LaLa Land

“California’s charter public schools are held to high performance standards.”

– California Charter School Association (CCSA)

With Jerry Brown’s exit from the California Governor’s mansion in 2019, the long-term impediment to reforming charter schools was finally removed. The result was AB 1505, a flawed bill that still managed to provide some important fixes to the state’s charter school law. The law included more specific guidance about what criteria school boards should use when determining if a school’s charter should be renewed.

Assuming there are no operational deficiencies, the charter of a school is easily renewed if it is high-performing under AB 1505. Alternatively, authorizers can reject the renewal easily if the school is not meeting standards. For a “middle performing” charter school like Los Angeles Leadership Academy (LALA), a School Board must dig a little deeper to make its evaluation.

Under policies established by the LAUSD School Board, comparison to neighboring schools is a key component in deciding if a “middle-performing” charter will be renewed. Since LALA covers grades six through 12, this included the resident-assigned middle and high schools.

When compared to the data from Florence Nightingale Middle School, neither school appears to be stellar. However, it should be noted that English Learners are making significantly better progress at the LAUSD school, where 59.8% of these students are making progress, a 10.2% increase from the previous year. This gave them a state rating of Blue (highest performance). In comparison, LALA was ranked as Red (very low). Only 22.1% of its students are making progress, with a negative trajectory.

The two resident high schools outperformed LALA, with Abraham Lincoln Senior High showing exceptional academic results and having a higher graduation rate than LALA (94.8% vs. 87.8%). Woodrow Wilson Senior High’s students were better prepared for college than LALA’s (56.1% vs. 34.8%). Both LAUSD schools were high performing for English Learners.

Further compounding the case against renewing LALA’s charter is a history of low performance. I addressed this issue in my comments to the LAUSD School Board:

In reviewing the paperwork for this recommended denial, I am concerned by the fact that the last day to act on this renewal request is today. If last week taught us anything, it should be that life is unpredictable. Why leave the possibility open that the District would miss this statutory deadline?

I also noticed that this school was the subject of three benchmarks when it was last renewed due to concerns about academic performance. These resulted in the following:

Benchmark 1: The charter school met this benchmark in three of the seven years.

Benchmark 2: The charter school did not meet the benchmark in any of the years in which data was available.

Benchmark 3: The charter school met this benchmark in one of the years for which data was available.

Now, the Charter School Division is recommending denial of the charter renewal after determining that the school’s “Verified Data Does Not Provide Clear and Convincing Evidence of Measurable Increases in Academic Achievement.”

Shocking!

Maybe I do not understand the definition of benchmarks but was their purpose to only collect data or wasn’t it assumed that action would be taken if the school did not achieve results when they were added as a condition for the school’s renewal? The Charter School Division and this Board let seven years go by where this school was failing at educating its students. Did we just not care?

There is no doubt that you should accept the Charter School Division’s recommendation to deny the renewal of this charter. An independent investigation must then be conducted to find out why it took so long to rescue these children from failure.

After the public hearing, the Board voted 6-1-0 to approve the Charter School Division’s recommendation for denial. The lone holdout was Charter School Industry shill Nick Melvoin. This was not the first time he had voted to keep a low-performing charter school open. In 2020 he joined Monica Garcia in voting to keep the Prepa Tec charter school open even though only 3.6% of its students met state standards in math.

Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, who serves as the Education Chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.