Six MA Charter Schools Rewarded for Achievement Gains

A short note from today's Globe.

"Six Massachusetts charter schools* were among 21 nationwide singled out for recognition yesterday by a national nonprofit that analyzes charter school achievement. The Effective Practice Incentive Community, or EPIC, grant program honored Community Day Charter Public School in Lawrence, Boston Preparatory Charter Public School in Hyde Park, Roxbury Preparatory Charter School in Roxbury, Boston Collegiate Charter School in Dorchester, MATCH Charter Public School in Boston, and Prospect Hill Academy Upper School in Cambridge. The organization will give individual principals, teachers, and instructional staff from the schools awards totaling an estimated $735,000. EPIC considered 144 schools for the award."

EPIC is a program of New Leaders for New Schools that distributes U.S. Department of Education TIF (Teacher Incentive Fund) money. TIF is the same Federal program that independently funds Edward W. Brooke Charter School's performance bonus program (which you can read more about here.)

According to the NLNS website, "EPIC award-winning schools are divided into two categories: Gold-gain schools have the highest gain; Silver-gain schools have the next highest gain. In 2009, EPIC is awarding 21 schools and distributing roughly $1.9 million in awards. Awards were based on student gains between the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years."

2008-2009
Gold-gain schools in MA: Boston Prep and MATCH
Silver-gain schools in MA: Boston Collegiate, Community Day, Prospect Hill, Roxbury Prep

(Other MA participatants: Smith Leadership, Berkshire Arts and Tech, North Central Charter Essential, and Salem Academy)

2007-2008
Gold-gain schools in MA: Roxbury Prep and MATCH
Silver-gain schools in MA: Boston Collegiate, Community Day, Smith Leadership

(Other MA participatants: North Central Charter Essential)

*While these schools were singled out for their performance, it is important to note that only 10 out of 54 MA charter schools participate in EPIC's National Charter School Consortium.

Jack Kent Cooke Young Scholars

The Jack Kent Cooke Young Scholars program just recently notified its 75 national 2008 scholarship recipients of their selection. A young woman at Kipp Lynn has been selected. Does anyone know if any other winners hail from the Greater Boston area?

Dorchester Collegiate Academy

Will DCA be allowed to open next year? There was some talk about the state not allowing new charters to open because of the economy. Does anyone out there know what's happening with this?

By the way, why is the naming thing so challenging in this city? In NYC, you have Williamsburg Collegiate, Kings Collegiate, etc. and they're all run by Brett Peiser as the "Collegiate" network of Uncommon Schools. This makes sense. In Boston, the schools that have at least some level of connection (Pacific Rim - Boston Prep; Boston Collegiate - Edward Brooke), don't have similar names. Meanwhile, schools that have similar names (Roxbury Prep - Boston Prep; Boston Collegiate - Dorchester Collegiate Academy - Excel Academy), have no relationships with each other.

I don't know how they chose their name, but Dorchester Collegiate Academy seems to have tried to get some cachet by copying parts of their name from previously existing, successful Boston charter schools. Or maybe they just liked the name...

Shovel-Ready Projects in Massachusetts

Recently, Massachusetts requested that various entities submit "shovel-ready" proposals for federal stimulus money. Charter schools have put together a number of proposals which, conveniently, are listed on the first 7 pages of this 120 page PDF.

Massachusetts is supposed to get about $1.2B in total; all entities statewide have requested $10B+ worth of funds. The total requested by charters is about $1B+, so it's clear all projects won't be funded. The state has stated that the most important criteria for funding these projects is how much of an impact the work will have on the economy. Will any consideration be given to how successful these schools are?

Many of the projects seem to fall into the "green" category. There are many window replacement and HVAC projects waiting to be funded. I wonder if these will get special attention because of President Obama's interest in making our country more energy efficient.

I've seen some complaints out in the blogosphere complaining that district schools are not nearly as well represented in the list of proposals. Perhaps this is because districts have the ability to float bonds and access other streams of building funds from the state that charters are precluded from accessing.

A couple of major Boston charter school building developments in the works according to the project descriptions. If these come through, you can add them to Boston Collegiate's purchase of a building in January.

