Last week, I highlighted some of the problems with the California School Dashboard (CSD) as it exists right now. My biggest gripe with the dashboard is that it rates whole districts, like LAUSD, but does not rate charter networks as a whole. Instead in treats each charter as an individual school, never aggregating their data.
Let’s fix that.
I am going to calculate “color” scores for all of the major charter networks in Los Angeles. Let’s start with the Alliance College-Ready Schools. Alliance operates middle and high schools around Los Angeles, and last year, when I compared them to their local schools, I found that they preformed relatively well.
Before I discuss their score, let’s remember LAUSD’s own score on this metric:
LAUSD ELA and Math Rating
LAUSD received a score of “yellow”, because although their score was “low”, they also “increased” in English and Math. I believe that their score actually includes all charter schools, but it is kind of hard to tell based on the CAASPP site.
Now, let’s look at Alliance. If they were to aggregate all their scores, this is what their rating would look like:
Alliance College-Ready Public Schools ELA and Math Rating
On average, Alliance really isn’t that different from LAUSD. They get the same color score as LAUSD. Alliance performs lower than LAUSD (as a whole) in Math, but slightly higher in English. Furthermore, they are also not really showing much growth as an organization, improving by only 3.1 and 2.7 points respectfully, which the state actually classifies as “maintaining” rather than “increased”.
You might have noticed that I only calculated two of the indicators. That is because, as I have noted before, the suspension data, the EL reclassification rates and the graduation rates are based on out-of-date data that I simply do not find relevant. So I am not going to even both giving ratings for those. The math and ELA scores for grades 3 through 8 are actually pretty solid indicators, and I think they could be used accurately.
So, Alliance appears to be performing no better (and no worse) than LAUSD as a whole. There is a caveat here: LAUSD as a whole is a big place that includes wealthier, more privileged areas. Alliance, on the other hand, primarily exclusively in low income, high need neighborhoods. The samples are not the same.
But the dashboard doesn’t really care about the sample. Instead, one of the philosophies of the dashboard is that it emphasizes growth. And anyone can grow, no matter where your sample is drawn from. The fact that Alliance had such poor growth this year should be concerning for them and their constituency – and it should be a target of focus for them in the future.
There were some other charter networks, however, that did show growth. More on that next time…