More on Stanford's charter school

Following up on my last email, I've read more and heard from some folks about Stanford Ed School's charter school.  Its defenders argue that its high school is doing well and that the only problem is the elementary school, which was only three years old and had only two years of data for a few grades when the charter came up for renewal last week.  Regarding the high school, they point out that: a) its graduation rate is 86%, which is far above the state average; b) 96% of graduates are admitted to college (including 53% to four-year colleges), twice the rate of African American and Latino students in the state as a whole; c) over the last seven years, its API score has risen by 180 points; and d) it has an EarlyCollege program that enrolls half the students in the school who earned 550 college credits in the past year; 40% of students earn "A's" in their college courses and many graduate with close to a full year of college credits.

 

These are all fair points, but the API scores are still really low and are insufficient based on CA's accountability system (see the data at: http://api.cde.ca.gov/acntrpt2008/2008GrowthSch.aspx?allcds=41689990109561).  It also appears that few kids at the high school are passing the state ELA tests.  For students who can't even pass this basic test, it almost doesn't matter if they go to college because they'll struggle and are unlikely to graduate.  There are good reasons why this school landed on the list of the worst 120 or so in the entire state…