Charles
Last Updated: July 07. 2011 1:52PM Charter high schools in Detroit not making grade Test scores for schools often trail DPS students' average Mike Wilkinson/ The Detroit News
Once touted as a solution to Detroit's public school woes, charter high schools are often doing just about as poorly — and in many cases worse — at educating students and getting them ready for college, a Detroit News analysis of recent test data shows.
Of 25 charters in Detroit or nearby, only six had higher math or science proficiency scores than Detroit Public Schools' average on the most recent Michigan Merit Exam, with most of the others doing worse than the district.
More charters did poorer in reading and writing as well; only in social studies did more charters surpass rather than trail DPS.
The results raise questions about the district's plans to authorize additional charters in its search for improvement and could also renew the debate over whether charters are the answer to the riddle of urban education, where multiple strategies are often producing the same poor results.
"If charters do not outperform the host district, they ought not to have a charter," said Margaret Trimer-Hartley, superintendent of the University Prep Science and Math Middle School in Detroit, a charter school.
One of the largest nationwide charter-schools studies found that nearly half of charter schools do as well as the local public school; more than a third did worse, and just 17 percent did better.
"(The results are) a call to focus on the quality of charter schools," said Dev Davis, research manager of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, which published the study in 2009. "It's not a panacea. There are no magic bullets in education."
Few dispute that DPS's most recent scores were awful, with students scoring well below the state averages on the ACT and all five subject areas of the Michigan Merit Exam. The district's students' composite ACT score was 15 out of 36, down from the previous two years and well below the state average of 19.3.
Concerns about the quality of the DPS schools and student safety have caused tens of thousands of parents to choose charter schools or leave the city altogether in search of better educational opportunities. In the past decade, DPS has lost nearly 100,000 students as charter schools and suburban classrooms have swelled with the arrival of former DPS schoolchildren.
Charter schools remain an important part of the reforms proposed by the district, though plans to turn over dozens of schools to charter operators, proposed by former DPS Emergency Manager Robert Bobb, have been scaled back to eight schools. The district, however, said it will not hesitate to remove charters that do not succeed.
"DPS knows that charters are one strategy for reform but by themselves are not the answer," said Kisha Verdusco, a district spokeswoman, in a statement. "We have specifically turned to charter operators with proven records of raising achievement. The companies that we are authorizing have raised performance on the ACT/MME at their buildings."
The district has five charter high schools: Aisha Shule/W.E.B. DuBois Prep Academy, Ross Hill Academy and three campuses of the Covenant House Life Skills Center that provide alternative education for homeless children and others.
All had lower ACT scores than DPS and only Aisha Shule, in social studies, outperformed DPS on the Michigan Merit Exam.
According to the Stanford University study, charter schools have the biggest positive impact on students in younger grades but tend to have a negative impact at the high school level.
Researchers are looking into the high school disparity, and Davis said it may be a greater number of them are educating students who would have dropped out otherwise, or that more students moved into the charter schools in high school with already inadequate academic skills.
The study looked at data from 15 states and the District of Columbia; it did not include Michigan. The center recently agreed to study Michigan students in public schools and charters; results are expected in 2012, Davis said. Questions raised
Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, said research in Michigan has shown charters routinely exceed DPS on the Michigan Education Assessment Program (MEAP) tests given to children in grades three to nine.
But he said the relatively poor performance of high school students in charters raises questions. Quisenberry said students perform better the longer they are in charter schools and it's unclear how long the high school students have been in the charter school setting. "These numbers are important, and they should make us concerned," he said.
For Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, the test results confirm what he has long suspected: Despite the advantages charters enjoy — they have more control of hiring, can demand greater parental involvement and can send misbehaving students back to DPS — they often have the same trouble educating a largely poor, minority population of students.
"If a charter is going to remain open, it must perform," said Johnson, whose union represents DPS teachers. "If it's consistently turning out poor results, it shouldn't remain open." 'In the same boat'
Educators say DPS and the charters are trying to solve the same problem: overcoming the environment so many children come from, where poverty creates a shaky foundation for success.
"Everybody is pretty much in the same boat," said Doug Ross, CEO of New Urban Learning, which runs University Preparatory Academy, one of the few schools to consistently outperform DPS. "We can't change the external environment."
Not all charters or Detroit Public Schools are the same, and comparisons can often be difficult. The three Covenant House schools have the lowest scores, but also some of the biggest challenges. And DPS' best high schools, Renaissance and Cass Tech, are open only to the district's best students — and score accordingly. Renaissance had an ACT average of 20.9, Cass Tech 19.2, well beyond the district's overall average.
Likewise, there's a vast difference between Ross' UPA and the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences, another charter school. University Prep had an ACT composite of 16.5, the Academy of Arts and Sciences 13.8.
What the scores point out is the difficulty both public and charter schools face, and the need for solutions.
"We need more good schools and we've got to get (students) out of low-performing schools," Ross said, "and who cares who governs them?"
(313) 222-2563
>From The Detroit News:
http://detnews.com/article/20110707/SCHOOLS/107070387/Charter-high-schools-in-Detroit-not-making-grade#ixzz1RRfa8yxR