No renewals for Stanford charter school
Stanford New Schools, a K-12 charter school in East Palo Alto, comes with a good pedigree. It’s operated by Stanford’s School of Education.
But last month, as this blog noted, the state named it one of the state’s 188 persistently lowest performing schools, designated for restructuring. Then on Wednesday night, as Palo Alto Online reported, the Ravenswood School Board voted not to renew the school’s charter. Unless the trustees relent, the school will shut down in June.
Contrary to the perception that it’s next to impossible to close a poor-performing charter, here’s a case where it just might happen. Everyone from the dean of the ed school to tearful parents came out to the hearing to request a charter renewal, to no avail.
The school can make a plausible case, despite its lagging test scores, for an extension. Stanford New Schools is a combination of a charter high school and a new charter elementary. The high school has an impressive record of sending students to college — more than 90 percent – but its STAR scores are low. The three-year old elementary charter’s first two years of tests are also low – less than 20 percent proficiency in math and English language arts. But the school can legitimately argue that a startup deserves at least a little more time.
The board voted 3-2 to deny the charter but subsequently 4-1 to at least consider a two-year extension, under the close watch of the district. The superintendent will present a plan.
Ravenswood itself has been a chaotic district and has been in District Improvement for six years. Having Ravenswood intensely supervise a Stanford operation promises to be humbling, if nothing else.
(Update: The New York Times today did an excellent story on the charter schools and the Ravenswood vote. See here. And blogger Joanne Jacobs, who has firsthand experience with East Palo Alto charters, adds her comments here.)
Where has anyone has gotten “the perception that it’s next to impossible to close a poor-performing charter [school]“? The facts show that California school districts have either revoked or non-renewed over 150 charters to date and uncounted additional schools have closed “voluntarily,” often when faced with the threat of revocation or non-renewal. Thus, the facts demonstrate that revocation and closure are very common in the charter sector. In fact, closing a charter school seem to becoming too easy and is often based on California’s very low-quality (non-longitudinal, non-scaled) student achievement data.
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Oh dear — do I have to tell you AGAIN the story of Urban Pioneer, a San Francisco charter high school focusing on wilderness-based experiential education? I’ll give you the short version: Two student deaths due to school negligence on a school wilderness outing. Financial shambles (teacher paychecks bouncing). Rock-bottom test scores. Academic fraud (graduating students with far fewer than the required credits). A massive fight against our school district (San Francisco Unified) when SFUSD moved to close the school due to all this — Peter Thorp of then-CANEC, now CCSA came to meetings to speak against closing the charter. Mr. Premack, Unless you will makle a a clear statement that CCSA has REVERSED its previous policy and philosophy (and an abject apology to our school district, which was harmed by that controversy, would be appropriate too), it is clear that CCSA continues to make it difficult to close troubled charters, while falsely professing otherwise.
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“But the school can legitimately argue that a startup deserves at least a little more time.”
Couldn’t agree more, John! Many pundits pounced on this story – more so out of opposition to Linda Darling-Hammond, than vested interest in the students of SNS. Any education reform requires time to see results into full fruition. Before jumping to conclusions, let’s examine all the facts. Read on for more details about the school here:
http://bit.ly/sns-atp-blog
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Thanks for linking to Barnett Berry’s blog on the issue. For the most part, he’s right about Stanford’s charter schools. And critics have used the revocation of the charter as an excuse to attack Linda Darling-Hammond and the child-centered approach to education she stands for, even though she hasn’t had much to do with Stanford New Schools for several years.
However, there’s no disputing that the test scores of both the elementary school and the high school were dismal. And reports were that the administration of the elementary school was weak. As I said, the elementary deserved an extension. What hasn’t been widely reported was that it came down to money. The district is financially in a hole, and the Ravenswood superintendent and trustees viewed closing the charter as a way to get more revenue from returning students. In the end, it was as simple as that.
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