’ve had is primarily related to their inability to settle on strong leadership and consistent board leadership at the beginning,” said Alan Coverstone, MNPS’ charter school guru and the executive director of the district’s Office of Innovation, which oversees charters.

“Lots of groups have good ideas about what a school would look like, but actually running a school is a bigger challenge,” he said. “This is a startup organization. It’s a school. It’s a nonprofit. It’s a lot of things all at once. If you don’t have a pretty good board collegiality — and a pretty good board understanding of how organizations work — it’s a big red flag that we look for,” he said.

That red flag waved high shortly before Boys Prep opened its doors. Three months ahead of the first day of school, Kennedy narrowly survived a no-confidence vote from the Boys Prep school board...

In the meantime, two teachers provided by the Teach for America alternative teaching certification program left the school for more stable gigs elsewhere, leaving Boys Prep suddenly short on staff...

Concerned with possible tinkering with test scores and other misconduct, Kennedy fired the popular school principal, the third since the school’s inception.

While the school board backed the move, it was the first in a series of events that would eventually lead to the founder being ousted from the school...

At least 39 of the 100 students who started with Boys Prep left last school year, and 16 others entered. The number of students cycling out gives the school one of the highest attrition rates in the district. Braddock said he counseled some boys out of the school because it was a good move for those individuals at the time, but would urge them to consider coming back...

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“Charter School Leader Comes Under Fire Over Discipline Methods.” NewsChannel5 (TN), 2/12/2013

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Tempers got heated Tuesday night at a charter school board meeting in South Nashville where parents say enough is enough.  The founder and president of Nashville Boys Prep has come under fire for his methods of discipline during the first semester of the school year.

Tuesday night's meeting went on for three hours.  The vast majority of that meeting focused on allegations against Dr. Martin Kennedy.  He's been on administrative leave from the school since December. 

That's when DCS and Metro Police opened an investigation into accusations of abuse.  Several parents made their case in front of the board Tuesday night...

DCS has completed its investigation and the agency found the allegations into the accusations of abuse against Kennedy to be unfounded. Metro Police still haven't come to a conclusion in their case. 

Dr. Kennedy told NewsChannel 5 he fully expects to be reinstated as president of Boys Prep.

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“DCS investigating Nashville charter school founder.” WSMV (TN), 12/19/2012

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) - The leader of a Nashville charter school is facing investigation over claims he assaulted two students.

Police and the Department of Children's Services are interviewing students and teachers to find out whether Dr. Martin Kennedy went too far when it comes to discipline at Boys Preparatory Charter School.

"I do not feel this individual is stable at all to be around kids. He has no self control, by no means," said school parent Lynn Mullins.

Mullins said her seventh-grade son is scared to go back to Boys Prep after, she claims, he was assaulted by Kennedy...

Marciecilla Giddens said her son was also attacked by the same teacher...

Both mothers have filed police reports, claiming Kennedy - a teacher and the founder of the small south Nashville charter school - took discipline too far...

Neither police nor DCS has commented on the investigation into the parents' allegations...

Also, according to that board member, Kennedy is no longer teaching in the classroom, but as founder of the school, he still has an affiliation with the school...

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University Preparatory Academy (Florida)

“Pinellas: Students are leaving new charter school voluntarily.” Tampa Bay Times (FL), 9/11/2013

... Dot Clark, the partnership schools coordinator for Pinellas, said that 23 children had been withdrawn from University Prep since the school year started.

She interviewed 10 or 11 parents. "There was no one who said they were told to leave," Clark said.

Instead, some parents felt their child was being bullied. Some just wanted to go back to their home schools. Others were concerned that some textbooks had not been purchased yet and were concerned their children were going to fall behind, Clark said...

The district is also aware that some of the class sizes at University Prep are too large, with 30 or more students. Clark said she spoke with the principal, who is working to separate some classrooms.

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D.U.E. Season Charter School

“Former teacher files lawsuit against Camden charter school.” Courier-Post (NJ), 7/20/2012

CAMDEN — A security worker charged with assaulting a special-needs student in April has faced repeated allegations that he manhandled youngsters at D.U.E. Season Charter School, the school founded and led by his mother.

Lawrence Carpenter’s alleged actions at the K-8 school came despite a history of complaints from parents, students and staff to his mother, Principal Doris Carpenter, a Courier-Post investigation shows.

