Two years ago, Columbus Preparatory Academy had an F grade, and the state warned the charter school that it would be closed the following year if it didn’t improve.
Now, the school has an A-plus, according to state report cards that officially will be released on Wednesday. It is the only privately run charter school in central Ohio to have received the state’s highest grade, and it is among an elite few — five total — in Ohio to earn that rating this year.
Some say that pressure stemming from the state’s charter-school closure rules, combined with the nimble nature of charters, has driven improvement statewide. The four local schools that were at risk of closing if they posted poor marks on this report card appear to be safe because they improved.
Because of that law, the poorest-performing schools have been closed and weak ones have worked hard to get better, said Ron Adler, who leads the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, a charter-school advocacy group.
‘Some of the better schools, without question, will start showing a vast improvement,’ he said.
Seventeen local charters improved their grades. Twenty-five earned the same grade as last year, and the rest either fell in the ratings or hadn’t been graded before. (See all the local ratings here.)
Charter schools are public schools that often are privately run. They have flexibility on some state rules, but charters can be closed for repeated F grades or failing to make enough progress with students. Those that have enough students and have been open for at least two years receive report cards and ratings from the state.
There are 77 charters in central Ohio and 339 statewide. Among the local schools, 63 will receive new report cards, which are largely based on students’ performance the previous school year.
About 62 percent of the local schools that were graded earned a C or better, up from 53 percent last year. Those are the best grades yet for charters in this region.
Wickliffe Progressive Community School, which is run by the Upper Arlington school district, also received an A-plus grade. Unlike Columbus Preparatory, Wickliffe was a traditional public school that the district converted to a charter in 2006.
Still, 14 schools in the local area have an F rating, which the state calls ‘academic emergency.’ Six of those F-rated schools had an F last year, too.
Among them is ScholArts Preparatory and Career Center for Children, which is using $1.5 million in federal turnaround money to improve. It serves a majority of special-needs children, so it isn’t subject to closure rules.
Statewide, 57 percent of charters earned a C or better, up from 55 percent last year and 51 percent the year before.
‘I think within the charter-school community, people get it that quality does matter now,’ said Bill Sims, who heads the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools. ‘If we are to succeed as a movement, we can’t just be another moderately performing educational option. We have to be better, and we have to get better.’
To celebrate its success, Columbus Preparatory plans an ‘academic pep rally’ on Tuesday. The principal and superintendent, Chad Carr, will have his head shaved in front of students. There will be T-shirt ‘guns’ blasting school shirts into the crowd. Confetti. Cheering.
‘This place is electric right now. It’s on fire,’ said Carr, who also is regional vice president for the Columbus and Mansfield charter schools run by Mosaica Education Inc.
‘We ask the question all the time, ‘Why not us? Why does it have to be Dublin and Hilliard? Why can’t we make our students competitive with the big boys?’ We don’t even compare ourselves to charter schools. We’re doing it right.’
More than 700 students in grades K-8 attend the West Side school.
A handful of other central Ohio charters jumped two letter grades, too.
Millennium Community School, one of the region’s oldest charters, moved from an F to a C, taking it out of danger of being closed at the end of the 2011-12 school year. [Imagine] Sullivant Avenue Community School and Columbus Bilingual Academy also jumped from an F to a C.
[Imagine] Great Western Academy and Horizon Science Academy Elementary moved from D to B grades, and YouthBuild Columbus Community School, which serves at-risk students and dropouts, earned an A, up from a C.‘We just needed time to catch these kids up that are two to three years behind,’ said Amy Buttke, regional director for Imagine Schools, which runs Sullivant Avenue and Great Western. ‘Now we’re starting to see those gains on state tests.'”
Article published on August 20, 2011 by the Columbus Post Dispatch