Champaign Charter School Rationale

Following up on a previous post, here. Nathaniel Banks had a guest commentary in the paper today that highlighted a local push for a charter school that will be brought before the Champaign Unit 4 school board. He points to disturbing data in the News-Gazette here:

One need only to look at the latest academic achievement data for black children in grades 3-8. The state has five levels of test achievement. Students in categories 1-3 indicate who are not on track for post-graduation success. Categories 4-5 mean that they are.

Comparing the overall district report card with the state’s shows the state and Champaign’s scores in English language arts and mathematics are comparable. Across Illinois, based on English language arts, between 30 and 40 percent of students in grades 3-8 are on track for college or career readiness. Across the state, that number for black students is 19.4 percent. In the Champaign schools, that number for black students is 10 percent.

Clearly stated, only 10 out of every 100 black children in grades 3-8 in the Champaign schools are on track for success in either college or a career. Fifty-two percent of the black children in the third grade can be found scoring at the lowest of the five levels of achievement.

In the Champaign schools, when it comes to successfully educating black children, “the emperor has no clothes.”

Over the years, many attempts have been made to mitigate this reality, with only moderate success. Grades K-3 are especially critical for education success. District numbers show that in 2011, the percentage of black children in the lowest category for literacy statewide was 10.8 percent and in Unit 4, 15.1 percent. By 2017, those numbers have increased dramatically to 35 percent statewide and 52.1 percent in Champaign schools.

These numbers should alarm the community, but they don’t. They should outrage the community, but they don’t. For the few in the community who are outraged, one would think that their only answer is to double-down and do more of the same without substantially changing the culture producing these results.

He points to a charter school as the solution to this issue:

Based on legislation, the state process for approving charters begins with the local school board. After receiving an application, the board must hold a hearing within 45 days on the proposed charter school and board of education vote 30 days after that.

The North Champaign Academy Charter Steering Committee, of which I am a part, is preparing a charter school application to be submitted during Black History Month 2018. One question that the 3,500 black families in Champaign providing $35 million in tax dollars to the district through the per capita tuition charge of $11,236 might ask is, are their children getting their money’s worth?

The data from the school report card clearly indicate that they are not.