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<< Georgia Education News Back Issues
CHARTER SCHOOLS IN GEORGIA PERFORM SIGNIFICANTLY BELOW THEIR TRADITIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOL PEERS IN MATH A new report issued by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found that there is a wide variance in the quality of the nation’s several thousand charter schools with, in the aggregate, students in charter schools not faring as well as students in traditional public schools. The analysis looks at student achievement growth on state achievement tests in both reading and math with controls for student demographics and eligibility for program support such as free or reduced-price lunch and special education. The analysis includes the most current student achievement data from 15 states and the District of Columbia and gauges whether students who attend charter schools fare better than if they would have attended a traditional public school. Georgia A supplemental report, with an in-depth examination of the results for charter schools in Georgia found that math gains were significantly lower in charter school students compared to their traditional public school peers, while there was no discernable difference in reading performance. For students that are low income, charter schools had a larger and more positive effect on learning compared to their traditional public school peers. African-American and Hispanic students performed significantly below their traditional public school counterparts in reading and math. Overall State Results The report found that achievement results varied by states that reported individual data. States with reading and math gains that were significantly higher for charter school students than would have occurred in traditional schools included: Arkansas, Colorado (Denver), Illinois (Chicago), Louisiana and Missouri. States with reading and math gains that were either mixed or were not different than their peers in the traditional public school system included: California, the District of Columbia, Georgia and North Carolina. States with reading and math gains that were significantly below their peers in the traditional public school system included: Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas. To download a copy of the Georgia report: http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/GA_CHARTER%20SCHOOL%20REPORT_CREDO_2009.pdf To download a copy of the full report and executive summary, visit: http://credo.stanford.edu Financial health of new Georgia charter schools falters Charter schools in Georgia, the majority of which are in metro Atlanta, may be outscoring their public school peers on testing but many are not making the grade when it comes to financial health, according to a new Georgia State University study. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Professor Cynthia S. Searcy, co-author of the study, said that more than 40 percent of start-up charter schools in Georgia operated with deficits or in the red during the 2006-2007 school year, the latest dates the data was available at the time of the study. During the timeframe of the study, two charter schools closed, including one for financial difficulties. “If we don’t know how these start-ups are faring financially, how can we detect financial stress early to help keep their doors open,” said Searcy. “Given the budget crisis all schools are facing, we need to have more conversations on how to help charter schools reduce costs or enhance revenues if we expect to use them as vehicles for educational innovation.” Among the other findings: few opportunities exist for economies of size for these small, independent schools and size directly correlates to charter school financial health. “Small enrollments can put schools at risk of closure because they have less per-pupil revenue to spread over their fixed costs,” Searcy said. “Since charter start-ups spend $1 of every $8 on management and administration costs, they might benefit from shared services with their local school district or other charter schools.” Additionally, because there are no uniform practices of reporting financial information or specific deadlines, it closes the opportunity to develop any meaningful financial indicator system to detect financial stress early in a school’s operation, the study found. Searcy, along with the study’s co-author William D. Duncombe, a professor at Syracuse University, studied audited financial statements from 25 Georgia start-up schools in the 2006-2007 school year. Since 1998, 34 start-up charter schools have opened and dozens of others have been authorized. Up to 2007, a total of five had closed. Recent legislation authorized the creation of entire charter school districts and a total of 115 charter schools are or will be open this school year. “Georgia is on the cusp of expanding the number of charter schools,” Searcy said. “Understanding their financial health is more important than ever.”
Complete study:
Georgia’s ACT scores remained steady in 2009 even as participation on the college entrance exam jumped by nearly nine percent in one year. Readiness and Rigor Growing Numbers Georgia ACT Report:
SAT: Georgia's Minority Students Outperform Nation Minority students in Georgia public schools continue to outperform African-American and Hispanic students across the country on the SAT. The Need to Close the Gap Superintendent Cox said a lot of work is already being done. For instance, the state has been pushing to increase the number of students who are taking Advanced Placement (AP) classes and the 2009 data shows that it is working. The number of students taking AP classes jumped more than 11 percent, overall. The biggest increase in enrollment was among African-American students (+16.2%) and Hispanic students (+19.3 percent). This is important because students who take even one year of AP classes in any subject will score higher on the SAT.
