I listened to about half of the Radio Times piece yesterday featuring Helen Gym and Matthew Brouilette and I must say it was quite illuminating. At first they discussed the upcoming movie "Won't Back Down" and how it portrays the Hollywood version of the various parent trigger laws being debated across the country. These laws are supposed to allow parents to take over and turnaround an underperforming school as long as a majority of the community agrees to it. What they do not discuss much through the political field is to whom they are turning these schools over? Many times these schools become charter schools and my oust the parent community they say they support due to hard-to-navigate entry standards or application processes.

But the most interesting thing to come of this radio show was the illumination that the PA Department of Education (PDE) has allowed test scores of charter schools to be elevated by treating each school as an individual District as opposed to an individual school. 

Even though I disagree with the use of test scores to compare grades, schools, etc, the charter advocates general do use them, so we'll analyze their rationale. According to this metric, 4thd grade in Charter School should compare only its 4th grade students against those at Public School Y in order to see which students are performing better. What PDE has allowed is for charter schools to average all their scores together in order to compare, which might inflate scores for individual grades.

This practice seems unfair to both charters and public schools alike. By playing games with numbers, the PDE will inflate certain grades' scores while deflating others. And the comparison is based on more students, changing the nature of said comparison.

While I do not advocate using these scores this way, at least use them fairly!