#Game planner pro alternative free
Traditional high schools in many states are free to use alternative programs to rid themselves of weak students whose test scores, truancy and risk of dropping out threaten their standing, a ProPublica survey of state policies found.Ĭoncerns that schools artificially boosted test scores by dumping low achievers into alternative programs have surfaced in connection with ongoing litigation in Louisiana and Pennsylvania, and echo findings from a legislative report a decade ago in California. But since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 refashioned the yardstick for judging schools, alternative education has taken on another role: A silent release valve for high schools like Olympia that are straining under the pressure of accountability reform.Īs a result, alternative schools at times become warehouses where regular schools stow poor performers to avoid being held accountable. Alternative schools have long served as placements for students who violated disciplinary codes. The Orlando schools illustrate a national pattern. He had transferred there from another alternative charter school, where he enrolled after his grades slipped at Olympia. I didn’t really make any progress the whole time I was there,” said Thiago Mello, 20, who spent a year at Sunshine and left without graduating. “I would show up, I would sit down and listen to music the whole time. The departures expose a practice in which officials in the nation’s tenth-largest school district have for years quietly funneled thousands of disadvantaged students - some say against their wishes - into alternative charter schools that allow them to disappear without counting as dropouts. Once enrolled at Sunshine, hundreds of them exit quickly with no degree and limited prospects. Sunshine collects enough school district money to cover costs and pay its management firm, Accelerated Learning Solutions (ALS), a more than $1.5 million-a-year “management fee,” 2015 financial records show - more than what the school spends on instruction.īut students lose out, a ProPublica investigation found. Olympia keeps its graduation rate above 90 percent - and its rating an “A” under Florida’s all-important grading system for schools - partly by shipping its worst achievers to Sunshine.
Sunshine takes in cast-offs from Olympia and other Orlando high schools in a mutually beneficial arrangement.
A current student said he was robbed near the strip mall’s parking lot, twice. One former student said he was left to himself to goof off or cheat on tests by looking up answers on the internet. Sunshine’s 455 students - more than 85 percent of whom are black or Hispanic - sit for four hours a day in front of computers with little or no live teaching. It offers no sports teams and few extra-curricular activities. Sunshine stands a few doors down from a tobacco shop and a liquor store in a strip mall. Last school year, 137 students assigned to Olympia’s attendance zone instead attended Sunshine High, a charter alternative school run by a for-profit company. Olympia’s success in recent years, however, has been linked to another, quite different school five miles away.
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