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Charter school pupils struggle on Pa. tests
Northside Urban Pathways Charter School
Steven Adams/Tribune-Review
Laboratory Charter School of Communication and Languages in Philadelphia
Joe Appel/Tribune-Review
Nearly 69 percent of charter elementary schools and 46 percent of charter middle schools scored in the bottom fifth of all public schools in the state. The scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment were adjusted for poverty, one of the biggest predictors of academic success.
"The information, be it the snapshot or trend information, is the kind that parents will want to know about and consider as they make choices about public school options that include charter schools," said Ron Cowell, president of the Educational Policy and Leadership Center, a Harrisburg think tank.
"It's the kind of information that should raise questions for state lawmakers who next year will be asked to evaluate the charter school law and probably make some decisions about whether the law is continued or modified in some form," said Cowell, a former state representative from Wilkins Township.
The Trib obtained data for 50 of the state's 76 charter schools. Four of the seven charter schools in Allegheny County were included in the study. Their achievement ranged from dismal at Manchester Academic and now-closed Thurgood Marshall charter schools to slightly above average at Northside Urban Pathways Charter School. Schools that did not have more than 75 percent of their students taking standardized tests were excluded, and some schools did not include the grades in which students are tested: five, eight and 11.
The Trib's findings come as Western Michigan University prepares to release the final installment of a five-year study of Pennsylvania's charter schools next month. About 28,000 students attend the state's charter schools, most of which are in urban areas.
Charting a new course
Charter schools are independent public schools free from many state regulations and union requirements. They must receive permission to operate from the school districts where they are located, and they receive state money from the districts where the children live.
School districts are responsible for monitoring charter schools and have the power to shut them down. Last year, the Wilkinsburg School District closed Thurgood Marshall, citing poor academic performance and financial mismanagement.
The charter school movement was born 10 years ago in Minnesota. Proponents say that charter schools, freed from bureaucracy, can be laboratories for innovation that boost student achievement and provide a model for other public schools.
"I think the kids here get more personalized attention. We know how many kids in public schools fall through the cracks," said Frank Wadley, the father of a first-grade student at the Urban League of Pittsburgh Charter School in East Liberty.
Many charter schools offer smaller classes, after-school programs and a longer school year than other public schools. Many also require students to wear uniforms.
In 1997, then-Gov. Tom Ridge, a Republican and a big backer of charter schools, signed the law authorizing charter schools in Pennsylvania. Charter schools are a key piece of Republican school reform efforts, in Pennsylvania and nationally.
Critics, however, say charter schools siphon money from other public schools without improving student achievement. Nationally, charter schools have a mixed record of performance.
"You have some states like Colorado where charters are doing better than regular schools on average, and others, like Pennsylvania, where they appear to be doing worse," said Bryan C. Hassel, president of Public Impact, an education consulting and research firm in Charlotte, N.C.
Charter school advocates and researchers say that schools should not be evaluated on one year's data. Charter students often were doing poorly in traditional public schools. As a result, proponents say, charter schools should be judged on the students' improvement over time.
Average reading scores of fifth-graders at Manchester Academic Charter School, for example, jumped 60 points last year, while math scores rose 110 points.
"Kids are more than just test scores. We teach the whole child here," said Vasilios Scoumis, deputy chief academic officer at Manchester.
The Western Michigan evaluation has found that while charter schools have low test scores, their annual improvement has outpaced that of similar schools.
"If a kid comes into ninth grade unable to read but leaves 10th grade able to read, but not at the ninth-grade level, that's a great gain," said Jeremy Resnick, former principal of Northside Urban Pathways, a Downtown charter school.
Barbara Jones said counselors in the Pittsburgh Public Schools gave up on her mentally retarded daughter, Kala Forbes, after she had completed elementary school.
Now Kala, 15, is a freshman and has attended Northside for four years.
"When I brought her to Northside Urban Pathways, she was reading at probably at first-grade or kindergarten level," said Jones, a Garfield resident. "Now, she's reading chapter books."
Schools offer discipline
In August, the Brookings Institution, a prominent think tank in Washington, D.C., released a nationwide analysis that showed charter schools' test scores were low but had increased substantially after two years.
Brookings found that Pennsylvania's charter schools performed slightly above average. That study, however, examined only 11 charter schools in Pennsylvania, because they are only in their infancy here.
"We're newborns. Like newborns, it takes a while for us to walk. You can't compare us to a full-fledged adult," said Veronica Joyner, chief administrative officer and founder of Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School of Philadelphia.
Her downtown school gives 1,000 students in grades 1 to 12 what they lacked in traditional public schools — discipline and security. Security guards in coats and ties monitor students in crisp white-and-blue uniforms.
Donna Wyllie, 45, works as a nurse's aide at the school. Her daughter, Amarri Kinsey, 14, is in the 10th grade.
"I feel very safe," Wyllie said. "On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say 10."