Now, a former Season teacher has sued the school and Doris Carpenter, saying she was retaliated against after complaining last October about alleged mistreatment of students by Lawrence Carpenter. In a letter to the principal, fourth-grade teacher Stacy Sampson described seeing Lawrence Carpenter, the school’s security leader, grab a boy by the collar and “slam him into a wall.”

Her civil suit alleges Lawrence Carpenter, who continues to work at Season, was responsible for a hostile work environment at the school. It also depicts Season as a “dysfunctional school,” alleging it has too few books and desks, and that fourth-graders struggled to count to 20 or to spell a simple word like “talk.”...

Lawrence Carpenter came to the public’s attention earlier this year in a video, obtained by the Courier-Post, that showed him grab 13-year-old Yontre Stanton around the neck with one hand and hold him for 19 seconds.

City police have charged Lawrence Carpenter with aggravated assault. He remains under investigation by the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office. The state Department of Education is investigating Season as a result of the incident...

Lawrence Carpenter’s behavior issues begin with a 2007 supervisor’s warning letter about his abrasive tone in 2007, the year Season opened...

Lawrence Carpenter is not the only issue facing Season.

• LaGreta Brown, a controversial former principal in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, was recently hired as an interim administrator. She was fired in Philadelphia after an outbreak of violence against Asian-American students.

• Poor academic performance heading into the year before its charter is up for state renewal. The school has not made what the DOE terms as adequate yearly progress in improving the performance of its students.

• A staff turnover rate approaching 50 percent a year and a student loss rate above 40 percent

• A police investigation into alleged activities by Nelson Olivo, a former media specialist. Some Season parents have claimed Olivo acted inappropriately toward young girls. Child pornography allegedly was found on his personal computer, at the school, after he fled the area.

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K12, Inc.

“Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP Announces Investigation of K12, Inc.” Press Release: Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, 12/16/2011 

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, a leading national securities law firm, is investigating potential securities fraud at K12, Inc. (“K12” or the “Company”) (NYSE: LRN - News).

The investigation focuses on whether the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws by failing to disclose that: (1) according to various academic benchmarks, K12 students were chronically underperforming their peers at traditional schools; (2) K12 has aggressively recruited students to their schools, regardless of how well-suited they might be for the Company’s curriculum; (3) as a result of K12’s haphazard recruiting process, the Company experiences student retention problems resulting in high rates of withdrawal; (4) K12 schools often have far larger student-to-teacher ratios than the Company advertises; and (5) K12 teachers have been pressured to allow students to pass regardless of academic performance, in order to receive federal funds.

On December 12, 2011, after several months of research, the New York Times published an article entitled “Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools.” The article raised serious concerns about K12’s business practices, alleging that Company schools inflate their student rosters, are underperforming academically, have detrimental student-to-teacher ratios and gain wrongful access to public funds. On this devastating news, K12 shares collapsed almost 24%, closing at $22 per share on December 13.

Request more information now by clicking here: www.faruqilaw.com/LRN

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“Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools.” New York Times, 12/12/2011  

By almost every educational measure, the Agora Cyber Charter School is failing.

Nearly 60 percent of its students are behind grade level in math. Nearly 50 percent trail in reading. A third do not graduate on time. And hundreds of children, from kindergartners to seniors, withdraw within months after they enroll.

By Wall Street standards, though, Agora is a remarkable success that has helped enrich K12 Inc., the publicly traded company that manages the school. And the entire enterprise is paid for by taxpayers.

Agora is one of the largest in a portfolio of similar public schools across the country run by K12. Eight other for-profit companies also run online public elementary and high schools, enrolling a large chunk of the more than 200,000 full-time cyberpupils in the United States...

Kids mean money. Agora is expecting income of $72 million this school year, accounting for more than 10 percent of the total anticipated revenues of K12, the biggest player in the online-school business. The second-largest, Connections Education, with revenues estimated at $190 million, was bought this year by the education and publishing giant Pearson for $400 million...

The New York Times has spent several months examining this idea, focusing on K12 Inc. A look at the company’s operations, based on interviews and a review of school finances and performance records, raises serious questions about whether K12 schools — and full-time online schools in general — benefit children or taxpayers, particularly as state education budgets are being slashed.

Instead, a portrait emerges of a company that tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.

Current and former staff members of K12 Inc. schools say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program, which requires strong parental commitment and self-motivated students. Online schools typically are characterized by high rates of withdrawal...

