Ask the Right Questions About Charter School Graduation Rates

Ask the Right Questions About Charter School Graduation Rates

A few years ago, the California Charter School Association revealed Golden State charter performance didn’t align to the usual bell-shaped curve, but instead was clustered at the highest- and lowest-performance levels, creating a U-shaped curve. The 2016 Building a Grad Nation Report, released this week by GradNation, suggests that the same is true for charter graduation rates nationally.

In a piece for Education Post, I point out some of the limitations of the data related to alternative accountability and gaps in understanding that have been going on for too long. It’s important we sort the apples from the oranges so we can focus our attention on the true set of charter high schools that are not performing at acceptable levels—those that should face stiff questioning at renewal time.

Read the full piece at Education Post.


Most Recent Posts
5 Key Lessons NACSA Has Learned About Ensuring Excellence
This blog was adapted from this piece, by M. Karega Rausch, Ph.D., published in The74. Ensuring schools are excellent has always been at the center of our work at the...
Statement on US ED’s Decision to Rollback Authorizer Restrictions
NACSA appreciates the United States Department of Education (US ED) rolling back prior efforts to restrict and redefine who is eligible to authorize charter schools. For more than 18 months NACSA...
NACSA’s response to recent NAEP results: Accountability and Innovation
Last year’s NAEP data was released this morning, and overall, it’s sobering. In education, we must improve student outcomes in order to create lifelong opportunities for every child to thrive....