Seeking a 'Gold Standard' in D.C. Charter Education

The top school on DeVeaux's list is Washington Latin, in Northwest, with one-tenth of its students from low-income families. KIPP DC: KEY Academy, which is 81 percent low-income, ranks second. Washington Math Science Tech, serving entirely low-income families, ranks sixth, and SEED, 74 percent low-income, comes in 14th.

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Robert Cane, executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, said he would not oppose establishing a gold standard for charter schools. He said DeVeaux's analysis shows charter secondary schools "blowing the [traditional] D.C. schools out of the water," particularly among those that serve many low-income families. D.C. charters with a majority of low-income students have, on average, reading and math proficiency rates of about 40 percent, twice as high as traditional D.C. public schools with similar percentages of low-income students, according to data analyzed by DeVeaux.

Perhaps KIPP's most impressive statistic is that the 1,400 students at 28 KIPP schools nationwide who have completed three years of the program gained an average of 24 percentage points in reading and 39 in math. Those gains were on standardized tests given at the beginning and end of each year by KIPP teachers, not by government evaluators. States usually test once a year and don't track individual student progress.

Critics of KIPP and other charter schools say self-evaluations can be distorted. They also say charter schools might have the advantage of attracting the most energetic and attentive low-income parents, who take the trouble to move their children out of regular schools. They say that could make it easier for charter schools to raise student scores.

Edelin, the D.C. charter schools association director, said a gold standard for charters should go beyond test scores. In a recent draft proposal, her association calls for evaluations to consider "teacher qualifications, student/teacher ratios, fiscal soundness [and] parent and teacher satisfaction," among other factors. She said the association also wants to look at graduation and college-enrollment rates.

Schaeffler, the KIPP director, said that although KIPP schools are doing well on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams, those tests are "very hard to use as something to determine a school's overall performance."

Sarah Hayes, principal of KEY Academy, said differences between schools can be seen just by watching. Last year, while Hayes waited in the office of another charter school to see a teacher she wanted to hire, she observed repeated signs of disorder that would not have been tolerated at her school.

"The principal came down to make announcements, and a kid stuck out his foot and tripped the principal," she said. The principal "didn't do anything about it. I had a hard time just sitting in that school."