Some of the reasons for charter schools' appeal, though, also could account for their low performance.
Many advocates, for example, like charter schools because they believe traditional schools are unresponsive to parents. Parents carry more clout at charter schools because many were founded by parents.
But June Brown, founder and chief administrative officer of the Laboratory Schools in Philadelphia, said parents are the main obstacle to charter schools' success.
Brown said parents routinely threaten to ask the school district to shut down her school if she doesn't relax its academic standards, homework requirements or dress code.
Brown stands her ground — her school was the best in the Trib study — but many charter school administrators cave in to parents, she said.
"The parents are the biggest challenge in this business. They side with the children to the extent they chip away at the standards a piece at a time," Brown said.
But discipline at her school remains as firm as it was in the school's past. The imposing stone building once served as a Catholic school and convent.
Now about 300 students in pale-blue and khaki uniforms march to class in silence on polished wooden floors. The school focuses on French and Spanish from kindergarten through the eighth grade.
Obstacles remain
Another double-edged sword: Charter schools are free from many union and state rules that govern who teaches and runs the schools. For example, only 75 percent of the teachers in charter schools need to be certified under state law. Other public schools may have no uncertified teachers, except in emergencies.
"We know that many charter schools don't have a curriculum that's thought out, they don't have properly trained and certified people, they don't have the resources and expertise to deal with students with special needs," said John Tarka, executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers.
Some charter schools are not meeting even minimum state requirements. Last year, state Auditor General Robert P. Casey Jr. cited seven for failing to meet state certification rules.
The seven schools audited by Casey had 28 percent to 66 percent of their teachers certified.
Collectively, charter school teachers and administrators have less experience than their peers in traditional schools. Steve Roberts, principal at Northside Urban Pathways, said his school can offer starting salaries that are competitive with those offered by school districts, but the pay can't keep up as teachers gain experience.
"One of the issues they face is getting good competent folks to lead the school," said Chenzie Grignano, director of the Charter Schools Project at Duquesne University.
Charter schools face other obstacles. They get only 80 percent of the money for each student that the host school district receives. Many charter schools cannot afford to buy a building, so they are forced to use money they would otherwise spend on education to pay rent, Roberts said.
A 2000 study by Louis Chandler, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, found that charter schools in Pennsylvania did not differ significantly in curriculum and teaching methods from other public schools.
Charter schools have discovered what traditional schools have known all along, said Deanna Duby, senior policy analyst for the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union.
"This is hard stuff," she said. "There's a reason why, particularly in urban areas, schools aren't doing well. They're not funded well. They're dealing with a very difficult population."
| How local charter schools performed |
Seven charter schools operate in Allegheny County. Three of those schools were included in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's analysis. They are:
In the Trib's analysis, eighth-grade students scored, on average, 77 points higher than what was predicted based on their poverty level, one of the biggest influences on test scores. Students in 11th grade scored six points lower than predicted.
At Northside, 60 percent of students are low-income. The only Pittsburgh city schools that have similar poverty levels are Schiller and Pittsburgh classical academies, which are middle schools, and both fared better than Northside in the Trib's analysis.
Test scores are not yet available for eighth-graders at the school; fifth-grade children, on average, scored 203 points lower than predicted. At Manchester, 42 percent of students are low-income.
Three schools had equivalent poverty levels in the city: Beechwood, Concord and Liberty elementary schools. All three did better than Manchester.
Almost 90 percent of Urban League students come from low-income families, and children scored two points lower than what was predicted. Among seven similar elementary schools, Urban League did better than five: Fort Pitt, Murray, Northview, Stevens and Weil.
Two city schools did better than the Urban League: Chatham and Lemington.
The Trib's analysis also included the Thurgood Marshall Academy Charter School in Wilkinsburg, which the Wilkinsburg Borough school board shut down last year.
State reading and mathematics exams are given in grades 5, 8 and 11, and some charter schools did not include those grades in the 2000-01 school year, the latest data available. The county's other charter schools are:
| About the analysis |
To compare academic performance at charter schools with that of public schools, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review used a two-step statistical analysis.
Staff writer Mark Houser built a computer model to predict how well students in public and charter schools across Pennsylvania perform on the state standardized test, the PSSA. The model is based on how many students receive free or reduced-price lunches, a standard measure of low income. (Student family incomes have been shown repeatedly to correspond with performance.) The Trib found that statewide, that one number accounts for slightly more than 60 percent of the variability in scores from school to school. In other words, the Trib’s model is 60 percent better at predicting a school’s PSSA average than just guessing the average is identical to the state median.
The Trib graded each school with an A, B, C, D or F based on how well its students actually did, compared to what we predicted they would do. We then looked to see what grades charter schools tended to get.
The study was based on only one year of testing data (2000-01). While it is a good way to compare charter and public schools and “level the playing field” regarding student family incomes, it can’t tell if schools are getting better or worse over time.
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