Seymour’s bizarre claims about charter school performance

Fact Checker: David Seymour’s bizarre claims about charter school performance

Analysis by Save Our Schools NZ shows that the charter primary and middle schools achieved only 27 out a combined total of 66 achievement Targets for the 2015 academic year. This is a hit rate of only 40.9%.

For most people, this would represent a “Fail” but David Seymour seems to have taken the dark art of grade inflation to a new height.

In his Free Press release (15 August), Seymour claims that his charter schools are “knocking it out of the park with results and innovation”.

Outrageous comments such as Seymour’s serve to remind us that charter schools are clearly not subject to any serious monitoring at all.

Seymour’s colleagues on the charter school Authorisation Board have just launched a marketing campaign to try and bounce back from the disastrous current application round.

One of the slides in the presentation pack describes the charter school model with this comment:

“Freedom from constraints imposed on regular state schools in exchange for rigorous accountability for performance against agreed objectives.”

But the agreed objectives are those set out in the charter school contracts and not those in Seymour’s fantasy baseball stadium.

It will be interesting to read the Ministry’s evaluation of 2015 charter school performance and to see whether they have also drunk too much of the charter school Kool-Aid.

For the record, the combined 2015 results for the 3 primary and 2 middle schools are shown below.

Contract Targets are set at each Year level, as being the percentage of students assessed as “At or Above National Standards” across Reading, Writing and Maths.

The schools have different numbers of Year levels in operation, as they become established, but these add to 22 in each subject area for the 2015 year.

Targets Met in total: Achieved 27 out of 66 40.9%

Reading: Achieved 7 out of 22 31.8%

Writing: Achieved 10 out of 22 45.5%

Maths: Achieved 10 out of 22 45.5%

ENDS

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