What's on your report card?

As a teacher in a Baltimore City charter school, the recent school board vote to renew contracts for three charters in the city sparked both interest and concern: what does it take to keep a charter alive in the city and whose job is it to keep it alive?

The school board tabled the vote for Baltimore City’s first charter school, the Maryland Academy of Technology and Health Sciences, because of a high number of suspensions in the previous academic year. The Inside Ed blog in the Baltimore Sun reported that more than 80 students were suspended at least once last year at MATHS. According to the demographic data provided in the 2008 Maryland Report Card (mdreportcard.org), 208 students attended the school last year. As a Spanish teacher turned MSA math prep teacher, I can tell you that’s 38% of the student body. What are the suspension statistics for this year? Could higher test scores (or some other criteria) outweigh a high suspension rate in the eyes of the school board?

While less specifically, but maybe more importantly, how was the school able to suspend this many students, at least once, without someone from North Avenue stepping in before it got out of hand? Where is the boundary between school sovereignty and system control? I understand the importance site-based management, but if schools are expected to meet a certain standard, is it the duty of the governing body to make sure that its constituents are meeting those expectations along the way? Just as teachers give progress checks and informal assessments to inform our decisions, remediate when necessary, and enrich where possible, the system has to do the same for the schools.

I’m asking a lot of questions here, because I think they are interesting points for discussion, but really, I have my own suspicions of what the answers might be, and a lot of you probably do too. One question I don’t have an answer to: What are The Green School, Rosemont Elementary, and ConneXions doing that MATHS is not and how/can whatever it is be replicated?