More independent charter schools are winning accolades
Eight members of the Milwaukee Charter School Advocates earned Wisconsin Title I School of Recognition awards based on their success in educating students from low-income families. The recent award announcement is one more indicator that independent charter schools are providing high quality education options for the city's most vulnerable families.
Independent charter schools represent 38% of the 21 schools in the City of Milwaukee that won the Beating the Odds award. Winning independent charter schools are:
Bruce Guadalupe Middle School
Central City Cyberschool
Hmong American Peace Academy
Milwaukee College Prep - 38th St. Campus
Rocketship Southside Community Prep
Seeds of Health Elementary School
Veritas High School
These awards are issued annually by the State Superintendent Tony Evers to recognize student progress and achievement. All of the public schools included in the awards also meet the state's test participation, attendance and dropout (avoidance) goals. Award winners in the "Beating the Odds" category are distinguished by these two characteristics:
They are in the top 25 percent of high-poverty schools in the state; and
They have above-average student achievement in reading and mathematics when compared to similar schools based on size, district, grade configurations, and poverty levels.
Congratulations to our members, and all schools, that earned this recognition!
Hmong Charter School Recognizes Three Anniversaries on November 7: the School, the Vietnam War, and the Hmong dispersion
News from the Hmong American Peace Academy - winner of the Advocates 2014 Independent Charter School - Elementary School of the Year
November 4, 2014 (Milwaukee, WI) – The Hmong American Peace Academy (HAPA) will hold a unique anniversary celebration on Friday, November 7 from 10:00 a.m. to 12 noon. The event will take place at 4601 N. 84th Street.
Celebrating Three Anniversaries: This year, HAPA celebrates their 10th year anniversary. HAPA is the largest Hmong school in the US, and Milwaukee's fastest growing Charter School. Enrollment has risen 550 percent in the past decade, with HAPA currently serving nearly 1,300 students from K4-12th grade. In addition, HAPA is one of Milwaukee's most successful charter schools, with a nearly 100% attendance rate, test scores exceeding MPS averages, and a 100% graduation rate. Graduates are career and college-ready, with many attending Wisconsin's most prestigious colleges and universities. Furthermore, this event honors both the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, and the 40th anniversary of the related dispersion of the Hmong people. The U.S.-Hmong partnership during the Vietnam War led to the persecution and dispersion of the Hmong people to areas around the world, including Milwaukee. HAPA will recognize and honor the sacrifices of both Hmong and American veterans that united us 50 years ago.
The celebration will feature a program of performances by the HAPA school choir and dancers. During the program, a special presentation of awards will honor U.S. veterans, and the Hmong veterans that fought beside them during the Vietnam War, as well as current Hmong members of the U.S. Armed Forces. John Malan of TODAY's TMJ4, a Purple Heart veteran of Vietnam, will co-present these honors and awards with HAPA Executive Director Chris Her-Xiong. In addition, Lt. Colonel Tou-Fu Vang will challenge and inspire HAPA scholars in attendance. The program will end at 11:30 a.m. with a traditional Hmong meal to follow.
The celebration will continue for the HAPA school community on Saturday, November 8. HAPA scholars, families and staff members have constructed a float and are honored to participate and march in the annual Milwaukee Veteran's Day Parade.
The Hmong American Peace Academy opened in 2004 in response to the struggle Milwaukee Hmong families faced in maintaining the strong bonds necessary to express their love for their children through the teaching of basic values and making education their top priority. It was the first Hmong Charter School in Wisconsin, opening with 200 students in K-5th grade. In 2012, Hmong American Peace Academy graduated its first senior class of 28 students. Education is the source of hope for maintaining the Hmong culture and embracing the best American values, providing our scholars with opportunities for success as productive citizens.
As a high-performing school, the Wisconsin DPI named both the HAPA Elementary and High School as Schools of Recognition at a ceremony under the capital rotunda. In the spring of 2014, Milwaukee Charter School Advocates named HAPA the Charter School of the Year. HAPA continues to prepare students for success in college and careers. In the next three years, HAPA expects to increase the student population to 2,000 scholars, expanding facilities in ways that will especially benefit HAPA's early childhood and senior high programs.
