Monday, December 12, 2011

BESE Approves 18 Charter Applications

Out of forty charter applications, one Type 2 charter and seventeen Type 5 charters were approved by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) at the December 7th board meeting.  The Type 2 charter operator that was approved is Outreach Community Development Corporation. The Type 5 charter operators that were approved are Collegiate Academies, The Future is Now, The Friends of King, KIPP New Orleans, Choice Foundation, ReNEW (2 schools), Rocketship (8 Schools), New Orleans College Prep Academies, and Crescent Leadership Academy.

Several of the twenty-two applicants whose charter applications were denied attended the BESE School Innovation and Turnaround Committee meeting on December 6. Many who testified had complaints about the third party charter application process, which is managed by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA).

Click here to read the press release from the Louisiana Department of Education and here for coverage in the Times-Picayune.

Click here for the applications and their NACSA reviews.

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Charter Extensions and Renewals

The Recovery School District (RSD) made recommendations to the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) regarding the extension of charters that have operated for three years and for renewal for those that have operated for five years. After considering the RSD’s recommendations, BESE chose not to renew McDonogh 42 and to extend Sojouner Truth for only the rest of the 2011-12 school year under an MOU. Both schools are Type 5 charters.

BESE did extend five charters and renewed six. However, almost all extensions and renewals were conditional upon schools improving in areas such as budgetary management, disciplinary policy, and academic performance.

Click here for more information, starting on page 204 in the BESE School Innovation and Turnaround Committee Meeting packet.

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Return Decision Deadline Extended

At the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) meeting on December 7th, the board voted to extend the deadline for the schools that are eligible to return to their previous governing authority to make their decision. The RSD’s return policy, of which we recently published an analysis , allows schools that have been in the RSD for at least five years and have had a SPS of 80 or higher for the last two consecutive years to choose to either stay in the RSD or return to their previous governing authority. This year marks the first time schools in the RSD are eligible to return. The eight eligible schools are: Firstline’s Arthur Ashe; KIPP’s Central City, McDonogh 15, and Believe; The Friends of King’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology; Algiers Charter School Association’s Dwight D. Eisenhower and Martin Behrman; and the Institute of Academic Excellence’s Sophie B. Wright. The new deadline for these schools to decide whether or not to return is January 11.

Click here for more information, starting on page 317 (pdf page 498) in the BESE School Innovation and Turnaround Committee Meeting packet.

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New Data Oriented Teacher Evaluation Program

The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) approved policy revisions to Bulletin 130: Regulations for the Evaluation and Assessment of School Personnel to align it with Act 54, which was passed during the 2010 regular legislative session. Act 54 provides for the implementation of what is considered a value-added model for teacher evaluation. Value-added models use growth in individual student test scores to measure teacher performance. The policy revisions approved by BESE require teacher and administrator evaluations to be based half on test score growth and half on observations. The law requires that the half that is based on test scores account for student- and classroom-level variables that effect performance, such as free and reduced lunch status and attendence.

Click here to read about the program in the BESE Educator Effectiveness Committee Meeting packet.

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High School Graduation Assessment Changes

The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved revisions to Bulletin 111: The LA School, District, and State Accountability System at the December 7th meeting. The revisions remove the Graduate Exit Examination (GEE), which will be replaced with the End-of-Course Tests (EOC). High school students will need to pass three EOCs to graduate. EOCs are based on Grade-Level Expectations and cover Algebra, English, Geometry, Biology and American History. All GEEs will phase out and all EOCs will be fully operational by the 2012-13 school year.

Click here to read about the program, starting on page 74 in the BESE Academic Goals and Instructional Improvement Committee Meeting packet.

Click here for a blog post we wrote on EOCs.

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