UPDATE: February 15, 2012: The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Board of Ed voted unanimously last night to renew the charter of Leadership High for another five years. The California Charter School Association (see full story below) had recommended its closure. From San Francisco News:
Loran Simon, a 2003 alumnus [at left, speaking at a California Foundation event with Governor Brown] who went on to graduate from the University of San Francisco’s law school, rejected the charter consortium’s report, which based its recommendation on Leadership’s record on statewide tests.
“I just became a lawyer,” Simon said. “All of that is built on the foundation I got at Leadership High School. We can’t rely on standardized tests. I never did well on those tests, and I never thought it would predict how well I would do in the future.”
UPDATE: February 14, 2012: Tonight's meeting of the board of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has the authorization or grant to deny the petition of Leadership High (see story below).
The Sacramento Bee reported Friday that California Charter Schools Association has alerted school districts and county offices of education around the state that 10 charter schools should be closed for not meeting the minimum criteria the CCSA has established for academic achievement. (Schools must have achieved one of the following things: an Academic Performance Index score of at least 700 in the most recent year, a three-year cumulative API growth of at least 50 points or must be on pace to meet statewide student performance for at least two of three years.)
The 10 schools (at left, students from Uncharted Shores Academy in Crescent City on a cruise in the town's harbor) were already in the process of petition renewal, having been identified previously that they fell below the CCSA's standards. As the organization explains:
Upon the publication of the 2011 Academic Performance Index (API) results, CCSA identified thirty-one (31) charter schools from across California that are "Below CCSA's Minimum Criteria for Renewal." Of those 31, 11 schools' charters... are in the process of petition renewal. CCSA provided all schools above and below criteria an opportunity to provide demographic data corrections and for those schools below criteria, an opportunity to submit additional student level, longitudinal data. CCSA analyzed the data provided and determined that of the 11 schools in renewal, 10 schools still do not meet CCSA's Minimum Criteria for Renewal. CCSA has informed these schools of this circumstance, and will take steps toward informing the authorizer and encouraging it to exercise their authority not to renew the charter, and close the school, according to the CCSA announcement.
In the CCSA announcement, the organization's senior vp of achievement and performance management, Myrna Castrejon, said:
"We cannot have an honest discussion about education reform and increasing accountability without closing the charters that have demonstrated an inability to meet the challenge of excellence--granted to us by law--and chronically underperform. Our accountability framework has been pressure tested, analyzed and deliberated thoroughly. The time to act on persistently low-performing schools is now, because our children's education cannot be put on the back-burner."
Some of the fingered schools were quick to respond. On its website, Leadership High of San Francisco (has a 93% graduation rate, based on very small numbers: the school has graduated 500 students in 14 years): [emphases is Leadership's]:
Leadership is not at risk of closure...[we are] is in the process of submitting [our] charter petition to the San Francisco Unified District, as it is required to do every five years. The school has no reason to believe the District will close the school...[the CCSA]... calls for the closure of ...schools...that did not meet a test score cut-off of 700. [The CCSA] is not affiliated with the California Department of Education or any other government agency and has no authority to be making this recommendation. The 700 point cut-off is arbitrary and disconnected from California law. Were San Francisco Unified to apply the arbitrary standard of 700 to the schools in the city, 10 regular high schools would warrant closure.... Leadership is proud to serve a community that is 82% African-American or Latino students, the highest percentage of any regular high school in San Francisco. CCSA's attack on Leadership is an attack on those schools committed to serving African-American and Latino students and being part of the solution of our city's achievement gap.
The CCSA story also included what was termed a "prepared statement" from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that read, regarding the announcement, "Good charter schools are part of the solution, but bad charter schools are part of the problem." Memo to Secretary Duncan: No response would have been the better option. We don't need more inanities, especially coming from the DOE.
The list of suggested closures:
The San Francisco Board of Education voted unanimously tonight to renew Leadership High School's charter. Leadership was one of the 10 schools recommended for closure by the CCSA. Commissioner Jill Wynns, who usually votes against charter schools, called the CCSA's recommendation for school closures a "politically minded attack."
Posted by: Mark | 02/15/2012 at 12:06 AM