14 of 15 Green Dot schools are "failing," by Parent Revolution's definition

Ben Austin of Los Angeles-based Parent Revolution contacted me privately today to object to my repeating rumors that his organization had paid parents at L.A.’s Garfield High School to sign the petition allowing the school to be turned over to charter operators -- and to dispute the rumors.

Fair enough. As I said, they were indeed only rumors, though I felt that even the rumors call into question the purity of these petition campaigns. Austin, by the way, is a paid organizer for this group, which is an “Astroturf” organization (fake grassroots) started by a group of charter school operators, not an actual parent group. The sponsors of Parent Revolution are led by the charter operator Green Dot.

My post was about the “parent trigger” portion of new California legislation designed to make our state eligible for the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” education money. The parent trigger allows parents in a school and in its feeder schools to petition for dismantling the school entirely – firing the administration and staff, turning the school over to a charter operator or shutting the school down. If 50% of the parents in an elementary school, or 50% of the total parents in a middle or high school and that school’s feeder schools, sign a petition, the trigger is pulled. The details of how it is decided which type of dismantling is wrought – or by whom -- are unclear. .

One concern is that the campaigns to collect these signatures seem very likely to involve threats, deceit or bribery. They're also likely to tear school communities painfully apart, with the brunt of the harm falling on the students.

Austin was not speaking on the record for publication, so I’m not quoting him. The only thing I will say is that he pointed out that only “failing schools” would be the targets of these parent trigger petition drives.

I object to the term “failing school” to begin with – every school’s situation is more complex than that. But more to the point, what’s the definition of a "failing school"? Well, it’s time to look up some numbers once again.

A few months ago I researched the achievement statistics for the schools Green Dot currently runs. Green Dot gets great press, but its schools’ Academic Performance Index ratings (this is the California Department of Education’s accountability system*) don't seem to warrant such enthusiasm.

The new APIs based on Spring 2009 testing have been released since I last did this legwork, and Green Dot’s stable of schools has increased. Meanwhile, by now, Parent Revolution has targeted five Los Angeles schools for campaigns collecting “parent trigger” signatures, two of them successfully.

Here are some numbers, all most recent APIs based on spring 2009 testing.

Average API of all Green Dot’s schools (15 total, counting several small schools on one campus, Locke High in Watts): 632 (rounded up to the nearest whole)
Average API of the “failing” schools Parent Revolution is targeting with parent trigger campaigns: 670 (rounded down to the nearest whole)

APIs for the schools Parent Revolution is targeting with parent trigger campaigns:

Garfield High School (parent trigger petition campaign successful): 594
Mark Twain Middle School (parent trigger petition campaign successful): 657
Emerson Middle School (petition campaign under way): 709
Mount Gleason Middle School (petition campaign under way): 744
Peary Middle School (petition campaign under way): 647

Well, as we can see, by Austin’s definition, an API of 744 or below constitutes a “failing” school. So that makes it a little eye-catching that only one Green Dot school, Animo Pat Brown Charter High School, achieved an API above 744 in 2009, at 753. By Parent Revolution’s own definition, Green Dot’s other 14 schools are “failing.”

• Of the schools targeted by Parent Revolution’s parent trigger campaigns, only Garfield High (API 594) has an API below Green Dot’s average (632). And six of Green Dot’s 15 schools have APIs lower than Garfield’s.

• Eight of Green Dot’s 15 schools have APIs lower than successfully targeted Mark Twain Middle School’s 657.

• Eight of Green Dot’s 15 schools have APIs lower than targeted Peary Middle School’s 647.

• Twelve of Green Dot’s 15 schools have APIs lower than targeted Emerson Middle School’s 709 (and of the three that outperform Emerson, one of them, Oscar de la Hoya Animo Charter High School, has only one point on Emerson, at 710).

• As noted, 14 of Green Dot’s 15 schools have APIs lower than targeted Mount Gleason Middle School (API 744).

I’ll share one other view Austin expressed when we discussed this by e-mail. He pointed out, in response to my citing APIs, that demographics impact test scores.

Well, yes, but that’s exactly the kind of disclaimer that education reform advocates disdain as “excuse-making” when it’s used about public schools. “No excuses” for the goose is “no excuses” for the gander.

Here’s the full list of Green Dot schools’ APIs, ranked high to low.

• Animo Pat Brown Charter High School: 753 (again, this is the only Green Dot school that is not “failing,” by Parent Revolution’s standard. All the schools below on this list are “failing” by that standard.)
• Animo Venice Charter High School: 729
• Oscar de la Hoya Animo Charter High School: 710
• Animo Film and Theater Arts Charter High School: 707
• Animo Inglewood Charter High School: 703
• Animo South Los Angeles Charter High School: 692
• Animo Leadership Charter High School: 688
• Animo Jackie Robinson Charter High School: 634
• Animo Ralph Bunche Charter High School: 629
• Animo Locke Tech Charter High School: 588
• Animo Locke Charter High School #2: 572
• Animo Justice Charter High School: 556
• Animo Watts #2 Charter High School: 534
• Animo Locke Charter High School #2: 504
• Animo Locke Charter High School #1: 480

*The API is a compilation of the school’s state standardized test scores, on a 200-1000 scale, with 1000 being the highest. A score above 800 is considered excellent.