In the words of a recent graduate, "HAPA has implemented this vision of remembering our past but to keep moving forward. This quote has helped me appreciate my past, while motivating me to work hard towards my future."
About HAPA
Hmong American Peace Academy provides students with rigorous academics, character development, and Hmong cultural values, preparing them to excel in colleges, universities and careers. HAPA honors tradition, forge new ground, and explore innovation. It recognizes the road of history and looks forward to the journey before it. It is alive, empathic, mindful, and a servant leader. It builds bridges, mend fences, bring people together and create new ways. HAPA stands as a beacon of hope and inspiration, always ready to lead the way and guide others. FOREVER FORWARD! For more information about HAPA, call 414-383-4944 or visit www.myhapa.org.
Chris Her-Xiong, Founder/Executive Director
Phone: 414.383.4944 (office) or 414.380.4521 (cell)
Email: herxiong.chris@myhapa.org
Independent Charter Schools do well on DPI report card
Contact: Sean Roberts, Executive Director
Milwaukee, WI (September 16, 2014) – Today the Milwaukee Charter School Advocates (the Advocates) announced that Milwaukee's independent charter schools are leading the way in student achievement in Milwaukee.
The announcement was made after data were released by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) in their annual "Report Card" ─ a tool used to document and disseminate student achievement and growth in the state's public schools. The report card is based on data from the 2013-14 school year and it includes data from 37 Milwaukee independent charter schools that enrolled students that school year.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Milwaukee's independent charter schools received positive ratings in the report card such as "satisfactory progress," "meets expectations", "exceeds expectations" or "significantly exceeds expectations." Twenty-five percent (25%) of Milwaukee Public Schools received positive ratings in these same categories; the MPS figure becomes 22% if the district's alternative schools are removed from the calculation.
The report card included student growth scores for 21 of the independent charter schools in Milwaukee, with an average student growth score of 64.3 for independent charters. The MPS district average student growth score was 55.7 and the state average was 62.4.
"Independent charter schools continue to lead and demonstrate what's possible with student achievement in Milwaukee, particularly for students of color and low-income populations," said Sean Roberts, Executive Director of the Advocates. Highlights of individual charter school results include:
· The only Milwaukee school in the report card to earn a rating of "Significantly Exceeds Expectations" was Downtown Montessori, an independent charter school. Last year they were rated by DPI as "exceeds expectations."
· Bruce Guadalupe Community School, Milwaukee College Preparatory School and Woodlands Schools moved from "meets expectations" last year to "exceeds expectations" this year.
· Central City Cyberschool moved from "meets few expectations" last year to "meets expectations" this year, in large part because of gains made in student growth in reading. Milwaukee Academy of Science also moved from "meets few expectations" last year to "meets expectations" this year.
"I know our schools have been working hard to achieve in reading and math, which is one reason independent charter schools outpace statewide averages in the report cards' growth scores," said Roberts. "Teachers at these schools deserve so much credit for the work they do to meet students' needs every day."
Independent charter schools are public schools authorized by UW-Milwaukee and the City of Milwaukee as "2R" schools, and by Milwaukee Public Schools as "Non-instrumentality schools." Most of the independent charter schools in Milwaukee are members of the Advocates.
To access the full dataset from the Department of Public Instruction's Report Card, click here.
The mission of the Milwaukee Charter School Advocates is to provide strategies and resources to expand and replicate high-performing independent charter schools in Milwaukee, and to overcome or curtail the obstacles that inhibit their growth.
Favoring charter school quality before quantity
In the Journal Sentinel's "Why the zen of starting a charter school eludes Wisconsin" Alan Borsuk offers commentary on the difficulties faced by many hopeful school leaders. As he outlines, not only are there barriers for leaders who want to expand their existing school but especially for those looking to start a new school.
The commentary focused on the lack of growth in the number of new schools, but the success of the charter school community should be based on quality first, focused on growth in student achievement, not just growth in the number of schools. There is ample evidence that independent charter schools in Milwaukee, as a whole, are exceeding the norm for student growth and achievement. In math and reading, for example, we know that since 2009 independent charter schools have outperformed traditional public schools with more students reaching "advanced" or "proficient" levels on the state's WKCE (see details here.) Another detailed analysis concludes: Milwaukee's 2R Charters Lead All Schools in Student Growth, Closing Achievement Gaps.
