Author: acs@@dmin

By the Arizona Charter Schools Association

The Arizona Charter Schools Association issued the following letter to our charter schools on Sept. 22 in response the Grand Canyon Institute’s report on charter school finances and accountability:

The Grand Canyon Institute recently released a paper that attempts to malign charter school accountability. We understand this is the first in a series of three hit pieces designed to discredit the work that charters are doing to deliver strong outcomes for kids. As your Association, we stand for quality and accountability in public charter schools. We do not agree with the baseless conclusions in this document.

Lost in the self-published 90-page diatribe against public charter schools is virtually any mention of what matters most: student success. And that’s no coincidence, as students across all demographics see higher outcomes when enrolled in charter schools. For the last three years, public charter students in all racial and ethnic groups are outperforming their peers, a simple truth that this paper sets out to ignore. Despite the availability of these and other data, including the most recent NAEP results that shine a light on the strong practices of charter schools, the paper’s authors cherry pick numbers from an old 2013 report to support their insinuations.

By Jamar Younger

Arizona’s public charter students have outperformed their peers for the past three years, topping state and national indicators of academic success.

This year, charter students once again scored higher than the state average in virtually every grade level and subject area on the state’s AzMERIT test for the third straight year, according to results released by the Arizona Department of Education on Sept. 6.

Despite these accomplishments, Arizona’s charter performance is usually met with the skepticism of those who believe charters don’t cater to all students, notably minority and underserved youth.

It’s time to retire that stereotype.

By Megan Gilbertson

We live in a personalized age, and there’s nothing more individual than, well, the individual.

Here in Arizona, families are not relegated to their zoned neighborhood school, and instead are provided the right to find and select a school that best fits their child.

And what choice is outpacing the rest? Public charter schools.

Newly-released data from the Arizona Department of Education show that public charter schools now serve 185,900 students or 17 percent of Arizona’s public school students, a 6 percent increase over FY16. These figures are consistent with the trend that has continued for over a decade: families are demanding quality schools and Arizona’s charter sector is responding. Arizona charter school performance is also on the rise, as our students outperformed their peers on state and national assessments.

The Center for Student Achievement, a division of the Arizona Charter Schools Association, released data showing that, in 2016, one out of every five eighth-grade students took a high-school level math course, such as Algebra I, Geometry, or Algebra II.

However, the results for these students are not reflected in the state’s reported 2016 AzMERIT scores. That means the number of eighth-grade students who passed AzMERIT is actually higher than what’s reported in the test results.

The Association’s Chief Academic Officer Ildi Laczko-Kerr and Director of Research Kelly Powell break down the numbers and provide observations about accelerated student performance on the Center for Student Achievement’s blog.

In an Arizona Capitol Times op-ed, Laczko-Kerr and Association President and CEO Eileen Sigmund explain why the lack of transparent data on accelerated eighth-grade math students creates big hurdles for policy makers who look to advance policies that will drive academic excellence.

Here is the op-ed in its entirety: