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February 24, 2005
Ed. board moves to close charter school
Jeremy Schwab
The state Board of Education voted last week to revoke the charter
of the Frederick Douglass Charter School in Roslindale, the second
time in two months the board has voted to revoke the charter of
a school run by African Americans.
The Douglass recently moved from Hyde Park to Roslindale, and
has expanded by one grade per year since its inception five years
ago. School officials and state-hired inspectors agree that the
move and expansion have made the task of meeting improvement goals
more difficult.
An inspection report last month cited problems at the Douglass,
including MCAS scores that are below city average, widespread
unruliness in classrooms and a high teacher turnover rate.
School officials, however, say the Board of Education’s
vote to revoke the charter was unjustified.
“I think we were moving in the right direction,” said
Head of School Wanda Speede. “We need more time. Other schools
that are 10 years old had similar data in their tenth year. For
instance, the Frederick Douglass and the Boston Renaissance [Charter
School] had very similar test scores and issues around teacher
turnover and so on, and they were renewed with conditions and
we were not. I feel we are being treated as a sacrificial lamb
to show the state is being tough in their treatment of charter
schools.”
School officials admit that many of the schools’ teachers
are new to the field and the quality of teaching is inconsistent.
But say they are working to train them better.
“The site team that came to visit for charter renewal inspection
said the quality of the teaching is uneven,” said Board
of Trustees Chairwoman Robin Walker. “We agreed, and developed
a program to help teachers who need better professional development
work with urban youth. With charter schools, most hires are newly
minted teachers. They just finished their teacher certification
and came out of colleges, and were attracted to the long hours
and low pay.”
The addition of a new grade every year has forced the school to
hire new teachers each year. The school now serves grades 6 through
10 and would eventually serve grades 6 through 12.
The board’s vote to revoke the Douglass’s charter
comes at a time when state officials face pressure to enforce
accountability among charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded
but independently run.
The board voted in December to revoke the charter of the Roxbury
Charter High School, which is also African American-operated.
There are distinct financial differences between the two schools,
however. Roxbury Charter owed the state $177,000 at the time of
the board’s vote, while Walker says the Douglass has a surplus
of $300,000, despite its move to a larger location.
The state’s summary of the Douglass’ performance,
released last month, focuses heavily on students’ MCAS scores.
The report notes that Douglass sixth through eighth graders performed
at proficient or advanced levels on the MCAS exam at consistently
lower rates than did their peers in the Boston Public Schools.
The report shows, however, that Douglass students’ scores
improved most years, as did the scores of BPS students.
In some cases, Douglass students reduced the performance gap between
themselves and BPS students. For instance, in 2002, 23 percent
of Douglass seventh graders scored at advanced or proficient categories
on the English test. That same year, 40 percent of BPS students
in grade 7 scored in those categories — almost twice the
rate reached by the Douglass.
But by 2004, 42 percent of Douglass seventh graders were scoring
in the advanced or proficient categories on the English portion
of the test, while 51 percent of BPS seventh graders scored at
those — a difference of just 9 percentage points.
The Douglass’ success in educating its students is measured
in the report primarily by how well its students’ MCAS scores
compare to the average scores for the state and the BPS. But 97
percent of Douglass students are African American, a group which,
along with Latinos, has lower average MCAS scores than do whites
and Asians.
“We took all the test scores for urban students in grades
six through eight and compared them with our students,”
said Walker. “We presented that data to the Department of
Education, and believe our students’ performed as well or
in some instances better than other charter schools and Boston
public middle schools. At the most recent meeting with the DOE,
they said aggregating the data that way was not appropriate.”
State Rep. Shirley Owens-Hicks has written a letter asking that
the state maintain the Douglass’ charter.
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