While achievement is essential, money matters, too. One big accomplishment by the charter school community in 2013 was securing an increase in per-pupil funding for independent charter schools, which we define as the "non-instrumentality" and "2R" schools. This increase, of $300 per pupil annually, still leaves a gap of more than 30% between funds allocated per pupil to traditional public schools and independent charter schools. Wisconsin ranks among the lowest in the country for charter school funding, even though charter schools are public schools. According to a recent report Wisconsin received a "0" on a scale of 0 – 4 when ranked on "equitable operational funding" for charter schools and in another report the authors affirm Wisconsin's large funding gap.
Our members have told us it is getting increasingly difficult to maintain their long-term success in student achievement with no parity in funding. Why does a group of the best performing schools in the state get sub-par funding? Well, as Borusk said in his commentary, "Money, precedent and politics have made the charter school picture complicated."
Flexiblity in hiring is essential to charter school success
Testimony at Public Hearing hosted by the Department of Public Instruction
My name is Sean Roberts, and I'm the executive director for the Milwaukee Charter School Advocates, a non-profit organization representing the independent 2R and non-instrumentality public charter schools in Milwaukee and Racine.
I'm here today in support of DPI's proposal for the PI34 3-year charter school license.
Charter schools are public schools that are held accountable to performance standards by their authorizers. In exchange for this accountability, charter schools are given additional flexibility in their schools. All successful charter school leaders will tell you that their success is contingent upon the people they hire to educate students. By giving these schools flexibility in who they hire they can better make hiring decisions to best meet the needs of their students, and will be held accountable for those hiring decisions in their charter contract.
While this flexibility is important for allowing schools to make the hiring decisions they need to be successful with students, we should also ensure that candidates know their subject matter well. In the proposed DPI rule, we also support the use of the Praxis II to determine subject-area competence for candidates.
Autonomy in hiring is one aspect that has led to independent charters being the highest-performing public option to students in the city of Milwaukee. We fully support this flexibility to remove barriers that might impede getting high-quality teachers in the classroom so they can continue to work to close the achievement gap in our state, as has been evidenced from the gap-closing and growth scores in our charter schools based on the state report card.
Sean Roberts, Executive Director
Digging Deeper into Data on Charter Schools
A recent Journal Sentinel article broke down the numbers of MPS and non-MPS enrollment of students and it was very insightful to learn about the detailed enrollment patterns of students in Milwaukee. The article also questioned which schools were getting the best results.
This piqued our interest because we have current data on how well independent charter schools are performing but wanted to dig a little deeper. We used WKCE data available from the Department of Public Instruction as far back as 2005. Based on an analysis of those data we know that independent (2R) charters have outperformed the district in both reading and math since 2009, and the trends are pretty interesting. See the charts below for a visualization of the data.
Charters' growth in achievement levels is shown by an upward trend line with sharper rises compared to MPS' overall growth, particularly in math. Please note that we just included 2Rs for simplicity… if we included non-instrumentality charters in our "independent" charter figures, instead of in the MPS category, MPS traditional school growth would look lower, and the independent charters' growth would look higher. As a side note, MPS non-instrumentalities are eligible for membership in the Advocates, and nearly all of them are members in the Advocates, but other groups do not consider them as "independent" charters when looking at data. This is a nuance not often cited when making comparisons.
Obviously the proficiency rates here are nothing to celebrate yet—everyone, including independent charter schools, has a long way to go. But I think if we saw the kind of growth that independent charters are showing city-wide, we'd have a much different picture of student achievement in our city.
Once again, "correcting" folks on true charter achievements
WUWM's Lake Effect show recently hosted a guest, Edgar Mendez, from Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service. Mr. Mendez gave his viewpoints on charters, education outcomes, and the financial effect on MPS. Sean Roberts, our Executive Director, sent this response to the show:
I was somewhat surprised to hear the statements by Edgar Mendez from Lake Effect's Tuesday November 5th program. Mr. Mendez consistently referred to independent charters performing the same as MPS schools, and that simply isn't the case.
