Vaughn School Praised in Study

As the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center seeks to renew its charter school status, it is enjoying some encouraging news: An independent evaluation due out this week praises the campus for raising test scores, keeping attendance high and empowering teachers during its initial five years.

The study of Vaughn is included in a broad review of Los Angeles Unified School District charter campuses that is scheduled to be unveiled Thursday. Charter schools operate largely independent of district rules.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, arrives at an opportune moment for the Pacoima school.

On Monday, the Board of Education will decide whether to renew Vaughn’s charter and those of three other charter schools, including Fenton Avenue Charter School in Lake View Terrace.

Board members are expected to rely heavily on the months-long evaluation from a research firm hired by the district. The study cost nearly $200,000 and produced hundreds of pages of documentation about the performance of district charter schools since the campuses embarked on the radical experiment in 1993.

“Vaughn students show gains in both standardized student achievement test scores and in other student outcome measures since becoming a charter school,” the evaluation states.

Principal Yvonne Chan had not seen a full copy of the report but welcomed its conclusions when told of them.

“It has proven the hypothesis that increased flexibility plus increased accountability equals increased student achievement,” Chan said. “I am hoping this report will give us some really conclusive findings.”

The 62-page report--produced by the San Francisco-based firm WestEd and researchers from USC--compared Vaughn’s test scores to those of 16 other district schools with similar ethnic breakdowns, enrollments, percentages of students from families on welfare and other factors.

It found that Vaughn students consistently performed better on standardized tests than their counterparts in the other schools from 1994 to ’97.

The evaluation did not examine Vaughn’s test performance dating back to 1991, as the school’s founders had originally envisioned in their charter.

A Times review of test data dating to 1991 found that scores had risen for two-thirds of Vaughn’s classes when compared to the most recent data available. The Times review, published June 1, also found that the school did not meet its own goal of raising test scores by 15 to 20 percentile points, which Vaughn leaders acknowledge.

Still, the WestEd evaluation found that the number of students achieving English proficiency has gradually increased and attendance has remained at about 95% as originally promised, while suspensions have dropped from 26 in 1991-92 to zero during the five years under the charter.

The report lists a host of accomplishments for Vaughn, including the addition of a new school building that allowed the reduction of class sizes and the switch from a year-round calendar to a traditional school year extended 20 days for all pupils. It also says that Vaughn’s working climate has become more collegial, empowering teachers and parents to get involved.

“Teachers feel confident knowing they have the support to make the changes they need to make,” the report states.

But the report also noted problems the school still must resolve.

Parents, it said, feel left out when it comes to the school’s curriculum and instruction.

“Some parents feel they are not getting all the necessary information about how the school operates and is run,” the report states. “They don’t feel that the school has enough confidence in them to understand these things.”

The researchers spent time at Vaughn interviewing teachers, administrators, parents and others. They also reviewed testing data and other documentation.

The evaluators note that the Vaughn report is only a draft and that a final version will be released at the end of this month.

Teachers greeted the report enthusiastically.