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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Full Data Proves Charter Schools' Merits

By Lisa Grover
Executive Director, N.M. Coalition for Charter Schools
    "Charter Schools Shouldn't Duplicate Failure," a commentary by Javier Martinez and Moises Venegas of The Albuquerque Partnership, argues that charter schools are merely repeating "the failures of the low-achieving schools they were developed to replace."
    A more-rounded view of the data proves that this is not the case.
    At their heart, charter schools are a grassroots movement. No charter school comes into being without revitalizing parental, teacher and community participation. Right now, more than 600 kids in Albuquerque are on waiting lists to enroll in a charter school. Across the state, close to 700 licensed educators teach in charter schools.
    Venegas rightly emphasizes that charter schools should be held to account. That said, he fails to incorporate data that would prove he worries prematurely that charter schools simply mirror the faults of the schools they are created to replace.
    Charter schools already outperform traditional schools. Last year, 57 percent of all charter schools made AYP, compared to 47 percent of traditional schools. This includes fifteen out of 28 Albuquerque charter schools, many with large populations of minority students and located in all quadrants of the city.
    If Martinez and Venegas want to focus on student progress based simply on the parameters of ethnicity and location, then they should include the whole picture and not just pick examples that appear to make their case.
    Omitted, too, is that many charter schools are essentially "designer" schools aimed to meet the special needs of students who have fallen through the cracks of the conventional public school system.
    This year, 32 Albuquerque charter schools educate 5,500 students. Of these, 2,126 students, or 40 percent attend charter schools that focus on very special needs: adjudication, foster care placement, homelessness, credit recovery or enhancement, and emotional and behavioral issues, including early parenthood.
    Other charter schools give special emphasis to programs such as performing arts, military training, Outward Bound, environmental studies and service learning— just to name a few. Last year, 651 students graduated from charter high schools around the state, and of this number, 365 graduated from schools designed for at-risk populations.
    Venegas uses a chart to show the achievement gap between high and low scoring charter schools ranging from 20-30 percent and correlating higher concentrations of minority students with lower performance.
    But he leaves out the other side of the picture. Using scores from the highest and lowest performing traditional schools in APS shows a much larger achievement gap of 70 percent.
    While the achievement gap grows in some charter high schools, we must remember that 12 out of 18 high schools seek to first and foremost address very challenging life situations of kids who otherwise may not attend school at all. We need to ask tough questions, but use research methodologies based on a full assessment of all the data.
    As the scrutiny of charter schools continues, so too should consideration of how well charter schools are working for the state as a whole. Are they lowering the drop-out rate? Are charter schools different from district schools and are parents choosing them?
    With close to 9,000 students enrolled in charter schools and AYP results exceeding the state average, what we see so far shows that charter schools are worth continuing— and refining to improve quality over time.