He cited that "only" 47% of independent charters were meeting expectations on the statewide report card, but failed to mention that only 24% of MPS schools met expectations. Furthermore, math and reading proficiency are higher in independent charters than traditional Milwaukee Public Schools based on the state tests, and charters show higher growth than students in schools across the state on average.
I'm fully supportive of all our quality public schools, whether traditional or charter, but misleading statements on performance impede our ability to objectively look at what's working for our highest-need students and build off of it to improve performance across the city.
Please let me know if I can provide further information. Thanks, and I enjoy listening to Lake Effect. Keep up the good work.
~ Sean Roberts
Testimony to Senate Education Committee
Good morning. My name is Sean Roberts, I am the executive director for the Milwaukee Charter School Advocates, a non-profit organization representing the interests of independent charter schools in Milwaukee and Racine. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the important work being done by charter schools in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin currently has one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation, and independent charter schools have led the way for our state in making progress toward closing that gap. In the most recent statewide report card, independent charters were rated as "meeting expectations" at nearly double the rate of traditional public schools in Milwaukee. Independent charters outpaced both the city and the state, overall, in terms of student growth last year. This means that a student attending an independent charter was more likely to demonstrate significant growth last school year than a student in a public school anywhere in the state.
There is much work to be done for students in our city and state, but these results are promising. Our schools have accomplished this even though Wisconsin has one of the largest funding gaps in the nation between traditional public schools and charter schools.
To continue to thrive and serve students, charter schools must have autonomy to best serve the needs of students. In exchange, these schools are held accountable toward measurable student outcomes.
Senate Bill 76 has a provision that would allow non-instrumentality charter schools to be eligible to apply for equivalency to the state's mandatory teacher evaluation system, just as independent 2R charter schools and school districts already can. Without this provision, these independent schools will have to evaluate their teachers based on the local school district's measures, which in some cases could add additional testing requirements or cause schools to violate their own charter contracts with the school district. We urge the legislature to correct this oversight from the educator effectiveness bill, as DPI, the school district, and the charter schools all need clarification.
This bill would also repeal the enrollment cap on 21st Century Preparatory School in Racine. The cap currently in law unfairly penalizes one school in Racine, despite there being no caps on any other schools in the city—including public, charter, and voucher schools. 21st Century Prep holds a waiting list of students that are unable to attend because of the current student limit.
Finally, I want to strongly encourage the legislature to consider measures to further promote and guarantee the autonomy and independence of charter schools. We support the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools' recommendations to strengthen Wisconsin's charter school laws. Our charter schools that are working and making a difference in the lives of students every day deserve the freedom to continue their educational programs and make the choices that will have the greatest positive impact on student achievement.
Thank you for your consideration of these requests.
Article on DPI's Report Card Results Misses the Mark
By Sean Roberts, Executive Director
Last Friday, September 20th, I was excited to have the opportunity to talk with Journal-Sentinel reporter Erin Richards on the latest round of results from the statewide report card on schools. We posted a blog about the results last week, which outlined that the rate of independent charters "meeting expectations" is about 50% higher than the rate reported for traditional public schools in Milwaukee.
What's more, independent charters' average growth exceeds both city and statewide averages on the report card metrics. The same is true for independent charters on the report card's "gap-closing" scores, which measure how well schools are doing at closing the achievement gap between groups of students. These mirror the results we've seen nationally on charter schools, such as in CREDO's 2013 national charter school study, out of Stanford.
Given all this, you can imagine my surprise when the article appeared on Monday, September 23rd with the headline: "Majority of independent charter schools miss mark on state report cards." I struggled with the article's broad and somewhat misleading title.
I was expecting a headline more similar to: "Independent charter schools nearly twice as successful as MPS on report card measures." To be clear, there ARE many schools that were not rated as "meeting expectations," but there are also many more schools that exceeded statewide averages in student growth and gap-closing scores. And, there were far fewer traditional public schools that "met the mark" on the report cards, compared to independent charters.