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K12, Inc. / LRN stock price trends @ http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/LRN

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Fahari Academy Charter School

CHARTERS 'NIX 23%' OF KIDS / Boys will be boys, but nonpublic schools are quick to expel average little rascals; April 24, 2011; New York Post 

He called a classmate a "spaghetti noodle" because she was skinny. And he led the "Rubberband Gang" that launched pellets of paper across the classroom. But now sixth-grader Tyrique Royal, 12, is facing expulsion from Fahari Academy Charter School on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn -- for being a kid.

The school insists it's simply adhering to a strict "no-bullying" policy parents are well aware of, but student advocates say Tyrique's case illustrates the disparity between how charter and public schools handle difficult kids.

In the public-school system, students cannot be expelled if they are under 17, and principals cannot suspend a student for more than five consecutive days.

For serious offenses like dealing drugs or using weapons, a superintendent must intervene to suspend the student for longer. Only two students in the city have been expelled in the past three years -- and both were ousted for reaching the age of 21, a city spokeswoman said.

But charter schools set their own suspension rules and don't report expulsion data -- although experts believe thousands of difficult students are dumped every year to public schools.

A study of eight middle-school charters conducted last year by the United Federation of Teachers found the average attrition rate was 23 percent. Some of those students were held back a grade, but the numbers indicate that many students were forced to leave or were expelled, according to the report…

[Principal] Venning defended her school's strict anti-bullying rules. The school has a zero-tolerance policy toward name-calling, she said, and students are not allowed to touch each other…

But charter parents complain that school rules can get out of hand.

"Too often, charter schools are quick to exclude students for minor problems instead of giving them the behavioral support they need to stay and succeed in school," said Randi Levine, staff attorney for Advocates for Children.

But charter advocates said one disruptive student can taint the learning environment for an entire class -- and it's the school's duty to remove that student from the classroom.

"A charter has been set up to have a more disciplined and structured environment that's better for learning," said Peter Murphy, policy director for the New York Charter Schools Association. "Good school culture does not allow a persistently disruptive student to negatively affect the learning of everyone else in the class."

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KIPP - Knowledge is Power Program (student attrition)

STUDY FINDS HIGH DROPOUT RATES FOR BLACK MALES IN KIPP SCHOOLS; March 31, 2011; Education Week 

KIPP charter middle schools enroll a significantly higher proportion of African-American students than the local school districts they draw from, but 40 percent of the black males they enroll leave between grades 6 and 8, says a new nationwide study by researchers at Western Michigan University.

“The dropout rate for African-American males is really shocking,” said Gary J. Miron, a professor of evaluation, measurement, and research at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, and the lead researcher for the study. “KIPP is doing a great job of educating students who persist, but not all who come.”…

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NATIONAL REPORT SAYS CHARTER SCHOOL HAS HIGH STUDENT ATTRITION; March 31, 2011; Baltimore Sun (MD)

A charter network that has two schools in Baltimore has a high level of student attrition and of private and public funding that have positioned it to be successful, according to a national report published Thursday.

The report on Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), which opened its first school in Baltimore about a decade ago and recently reached a long-term deal to remain in the city for another 10 years, suggests that the national charter school network's high performance is a result of having advantages over its public school counterparts.

The study, which was published by Western Michigan University and jointly released with Columbia University, "What Makes KIPP Work: A study of student characteristics, attrition and school finance," based its conclusions on publicly available KIPP data measured against districtwide data…

Nationally, the report found, on average about 15 percent of students leave KIPP every year, compared with 3 percent in public schools. Moreover, between grades six and eight, about 30 percent of students drop off KIPP's rolls.

The majority of students who leave are African-American males, the report found, and the schools primarily serve African-American students.

The lead researcher, Gary Miron, called KIPP's attrition a "tremendous drop-off," concluding that he believes "their outcomes would change" without the attrition.

The study also concluded that KIPP's high performance, when compared to public schools, could be a result of serving significantly fewer special-education students and English language learners — two populations that are often less competitive academically and more expensive to educate…

The report's researchers found that in addition to receiving more public funding per pupil than its public school counterparts, KIPP also received $5,760 per pupil from private funding…

"Kids who persist at KIPP do well," Miron said. "But the question is, is KIPP lifting the public schools, or are they lifting the kids who have the support to persist?"

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