Excel Academy Charter School

How about Excel Academy charter school in East Boston, which I visited on Thursday and was hosted by Rebecca Cass, the ED, and Komal Bhasin, the Principal (and, I'm proud to say, a former KIPP principal in New Orleans).  It is one of the most impressive schools I've ever seen – it is the #1 ranked school in Massachusetts in both English (100% advanced or proficient) and Math (96%) and #5 in Science (79%) (see chart for all four grades, below).  Lest anyone think Excel is creaming or forcing low-performing students out, 75% of students are Latino, English isn't the first language for 51%, and 67% qualify for free or reduced lunch.  Of the 54 incoming 5^th graders this year, only 3 were reading at grade level and 48 of the 54 are still around in 8^th grade, which is very low student turnover.

 

Rebecca provided me with some slides with a scatterplot of how Excel compared to all districts in MA (plus individual charter schools) in 8^th grade math, ELA and science, with % low income students on one axis and % of students scoring advanced or proficient on the other axis.  Not surprisingly, there's a strong correlation: districts with a lot of low-income students tended to have much lower percentages of students advanced or proficient – but there are a handful of schools (and not one district) that are totally off the trend line, with both high percentages of low-income students AND high scores.  Excel was one of these schools, joined by a number of other high-performing charter schools, including KIPP Lynn and Roxbury Prep (which I've visited) plus a few others I'm not familiar with.  I took Excel's chart and added labels for the other schools, and the result is really quite stunning (see pages 2-5 of the attached file; also posted at: www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Excelslides.pdf).

 

Here are pictures from my visit posted at: http://picasaweb.google.com/WTilson/ExcelAcademy and from pages 6 onward is a slide presentation Excel did for its teachers when they came back this fall called a "re-inspiration deck".  Note slides 24-25, which refer to the fact that Excel struggled in its first couple of years and had to replace its principal – I see this type of turnaround all the time among charter schools, but almost never among regular public schools…

 

By the way, Excel is looking to hire a new ED – see details at: www.excelacademy.org/get-involved.html and www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/ExcelCEO.pdf

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www.boston.com/news/special/education/mcas/scores09/results/excel.htm

Excel Academy Charter School

These results for Excel Academy Charter School, released in September 2009, are for the MCAS exams taken in the spring of 2009. Source: Massachusetts Department of Education.

Note: "Placement overall" ranks schools by combining the percentage of students who were either "Advanced" or "Proficient" and comparing that number for each subject and grade with schools across the state. The ranking was done by Boston.com.

Excel Academy Charter School
Grade/subject	% Advanced	% Proficient	% Needs Improv.	% Warning/ Failing	Students tested	Placement overall
5th English	41	48	9	2	54	43 of 896
5th Math	38	42	21	0	53	83 of 897
5th Science	32	53	13	2	53	28 of 897
6th English	49	43	8	0	53	21 of 565
6th Math	53	38	8	2	53	5 of 565
7th English	42	57	2	0	53	2 of 466
7th Math	45	32	23	0	53	30 of 466
8th English	50	50	0	0	48	1 of 464
8th Math	62	34	4	0	47	1 of 464
8th Science	13	66	21	0	47	5 of 464