As an important caveat, I should clarify that in no way do I think the results we've seen out of any sector in the city ─ charter, public, or voucher ─ are anything to cause us to rest or rejoice. I pointed this out to Ms. Richards both in my conversation with her and in an e-mail I sent to her last week, as excerpted below:
"Obviously, the data for Milwaukee schools overall isn't anything to celebrate—there's a lot of work ahead of us to get where we want to be as a city…"
The article also relies on some oddly-chosen statistics to make its point. For example, the article points out, "The charter schools enrolled a higher percentage of white students and lower percentage of students in poverty than MPS." I'm not exactly sure what point this is trying to make, and the actual figure of White students enrolled in independent charters is far less than what was reported in the article. As it turns out, a correction on race and ethnicity figures was later published online by the Journal Sentinel. Lastly, while it is true that charters enroll a "lower percentage" of students from poverty than MPS, the gap is small – within 5 percentage points, in fact.
As a source for this article, I did certainly point out that the statewide report cards have their limitations at the outset of our conversation, as we've detailed before. My intent was not to focus on an unfair system, but rather help provide some context on what these results mean, both good and bad, for charters and any other school. I also made it clear in our conversation that charters are not shying away from results or accountability, and I merely wanted to begin the conversation with the caveat that the report card system isn't perfect and we shouldn't treat is as an absolute – for any system of schools.
It certainly seems like the story points and angles in the article do not accurately reflect what is going on in independent charters in Milwaukee. The truth is, independent charters, though there is still work to be done, are leading the way in our state for closing the achievement gap and are benefitting students above and beyond those attending traditional public schools.
Charter Schools and the 2013 DPI Report Card
By Sean Roberts
DPI released the most recent round of report card scores this week. Advocates, reporters and school officials are all looking at these data to figure out how individual schools and groups of schools fared in the ratings.
In a blog post at the Journal Sentinel one reporter asks the question, "How are independent charter schools doing?" The answer is: independent charter schools in Milwaukee continue to outperform their traditional public school counterparts on the DPI report card, and many other measures.
The rate of independent charter schools "meeting expectations" in the DPI report card is about 50% higher than the traditional public schools in Milwaukee (36% of independent charters met expectations, compared to 24% of traditional MPS schools). Of course, one could argue that looking at the number of schools that "met expectations" is not the most accurate way to judge schools.
Wouldn't we rather see one school that serves 1,000 students "meeting expectations" rather than two schools that serve 100 students each "meeting expectations?" So what do these data show us when we look at the percentage of students who attend a school that is deemed "meeting or exceeding expectations?" The gap between MPS and independent charters is even higher (see Table 1 below) -- 39% of students attending independent charters in Milwaukee were in a school meeting or exceeding expectations, compared to 22% of students attending MPS.
Independent public charters continue to be the city's highest-performing sector of public options to students and families, and are clearly making a difference in closing the achievement gap.
Table 1. Comparison of MPS and Independent Charter Schools: Number and Percentages of Students that Attend Schools Rated "Meeting Expectations" or "Exceeding Expectations" on DPI Report Card September 2013.
However, these data come with two important caveats.
First, we know that the statewide report cards are still an imperfect measure of how schools are actually performing with students. Take the example of Carmen High School of Science & Technology. On the statewide report card, the school is rated as "meets few expectations." And yet, U.S. News and World Report ranked Carmen as the fifth-best high school in the state of Wisconsin last year. What causes this kind of discrepancy?
In part, the statewide report card is not giving adequate credit for schools that have high ACT participation rates (like Carmen). If you're a high school in Wisconsin, you would probably rate higher on the DPI rating if you were selective about which of your students should take the ACT, favoring those who you think will do well. Thankfully, this is an issue that will be sorted out once all high school students are required to take the ACT tests, a policy that was passed in the state budget last year. This will also allow the state to measure growth at the high school level which the report card does not reflect at all, currently, for high schools. This is just one example of how a quality high school can end up in the "fails to meet" or "meets few expectations" categories.
Second, while these data are encouraging in that they demonstrate clearly that we can do better as a city, and independent charters are leading that charge, there is still much work to be done in Milwaukee and in the charter sector specifically. As charter advocates, we need to advocate for high-quality replication and expansion, help existing high-quality schools gain access to the resources they need, and push for the closure of low-performing schools that are not successfully serving students.
Independent charter schools themselves can, and should, continue to drive the agenda for school accountability and successful outcomes with students.