LDE Charter School Renewal Process Lacks Specifics for Determining Student Academic Performance
An evaluation of the Louisiana Department of Education’s (LDE) charter school renewal process found that LDE has not developed specific guidelines that address the primary academic requirement for renewal, as required by state law, the Legislative Auditor said in a report released today.
LDE uses a charter school’s School Performance Score (SPS) as the primary academic performance indicator for renewal decisions. State law, however, requires that a charter school demonstrate improvement in the academic performance of its students through standardized test scores.
While LDE has some standards for determining whether a charter school should be recommended for renewal, it does not have specific procedures detailing how to determine improvement in academic performance using standardized test scores or what criteria and measures should be used. Not having specific guidelines means that LDE’s oversight process may not be consistent and predictable as required by the Charter School Performance Compact and that LDE could recommend schools for renewal that do not meet the guidelines of state law, the state auditor said.
Auditors found that seven (39 percent) of the 18 charter schools that opened and that had their charters renewed between 2011-2012 and 2015-2016 did not show improvement in their students’ standardized test scores. That means there is a risk that LDE is recommending charter renewals for schools whose students may not have improved their academic performance and that substandard schools could be continuing to operate.
Auditors noted as well that improvement in the SPS of a middle or high school does not necessarily indicate students’ standardized test scores have improved because the SPS includes such non-test factors as graduation rates and credit accumulation. These non-test factors could obscure declining test scores over time.
This report is the second one examining LDE’s charter school monitoring processes released by the Legislative Auditor in the past two weeks. The previous report evaluated LDE’s use of the Charter School Performance Compact to monitor the organizational performance of charter schools. Auditors found that the monitoring process weighted critical and non-critical violations equally, making a charter school with critical violations likely to be rated the same as schools with non-critical violations.
For more information contact:
Legislative Auditor
225.339.3800