Category: Association Blog

By Eileen Sigmund

This week, Arizona issued its first “A-F” letter grades in three years. This is what you need to know about these grades and what the Association is doing on behalf of Arizona’s public charter schools to ensure our unique campuses are rated fairly and accurately:

• First, keep in mind these grades remain preliminary and are subject to change. More than half of all charter schools in Arizona have yet to receive any grade whatsoever. One of the biggest problems is that the rating system assumes every school is either K-8 or 9-12 and does not account for non-traditional models. Additionally, many schools received an initial grade that they are appealing.
• The Association believes strongly the new letter grade formula needs to be improved, and we are vigorously advocating for Arizona policymakers to immediately revisit the formula before parents are misled and schools are further harmed.

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:

By Yvonne Watterson

What do we look for in a quality school? Test scores? Funding? Class size? The principal’s resume?  Do we know why some schools do a better job than others in helping students learn? At a time when Arizona is facing challenges that include improving literacy, the high school graduation rate, the recruitment and retention of effective teachers and leaders, and ensuring equitable funding for its schools, these are critical questions.

As parents, educators, community members, and business leaders, we want to feel confident that Arizona’s children will emerge from our schools ready for the demands of college or the work-place. We should demand nothing less. In order to achieve it, however, we must share a common understanding of what quality looks like.

By Jamar Younger

Arizona’s “wild west” reputation seems to inject itself into numerous topics, including education.

In the charter school realm, Arizona is known for its massive growth of public charter schools in the early days of charters, leading to the movement’s association with the “wild west” moniker.

Two recent blogs pointed out that Arizona’s somewhat freewheeling attitude towards charters at the time might not have been a bad thing.