I haven’t carefully studied the strange case of Challenges, Choices and Images charter school. But then again, the facts seems so stark that I’m not sure I need to. In voting 7-0 to keep open a school that is by all measures failing, the Denver school board would seem to be doing the equivalent of keeping a ripening corpse on life support to make the family feel better.
Will Denver never close a charter school, no matter how hideous its performance? It is beginning to seem that way. The board’s reluctance to pull the trigger actually tarnishes even the city’s stellar charters. Unlike the Life Skills charter, which the district had valid reasons to spare, CCI students would have other options, which couldn’t possibly be worse. (Could they?)
Never mind that the school will have a new leader, governing board, chalk, fresh paint on the walls, fresh-cut flowers in every classroom, whatever. The fact that this school will remain open is, to quote Woody Allen (that well-known school reformer), a travesty of a mockery of a sham.
The impressive new DPS School Performance Framework ranks CCI as one of the four worst elementary schools in the city, the second-worst middle school, and the single worst high school See the data here ). CCI is not a new school: its CSAP results have been in sharp decline since 2005, and were not particularly good back then.
In 2007, not a single student was proficient in 8th grade math or writing, and just 8% were proficient in reading; in 10th grade again zero in math, 3% in writing and 21% in reading. I can hardly wait to see the 2007-08 numbers. On CCI’s School Accountability Report the school ranked low in every category, and was in decline in both elementary and middle, with a significant decline in high school.
And did you notice that I haven’t even mentioned the juicy stuff yet? The "mixing public and private dollars, hiring convicted felons and bouncing paychecks to its teachers," to quote the dailies?
The stringent corrective actions the board is now forcing upon the school are probably a couple of years too late. I guess it took a full-blown crisis, like having the assistant principal arrested for buying crack (not his first arrest by a long shot) to force some action.
I hope CCI becomes the next Denver School of Science and Technology. But I’m no David Blaine: I’m not holding my breath.
Popularity: 2% [?]
This was a remarkable decision in several ways.
First, while the BOE did extract significant concessions — including the change of both governance and the entire administrative team — as Alan notes, the academic performance of the school has been poor for years (hence their probationary status). If the media reports on the more salacious details had never broken, it seems likely that the school would have continued without any significant change at all. It truly never should have gotten to this point, as this sort of reform should have been mandated earlier: it is reminiscent of the Animal House fraternity’s reaction when placed on “double-secret probation” – have a monster toga party. CCI seems to have done just that, since some of the more spectacular infractions occurred while the school was already on BOE probation.
Second is the juxtaposition with another of that evening’s votes: the narrow 4-3 decision to approve the application for Envision Charter Schools. Do the four BOE members who voted for both think they will be roughly equal in quality and think the opportunities for kids will be the same? And even worse, do the three BOE members who voted in favor of CCI and against Envision really imagine that the latter would have been a worse school? That kids would be better off at CCI than Envision? It is not the first time the BOE vote has favored bad existing schools against the promise of better new schools, but if you can’t vote to close the bad ones, it makes it a lot harder to vote to open new good ones.
Third are some factors Alan does not mention. CCI had an $18M bond (some reports have bond debt as high as $25M overall) from April of 2007. I had imagined the bond markets would have more discipline than sub-prime mortgages, but giving CCI $18M is full knowledge of the 2006 and earlier test results is remarkable. I can’t imagine commercial considerations were not a factor. In addition was the “private audience” between a former Mayor and the BOE. At some point members of communities whose children are graduating into society completely unprepared to succeed have to realize they are doing no one a favor by perpetuating low achievement. Even Al Sharpton is pushing for education reform (see the Education Equity Project). When you are to the left of Al, it might be time to look around.
What is clear about all this is the need for the BOE and DPS to come up with a different process for renewing Charter schools. The repeated designation of “probation” for failing Charter schools – many of whom stretch their probationary period across multiple years — is incredulous. After several years of work, DPS’s review process for a new Charter is, in contrast, pretty solid. If CCI had to come in the same door for renewal that Envision did for its initial Charter, it would hopefully have been a different story, but the current vague process and back-alley negotiations are less conducive to quality education than they are to assistant principals looking for a fix. There are lots of ways to improve the renewal process so that this does not happen again, and continuing to allow poor Charters to exist undermines the closure of equally low-performing District schools and the overall commitment to quality.