Pennsylvania began treating charter schools and school districts the same for the 2011-12 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test results.
The U.S. Department of Education refuses to sign off on Pennsylvania's unauthorized change to the way it calculates whether charter schools made state testing benchmarks.
Adequate yearly progress measures whether or not a school or school district is on target to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Pennsylvania began treating charter schools and school districts the same for the 2011-12 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test results.
Since 2005, for a school district as a whole to make adequate yearly progress it only had to
hit targets in one grade span, say 3-5 or 6-8 or 9-12. This year,
charter schools were held to the that same grading standard.
The Bethlehem Area School Board and other critics said the change artificially inflated charter schools' performance.
Pennsylvania wants to treat them as only "local education agencies," according to a letter from the U.S. Department of Education.
"I cannot approve this amendment, however, because it is not aligned
with the statute and regulations," Assistant Secretary Deborah S.
Delisle wrote to Pennsylvania Education Secretary Ron Tomalis.
Charter schools can be recognized as local education agencies and have adequate yearly progress calculated like traditional public districts as long as AYP is also
calculated for each individual charter school building, Pennsylvania
Department of Education spokesman Tim Eller said.
Eller said his
department is pleased the federal government "shares its opinion that
equitable treatment should be applied to all public schools and local
education agencies across the state."
Critics of the switch Pennsylvania attempted say that it makes it easier for charter schools to make adequate yearly progress but proponents say as charter schools have grown it makes more sense to treat them like school districts.
For an individual school to make adequate yearly progress , the overall student body must
score proficient or above on math and reading tests. And in schools with
certain demographics of 40 or more students if one group misses one
target the entire school doesn’t make adequate yearly progress. And until this year charter schools were measured the same way.
The federal Department of Education cannot approve Pennsylvania's request to treat brick-and-mortar and cyber charter schools only as "local education agencies" for adequate yearly progress purposes because "Adequate yearly progress determinations would be made for each charter school as an LEA but not as a school," according to a letter provided by the state.
"Moving forward, the department will calculate adequate yearly progress for each school building in every school district and charter school, as well as for each local education agency – traditional public school district and charter school," Eller said.
The federal government is requiring Pennsylvania go back and calculate school-level adequate yearly progress results for charter schools for 2011-12 PSSA data by the end of the first semester of the 2012-13 school year. Any schools identified with problems must implement improvement plans by the start of the second semester of the 2012-13 school year.