• Excel Academy is pursuing the acquisition and renovation of a former Catholic school building in East Boston. Total cost of purchase and renovation is estimated to be approximately $7.25 million. Renovation of the site will require replacing the electrical system and wiring, wire classrooms for internet, installing bathrooms on every floor, updating interior lighting, upgrading heating/ventilation system and insulation, installing an elevator, and upgrading security and sprinkler systems. Total renovation costs are estimated at $5.5 million.
  
• The Codman Education and Health Center project will build a 30,00 sq. ft. green addition on to the Codman Square Health Center building at 637 Washington St., Dorchester. The project will create space for Codman Academy Charter Public School and Codman Square Health Center, as well as community space. The project will allow for the expansion of the Codman Academy/Codman Square Health Center health professions training program, which introduces high school student to health profession through interships/ mentorship programs. Space created will also be used for community development purposes for art and adult education programs for residents of the community. (Cost: $11M)

• Dorchester Collegiate Academy is in the process of securing a permanent location by April 2009. Our current options will require significant facilities renovation: 1) bringing the facility intocompliance with fire, health, and safety codes and 2) modifications to make the facility ADA compliant. This includes having proper egresses, proper lighting, and proper alarm systems, compliant bathrooms and proper accessibility from the building exterior and to all internal activity spaces. (Cost: $250K)

• The Boston Renaissance Charter Public School proposes to relocate their entire K-6 grade school from their current 15 story building on Stuart Street in the Back Bay to a more spacious 6 acre site in Hyde Park, MA which will have a capacity of 880 students. The new location will enable the diverse school to provide a more appropriate campus setting with greater space and enhanced amenities, including outdoor play areas, that is more centrally located to the majority of students. (Cost: $33M)

Katherine Merseth on Uphams Corner

There's a letter to the editor in today's Globe from Professor Katherine Merseth. Professor Merseth, of Harvard's Graduate School of Education, recently performed did a study of successful Massachusetts charter schools. She discusses her research here.

Uphams Corner and the Challenge Index

I've been thinking a bit about Mike Mayo's piece in the Globe last Sunday, which is linked below.

In it, he writes: "Today, our special-education population hovers around 40 percent. Low-income families represent 93 percent of our population. These levels are far beyond what the governor has proposed, far beyond what the Boston Public Schools serves. Is this failure? Was this "brand" a mistake? We didn't set out to specialize in serving these populations; it just turned out that way."

Mr. Mayo is correct that his school has a difficult population to teach. This year, Uphams Corner has the highest Challenge Index score of any charter middle or middle/high school in Boston. (Numbers courtesy of the DOE).

And yet, it hasn't always been that way. In the early years of the school, Uphams Corner's had a high CI, but one that is comparable to other charter schools in the city. The UCCS population has been getting more and more challenging every year.



Why is that? Mike Mayo seems to think it's because his school attracted "Challege Index" parents. That's one way a percentage can increase. My guess is that it "didn't just turn out that way." My guess is that many non-"Challenge Index" parents (the ones who have a better chance of navigating school choice), fled as soon as they realized how unsuccessful UCCS was. Remember, Uphams had issues retaining teachers and kids, scoring well on tests, and maintaining orderly clasrooms. And of course, once this process started, I'm sure it became a vicious cycle.

Challenge Index

Seems like everyone in the blogosphere is always arguing about the student populations of charter schools - whether they have easier to teach or harder to teach populations than their sending districts. Problem is that there seems to be no consistency in these arguments. I figure we all need one number that combines that reflects the "hard to teach"populations. Maybe I've missed something, but I haven't seen one out there. So I thought I'd come up with something that I'm currently calling "Challenge Index."

The big arguments seems to be about 3 groups: low-income, special education and English language learners, so I thought I'd include those in the index. Here's the system, for what it's worth:

% Limited English Proficient + % Free and Reduced Lunch + % Special Education = CI

The benefit of the system is that it's simple. The flaws...well, there are a lot. But since this is the data is easy to get to on the DOE website, I'm going with it.

First post to include CI data to come soon.