Grades raise charter-school panel queries
Almost half in state score marginally, lawmakers told
Forty-six percent of Arkansas’ open-enrollment and conversion charter schools have D- or F state-applied letter grades, as do 32% of public schools overall, including charter schools, according to a state Division of Elementary and Secondary Education presentation Tuesday.
More specifically, 43 of the state’s 93 charter schools have marginal or worse grades.
Addressing the state’s Charter Authorizing Panel, Tiffani Grayer, the agency’s director of school performance and monitoring, said the highest percentage of Dand F- grades to the charter schools — which are publicly funded schools — is at the elementary school level. There, 15 of the state’s 24 elementary charter schools — roughly 63% of them — had D and F grades, according to Grayer’s report. That compares with 36% or 188 for the broader set of all 524 public elementary schools.
Grayer told the panel that the numbers were surprising to her. The numbers at the elementary school level, in particular, are at least partly the result of the covid pandemic that started in March 2020 and disrupted instruction, particularly at the elementary school level, she said.
“This is where we need to home in our efforts and supports — at the elementary level with our charter schools,” she said.
Forty-six percent of all 24 charter middle schools and 39% of all 17 charter high schools had the low D and F grades, as did 32% of all of Arkansas’ 204 public middle schools and 26% of all 307 public high schools, according to statistics shared with the panel.
Another view of the data showed that D- and F-graded charter schools made up 12.8% of all D- and F-graded schools in the state, or there were 43 D- and F- graded charter schools out of the overall number of 334 D- and F-graded public schools.
The state Charter Authorizing Panel reviewed the letter grade information at a meeting in which it also:
⏹ Approved a name and location change for what will now be the School for Advanced Studies Northwest Arkansas that will be housed in the former Lane Hotel and Haas Hall Academy in Rogers. The school to open later this year was previously la
beled the Bentonville School for Advanced Studies.
⏹ At the request of the Pulaski County Special School District, rescinded the state-issued conversion charter for the district’s Driven Virtual Academy that saw an enrollment decline in recent years.
⏹ Received detailed presentations from four open-enrollment charter school organizations that have one or more D and/or F- graded campuses: Founders Classical Academy Online; Scholarmade Achievement Place in Little Rock; Jacksonville Lighthouse Elementary and Friendship Aspire Academy of Arkansas that has low-graded campuses in Little Rock and Pine Bluff.
Grayer’s data 2021-22 and 2022-23 report to the Charter Authorizing Panel was accompanied by caveats, including the fact that the charter data was not broken down by open-enrollment charters that are operated by nonprofit organizations versus conversion charters operated by traditional public school districts.
Additionally, some of the state’s charter schools specifically target high-need students, including students who have dropped out or are at risk of dropping out of traditionally operated schools. Not all of the state’s “second-chance” charter schools are separated from overall charter schools.
“This is answering questions I’ve always had about charter schools compared to non-charter schools,” panel member Phil Baldwin told Grayer about the data, adding that he would like a more granular report so that comparisons between open-enrollment, conversion and virtual charter schools can be further assessed.
Baldwin, who called the data disturbing, asked for a chart showing a more direct comparison between charter schools and noncharter schools to determine whether there is a performance difference.
“One of the things I’ve always wondered is if we are doing what we need to be doing,” Baldwin said, adding later that it would be appropriate for the state panel to become more involved in charter school data analyses.
Panel member Freddie Scott also asked for a comparison of the charter schools based on the their different years of their operations — those that have had charter contracts with the state for multiple years compared with newer schools.
Sonja Wright-McMurray, another panel member, said she is curious about the populations of students being served by the C, D, and F-graded schools.
“I’m curious to see the population of students those schools are serving,” she said. “Those falling in the C, D, F range, is that attributable to the school itself or to the population they are serving?” she asked. “The letter grade we see may not be giving the full story of the work that is being done in the school for the students they are serving.”
Grayer responded that there are more than a dozen charter and other schools that are actually exempt by rule and law from receiving a state letter grade and they were not included in the data presented Tuesday to the panel. Those schools are exempt from the state’s accountability system although they are included in the federal system of holding schools responsible for student learning.
Wright-McMurray urged that the data be used so that A-graded schools can share successes with lower graded schools.
Panel member Tina Moore also urged that in fairness, the surrounding community of a low-graded charter school be taken into account.
Representatives of charter organizations had been invited to Tuesday’s charter panel meeting to present the barriers they have faced in operating their D and F-graded schools and to share steps they are taking to promote academic growth and build community partnerships.
Phillis Nichols-Anderson, founder of the Scholarmade Learning Place in Little Rock, described the “rolling study halls” that her school provides to students. Teachers are assigned to the school’s three buses to help students with their school work on their rides to and from school.
The Friendship Aspire organization talked about students organizing a forum to question candidates running for Pine Bluff mayor, and the development of an aviation program in which students could earn a pilot license by age 16.
Phong Tran, Friendship Education Foundation southern region superintendent, told the panel that the organization’s schools fell short last year in using data to drive student instruction. This year students are taught and tested on Arkansas education standards on a weekly basis.
Low student achievement in the schools are the result of generational neglect, Tran told the panel.
“Kids are pushed on to next grade and pushed on to next grade without any consideration of what they need to know for them to become good citizens,” Tran said. “We are working against the clock to get the kids where they need to get.
“We found out our sixth-graders couldn’t even add and subtract double-digit numbers,” Tran said. “That’s how sad it is and no one has done anything about it. We are seeking improvement but it takes a lot of work and a lot of time.”
Joe Harris, chief executive officer of the Friendship Education Foundation, told the panel that plans in the state to provide one-to-one tutoring for struggling students will be a transformational.
“That will transform a lot of the schools that have stood before you today talking about deficiencies,” Harris said. “We are setting up a system where kids will get one-to-one tutoring as part of daily and after-school instruction.”