Charters Get Better but Lag Traditional Schools, Study Says

California charter schools trailed traditionally run public schools, but charters showed stronger year-to-year improvement, according to results from the state’s annual testing and accountability system.

Within the Los Angeles Unified School District, charter middle and high schools -- independently run but publicly funded campuses -- scored higher than district campuses, according to separate evaluations of public school performance.

District officials, however, said the analyses, conducted separately by the California Charter Schools Assn. and The Times, were misleading.

The findings are based on schools’ scores on the Academic Performance Index, the state’s method of assessing public school performance. Schools are graded on a scale of 200 to 1000 based on standardized tests administered each spring in math, English and other subjects.

The Times found that California charters as a whole scored 700, an average gain of 28 points over last year’s results, while traditional schools posted 719 and showed a 20-point improvement. That pattern is similar to a year ago, when charters scored about 20 points lower than their district-run counterparts but showed a somewhat better improvement rate.

But the traditional schools’ advantage is limited to the elementary level, where they exceeded charters 753 to 743. In secondary schools, where gains in student achievement have remained well below those in the earlier grades, charters outdistanced district schools, 742 to 717 for middle schools and 633 to 622 for high schools.

In Los Angeles Unified, charters exceeded district schools, 715 to 677; their scores grew by 30 points overall, while district schools grew by 20.

The findings are unlikely to quiet the debate over whether charters, which are granted substantial freedom from the requirements governing traditional schools, do a better job; a handful of earlier studies has produced somewhat conflicting results or found the differences to be relatively small.

Priscilla Wohlstetter, professor and co-director of the Center on Educational Governance at USC, said reviews of school performance shed light on ways the charter movement, more than a decade old in California, can contribute to broader school reform issues.

“We are seeing some evidence that this reform is working, and maybe we can benefit from this longevity,” said Wohlstetter, who is overseeing a study of promising practices at charters around the state.

Charters, self-governing and lacking the strong central administrations typical of many districts, are growing by about 20% a year in California, one of the first states to authorize them. About 570 enroll about 200,000 of the state’s 6 million public school students in kindergarten through 12th grade; another 400 schools are expected to open by 2008, according to the charter association.

“Charters are smaller, and they are really focused on meeting the individual needs of students,” said Caprice Young, president of the charter association. “They also deeply engage their teachers and parents.... There is no bureaucracy they have to go through to make changes.”

The Watts Learning Center in South Los Angeles, for example, recruits its students from area Head Start programs. It encourages not only parents but also grandparents, foster parents and community members to become involved with the school. Its latest API score was 789, while nearby Los Angeles Unified elementary schools scored lower -- Manchester Avenue, 595; La Salle Avenue, 609; Miller, 624; and 95th Street, 602.

Altonia Dairy sent her daughters to Watts Learning Center and said she was thrilled with the educations they received.

“They have a really dedicated staff,” Dairy said. “They have that sense of striving extra hard, and they emphasize reading, reading, reading.”

After her older daughter completed fifth grade, the last the school offers, Dairy said, she put her in a traditional middle school in the Compton Unified School District. She did well at first, but then “her grades started plummeting -- there were too many distractions and the classes were too big,” said Dairy, who soon found another charter school, the Southern California Academy of Arts and Sciences in South Los Angeles.

“I like the fact that they are smaller, and they not only know the child, they know the parent,” Dairy said.

District officials said numbers can be misleading. They cited three elementary schools that outscored nearby Vaughn Street, a widely praised charter in the east San Fernando Valley that posted 677 on the API. The schools, Cohasset (718), Parthenia (702) and Liggett (692), serve similar families as Vaughn, officials said.

Bob Collins, chief instructional officer for secondary schools, said two of the biggest charters in the district, Palisades on the Westside and Granada Hills, make up the largest chunk of charter high school students and draw more affluent students, who generally do well no matter where they go to school.

“The majority of the charter school population is in the Westside or the West San Fernando Valley. You are looking at charters in extremely high socioeconomic areas,” Collins said. “You need to look at individual schools.”

In a less affluent part of town, View Park Preparatory, a charter high school in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles, earned 774 on the performance index. Nearby Los Angeles Unified schools, Crenshaw and Dorsey high schools, scored 511 and 501, respectively.

Michael Piscal, founder of the charter high school and its elementary and middle school counterparts, said the key was a challenging curriculum and high expectations for the schools’ mainly African American students.

“We want to prepare every student to attend and compete at one of the top 100 colleges in the U.S.,” Piscal said.

Robert Schwartz, principal of the high school, said he found more teamwork there than he did when he taught at Stevenson Middle School.

“All the teachers, parents and administration are all united in our mission,” Schwartz said. “At a district school, you get some phenomenal teachers and some great parents, but there are others who just want to put in their time.”

Wohlstetter, the USC professor, says the charter school movement has matured to the point where it can contribute to the broader debate over how to improve public education.

“We need to look at the issues of why some of these schools are working and others have not,” Wohlstetter said, “and to transfer some of those promising practices” to district schools.

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Times data analyst Sandra Poindexter contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Charter schools

How charter schools compare with district-run schools on the Academic Performance Index, the state’s testing and accountability system:

2005 scores

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Statewide

Charter schools: 700

Number that improved from 2004: 28

Non-charter schools: 719

Number that improved from 2004: 20

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LAUSD

Charter schools: 715

Number that improved from 2004: 30

Non-charter schools: 677

Number that improved from 2004: 20

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Source: California Department of Education. Data analysis by

*Sandra Poindexter