Chalking Up the Charters

As if sorting through differing federal and state school accountability ratings weren't confusing enough for parents, those with children at charter schools have an added dilemma. Because of the way the Texas Education Agency sorts and reports test data, the same charter school can end up with two different TEA ratings – as if students could score an A and a B on the same test.

The problem arises because the agency ranks districts and individual campuses according to different rules – but many charter schools count as both a district and a campus. These are charters with only a single campus, and they're very common: of the 15 charter holders the TEA reports in the Austin area, for example, 11 are single-campus districts. Two of these – Harmony Science Academy and Star Charter School – are ranked as "recognized" when measured as a campus, but only as "acceptable" when ranked as a district. (A reader called the Chronicle to complain we failed to acknowledge Star's "recognized" ranking last week. Our article didn't make clear that we were reporting the charters' "district" rankings, and we apologize for the confusion.)

What's the difference? At the risk of oversimplifying an incredibly complex system, let's just say the "district" rating includes more complete data. When schools report test data to the state, they break it down into a number of demographic subsets, including race and socioeconomic status. However, if a grade has less than 30 students of a given group – say, Hispanic third-graders – their test scores are not included in the assessment of the campus' rating. However, those scores are included for the "district" ranking. Thus, for single-campus districts, the "district" and "campus" ratings will differ based largely on how well or poorly the students in the excluded groups did on their tests.

TEA spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman admitted that the system is confusing, but said it helped the data be used in different ways.

"If you're a parent looking at particular grade levels, the campus rating gives you a clear picture, but the district rating gives you the whole for the district level," she said. "It's hard to say that one's better than the other. It just depends on what you're trying to see."