The majority of North Carolina charter schools are testing under par, according to test results released Oct. 4, but education officials remain positive about the schools' potential.
Based on the results of the 2000-2001 ABCs, a state-sponsored exam administered to public school students to test basic skills including reading and math, the state deemed 13 of 78 tested charter schools "low-performers." Five charter schools were named schools of excellence, and 16 named schools of distinction.
Fifteen of the schools tested showed exemplary growth from the previous year, and seven more met their expected growth. Five schools were named to a list of schools with the most improved test scores. Still, the majority of charter schools did not improve enough to meet their expected growth and received no recognition.
Despite the discouraging results, education officials do not see the scores as reason enough to revoke low-performing schools' charters, and parents' support for the schools remains high.
"We are a school of choice and that is the only way you can define success, by the fact that parents are still sending their children here," said Liz Morey, board chair and acting principal at Healthy Start Academy Charter Elementary School in Durham.
Morey, among other school officials, finds the ABCs school report card to be a poor gauge of school performance. "The ABCs test does not work on small populations, and it is not a nationally normed test," she said.
However, Gary Williamson, chief of reporting for North Carolina's department of public instruction, said the ABCs test is a fair assessment. "Charter schools have all elected to participate in the ABCs," he said. "[The tests] all go through the regular development process and focus on the core courses--reading, math, and basic communication skills."
State officials hope the ABCs will fulfill three goals: making schools more accountable, emphasizing basic educational standards and providing schools and school districts with as much local control over their work as possible.
The initiative was introduced in 1996 to elementary and middle schools, and in 1997 to high schools. Tests are administered toward the end of the school year and include different components based on grade level. In third grade, students take their first ABCs test, which focuses on basic reading and math. Subsequently, students take additional ABCs in fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth, tenth and twelfth grades.
"We want every school to meet the end-of-grade expectations," said Otho Tucker, director of the state Office of Charter Schools. "The difficulty is determining if this assessment is fair for all schools."
Tucker explained that the student population must be considered when assessing charter schools. "Some focus on the top 1 percent of students who think above and beyond the normal population. For some an improvement is just being back in school."
Tucker emphasized that charter schools are as different from each other as are traditional public schools. "Too many people have the impression that charter schools are one thing," he said.
Williamson agreed, and said test results do not reflect charter schools as a whole. "For ABCs purposes, it's a school-based evaluation," he said.
Still, charter school officials are skeptical that the state's test scores produce accurate assessments. "The state uses one, and only one, method, and that is its test scores," said Bonnie Wright, operations director at the Maureen Joy Charter School, a kindergarten-to-fifth-grade school listed among the state's 25 most-improved. "We try to look at the whole picture," she said.
Wright explained that Maureen Joy looks at students' social and behavioral skills, as well as their leadership in the community.
Officials said this ability to address students individually is one advantage charter schools have, along with small class sizes, the flexibility of teachers, the ability to focus on a particular mission curriculum and a large amount of parental support.
At Healthy Start Academy in Durham, for example, students follow a core knowledge curriculum. "If you're studying American history, you're also studying American literature," said acting principal Morey. "This is a very logical and systematic way of teaching kids."
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