Raising Math Achievement High Participation and Ongoing Analysis
ABOUT THE SAT: More Than 79% of Schools Make AYP More than 79 percent of Georgia's public schools made Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, according to initial results released today -- a 10 point jump over 2008. Compared to initial AYP results last year, the 2009 report shows that:
The percentage of high schools making AYP continues to lag behind. In 2009, just over 47 percent of the state's high schools made AYP, a slight decrease from 2008's initial results.
58 Schools No Longer in “Needs Improvement” Graduation Rate
Complete Report:
New Study Finds Little Evidence That Federal Emphasis on “Proficient” Performance Has Shortchanged Advanced or Low-Achieving Students
Many States Show Gains Since 2002 at All Achievement Levels Georgia report:
Student performance on state reading and math tests has generally risen at three achievement levels, according to a 50-state study by the Center on Education Policy (CEP). The study found more states with gains than declines in the percentages of students reaching or exceeding the basic, proficient, and advanced levels of achievement, and relatively few instances of sizeable declines in the percentage scoring below the basic level.
Achievement also improved in most states at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.
The CEP study analyzed test score trends, where available, from 2002, the year the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) took effect, through 2008. (Some states did not have trends going back to 2002 because they had adopted new tests or made other major changes in their testing systems.) The study expands on CEP’s previous two reports on achievement by examining, for the first time, test results at the “advanced” level and at the “basic” level-and-above—as well as at the “proficient” level and above, which is the benchmark that matters most for federal accountability under NCLB.
ASSESSING PERFORMANCE AT LEVELS ABOVE AND BELOW PROFICIENT
CEP found that, even though NCLB creates incentives for schools to focus on ensuring students reach the proficient level, states posted gains at the advanced and basic-and-above levels as well. At the basic-and-above level, 73 percent of the trend lines analyzed across various subjects and grades showed gains. At the advanced level, 71 percent of the trend lines analyzed showed improvement.
“If accountability policies were indeed shortchanging high- and low-achieving students, we would expect to see stagnation or decline at the basic and advanced levels,” said Jack Jennings, CEP’s president and CEO. “Instead, the percentages of students scoring at the basic-and-above and advanced levels have increased much more often than they have decreased, especially in the lower grades.”
Gains were somewhat more prevalent at the proficient-and-above level than at the other two achievement levels. Of the trend lines analyzed at the proficient-and-above level, 83 percent displayed gains, while 15 percent showed declines. The size of the gains was also larger, on average, at the proficient-and-above level. However, this may be partly due to a test-related statistical issue: When average test scores go up, the percentage of students at the proficient level tends to grow faster than at the basic and advanced levels because more students’ scores tend to be clustered near the proficient level.
At the advanced level, the size of the gains in elementary and middle school math were close or equal to those at the proficient level and there were more upward trends than downward. These findings generally point to a significant movement of students from proficient to advanced. At the basic level, too, there were more gains than declines. Although some states posted declines at the basic level, most were slight.
“There are several possible explanations for the upward trends. The most hopeful explanation is that students are learning more and consequently are performing better on state tests,” Jennings said. “There is probably also a cumulative effect of test-focused instruction at work.”
More gains have been made in math than in reading, according to the report. The size of the percentage gains across all states was greater in math than in reading, data which is confirmed by the results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
HIGH SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT CONTINUES TO LAG
The report notes that achievement at the high school level has improved but still lags behind elementary and middle school achievement. The average annual percentage point gains for high school students tended to be lower than at the elementary or middle school levels. There may be several reasons for the divergence in performance between students at the lower and higher grades, among them that it is more difficult to engage and motive high school students or that high schools receive fewer federal resources.
Although CEP collected test data from all 50 states, achievement trends were included in the report only for states with at least three years of comparable test data for a particular subject, grade, and achievement level. A change in test results was considered to be a “trend” only if it was based on at least three years of data in order to account for yearly fluctuations in test scores that are unrelated to students’ learning.
The report, titled State Test Score Trends Through 2007-08, Part I: Is the Emphasis on “Proficiency” Shortchanging Higher- and Lower-Achieving Students?, is available at
Individual state profiles are available at:
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