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IT'S GOOD NEWS, GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS
by Veronica Van Dress—Repository Education Writer

Canton, August 25, 2004 – One of the three privately run charter schools here failed to make sufficient progress under Ohio's system for grading schools.

Summit Academy, which serves special-needs students in grades 2 through 8, is rated "academic watch" on its report card from the Ohio Department of Education. The school did not make adequate yearly progress (AYP) and is at risk of entering school improvement status * a level that carries penalties that eventually could lead to state takeover.

But Richard Hronek, superintendent of the eight Summit Academies in Ohio, said that despite the report card, the school is making a difference for the 65 students it serves here.

"Overall research shows we've made a definite impact, and we have a slew of testimonials from parents," he said.

The good news from area charter schools comes from Life Skills and Hope Academy * publicly funded schools run by White Hat Management. Students at both schools did well enough on tests to meet AYP criteria, even though Life Skills did not meet any of the state indicators for performance.

"I think it's extraordinary what they've done," said David Brennan, company owner, whose management style is to reward teachers when students make gains and fire them for continual decline. "You get what you pay for. Teachers directly impact student achievement, so I look at teachers first."

For the public school districts that operate community schools, it's difficult to judge achievement by looking at the state's report cards, said Jackie DeGarmo, superintendent of Plain Local Schools. Her district's technology school earned a "continuous improvement" rating based on a handful of students who took proficiency tests. The school has fewer than 30 students in a combined 6-8 grades, and only the sixth-graders were tested.

"It (the rating) is not very meaningful," she said. "What means a whole lot to us is how every child performs."

Plain Local, as a district, missed AYP proficiency targets because its special-needs students "didn't make the same leap in progress" that other students did, DeGarmo said.

"The report cards can give a sense of the task ahead, but they can't tell us whether we're doing a good job or a poor job," she said.

The remaining schools for which the state issues a report card were not given a rating either, because there were too few students taking the tests or no standards to meet.

"The frustrating part for every superintendent and every teacher is getting a handle on how the numbers are crunched and what it's really telling us," DeGarmo said. "It's not about one school being better than another."

Originally printed in the Canton Repositry, www.cantonrep.com

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