Charter closing:a rush to judgment

TUESDAY'S unanimous decision by the state Board of Education to close the Frederick Douglass Charter School is sad for the school community and disappointing to all who serve children in urban schools. What this recommendation reflects about the current state and immediate future of public education -- both in Massachusetts and the nation -- should be alarming to us all.

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Although there were multiple reasons cited, it seems most likely that the primary driver for closing the school is student achievement as measured solely by the school's ability to make Adequate Yearly Progress on MCAS.

In our rush to achieve high academic standards and manage and enforce accountability, we have begun basing our evaluation of school success entirely on Adequate Yearly Progress, turning to this number as the sole and best indicator. Reducing public discussions of school performance to one number certainly has made this complex topic simple to discuss. But has our overreliance on this one indicator also left our civic dialogue simplistic -- and our decision-making shortsighted?

Adequate Yearly Progress is calculated for schools based on the No Child Left Behind goal of 100 percent proficiency for all students by the deadline of 2014. If you talk to practicing educators, you will find that most share the spirit of this goal; they believe passionately in their students' ability and potential and are dedicated to high standards and achievement. You will also find, however, that most educators, particularly those in urban schools, believe the 2014 deadline to be overly ambitious and unrealistic -- and find the current reliance on Adequate Yearly Progress as the indicator of school success misleading and dangerous.

As current research reveals, many urban schools with demographics such as Frederick Douglass serve children who come to school with multiple barriers to learning that were not developed in schools and cannot be entirely overcome by schools.

Yet the challenge to address these barriers in quick and miraculous ways is placed at the schoolhouse door. For schools serving these students, educational achievement is even more of a need and a challenge -- and any gains in achievement even more precious and hard won. These gains should be recognized, celebrated, and built upon whenever they occur -- whether those gains fall below the school's progress target or above it. We must not allow our dogged focus on this one number to blind us to the challenging realities and actual successes of our schools.

Under No Child Left Behind, the basis for all our dialogue and decision-making has become time. How fast is fast enough for a school to prove it's on an effective course for raising achievement? How much time is enough time to call any school's improvement a trend? How long is long enough to wait for any school, particularly an urban school serving high-needs students, to meet this calculated mark?

As the No Child Left Behind deadline draws tighter around us, the time-related questions we should perhaps begin asking are these: How long will it take to replace the growing number of schools in all urban districts that will ultimately be deemed "failing"? How much time will it take to build new school communities with these dislocated students and staff, and see success? As for the Frederick Douglass, will Boston public education be improved by its closure?

The Massachusetts Charter School Association, in an analysis of 2003-04 MCAS data, compared Frederick Douglass with the performance of African-American students in Boston's 32 nonexam schools. (The Frederick Douglass student body is more than 90 percent African-American.) This analysis revealed that Frederick Douglass students, if dispersed to these schools, would have a two out of three chance of attending a school with lower MCAS performance for African-American students.

From a school choice perspective, should the school close, another viable option for parents, particularly African-American parents, will have been eliminated. From a charter school perspective, the closing of Frederick Douglass would mean the loss of a school with the mission of preparing its primarily low-income, African-American students for college. The charter school movement itself would be the poorer, and we might wonder: Which part of our public will ultimately be best served by this alternative public education model?

In our current public education landscape, with national and local pressure for decision makers to "get tough" with schools, we must be vigilant on behalf of our public schools -- ensuring that the decisions made are not politically expedient but are thoughtful, educationally sound, and responsive to the choices of children and families.

Lenora Jennings is executive director of the Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School. Lori Likis is the Banneker school's strategic planning project manager.