The Alliance schools, which include 17 high schools and 9 middle schools, are all located in low-income neighborhoods but have an overall high school graduation rate of 94 percent and combined 2012-2013 API scores of 760, which exceeds state (735) and LA Unified (693) averages.

While not all charters have performed well in LA Unified, and with Alliance having faced challenges, too, over the last decade, the network does serve as an example to many supporters of what charter schools can offer students in struggling neighborhoods.

“The first thing I would point to about our success, and it may be a bit hokey, but believing that all kids can do it and having high expectations for students when they come in,” Alliance spokesperson Catherine Suitor said. “Everything we do is focused on and works around that.”

Other key factors Suitor pointed to are longer school days, giving decision-making power to principals, setting aside more training time for teachers and having smaller schools.

At Alliance schools, kids attend an average of 38 days more of school a year, which comes from having an extra hour of school a day plus 10 more full days per calendar year than LA Unified students have, Suitor said.

“We’re very academically focused. When those kids come in and they are behind, there is tutoring, they double up on math and English the first couple of years because they are always playing catch up,” she said. “It’s that expectation that they will get there even if they come in behind.”

Teachers also get extra days, which includes 10 days of training before school opens and six days throughout the school year, which amounts to twice the training days teachers in traditional LA Unified schools get, Suitor said.

While Alliance has seen great academic success from its students, it hasn’t been all wins, as two of its middle schools and two of its high schools performed below the API average of LAUSD schools during the 2012-13 school year. Alliance also had to close a school for poor performance in 2012, replace the leadership and some staff and reopen as the Renee and Meyer Luskin College-Ready Academy.

“It’s all about leadership. I think the principal leadership is incredibly important,” Suitor said when asked what lessons were learned from the school’s restructuring. “I would say the other thing that we learned is move faster if something is not working. Those are the big things learned from that lesson.”

On the subject of principals, Suitor also said that Alliance believes in allowing for decisions to made at the local level. This is possible in part because Alliance uses a model in which each school is run as an individual non-profit, with a separate governance structure, compared with some other charters that operate as a single non-profit. 

“We don’t want to run the risk of jeopardizing the whole network for one school. Let’s say you have a catastrophe at one school, you don’t want it to circulate through the whole system,” CFO David Hyun recently told LA School Report.

The funding structure also allows for the money to go directly to schools, Suitor explained.

“The schools pay Alliance for some backend help and HR, but the money goes directly to the school so the principal decides who to hire, how to spend money, and whatever the particular needs of the school are,” she said. “There are very different communities all around LA, and they do make different decisions based on what’s going on there. And they are all held accountable for results.”

Alliance also keeps the size of its schools small, with all high schools serving fewer than 600 students and its middle schools fewer than 450.

“There is a lot of research to back it up that the size of the school is more important than the size of the district. There is a lot of debate about should LAUSD be broken up into smaller districts, but we have found it is having small schools that matters,” Suitor said. 

And success is breeding the potential for more success: Alliance is planning to open 10 more schools over the next five years, starting with two in Sun Valley next school year.

Source: California Charter Schools Association

*UPDATED

A new report by the California Charter Schools Association shows a growing gap between the overall school performance of traditional schools and charter schools in LA Unified.

The report — Portrait of the Movement — says LA Unified charter schools, on average, produce stronger test results than traditional schools in the district. The data shows that charter school median API scores have been on a steady rise over the last six years, gradually expanding the difference over the other schools.

The report covers a five-year period between the 2007-2008 and 2012-2013 school years. A three-point difference in the median API score for charters and traditional schools in 2007-2008 grew to 47 over the five years, as the median API score for traditional scores slipped in the final year.

The charter association said the trend represents just one aspect of the charters’ overall achievement.

“The gap doesn’t just exist on one measure, the gap exists on a host of other measures across a spectrum of performance, whether you look at graduation rates, college readiness data or this particular data,” Elizabeth Robitaille, Senior Vice President, Achievement and Performance Management, told LA School Report.

She said this gap is likely to get bigger as more students in LAUSD start attending top performing charter schools.

The findings also showed that the difference in performance exists between charter and traditional schools that have similar demographics.

Officials compared two schools: Morningside Elementary, a traditional K-5 school, and Downtown Value Charter, which is a high-performing K-8 school. Both have student bodies that are mostly Hispanic, and approximately half of all test takers in both schools are English learners.

Officials used what they call a predicted API to determine how the school should score based on demographics and other criteria.

The report showed that during the 2013-2014 school year, both schools’ predicted API was 810. However, Downtown Value Charter scored 838 — or 45 points higher than Morningside, at 793.  From the analysis, on average, officials say there’s a 5 percent gap between predicted API scores and actual scores for all charters and traditional schools.

On average, LAUSD charters outperformed their predicted API score by 3.5 percent while traditional schools underperformed by 1.5 percent (thus, a 5 percent gap in total in percent predicted API). This gap has widened — five years ago it was only 3.8 percent.

The number of charter schools in LA Unified has grown to 250 this year from 145 in 2009.

*Corrects scores for Morningside Elementary and Downtown Value Charter

A Student With Promise, a Teacher Who Had to Help
Brought to the U.S. as a baby, Itzel Ortega had no way to get financial aid to become an architect. Then a former teacher, recalling her own story, stepped in. LA Times

L.A. Unified Teacher Arrested for Alleged Child Porn Possession
Douglas Randolph Collins, 46, of Valencia, was taken into custody at the Van Nuys Education Center, where he had been sent after being removed from the classroom after authorities began investigating child porn allegations in October. LA Times
See also: LA Daily News, HuffPo

LA Mayor’s Race: How the Candidates Stand on Your Issues
Even though the mayor doesn’t have any direct authority over the Los Angeles Unified School District, many voters said they want the next major to play a role in education. Neither Greuel nor Garcetti has indicated they would follow Antonio Villaraigosa’s lead. KPCC

Five Gates Millennium Scholars Selected From Paramount High School
Five Paramount High School students have been selected as Gates Millennium Scholars — a rare achievement among high schools. Funded in 1999, the minority scholarships pay for up to 10 years of study, room and board. KPCC

Pasadena Unified Plans to Slash 48 Additional Jobs Across District
Pasadena school board members voted Tuesday to slash 48 jobs — this on top of 94 teacher, librarian and counselor pink slips in March — in their ongoing struggle to close a projected $8.8-million budget gap. Pasadena Sun

Thousands of Los Angeles County Fifth-Graders Enjoy a Day at Music Center
More than 18,000 fifth grade students from schools throughout Los Angeles County experienced the power of live performing arts beginning Tuesday and going on though Thursday at The Music Center. Pasadena Star News

Panel Moves to Include Grad Rates As Part of the API
A state advisory panel got its first look Tuesday at a new formula that will integrate graduation rates into the state’s school accountability system but asked staff to circulate the proposal among stakeholders and bring it back before they will contemplate a final recommendation to the Legislature. SI&A Cabinet Report

Democratic Senators Offer Alternative to Brown’s Funding Formula
Democratic leaders of the state Senate want to delay Gov. Brown’s sweeping plan for changing how schools are funded by a year and will recommend significant changes to it in a bill that they will reveal on Thursday. EdSource

CTC to Survey New Teacher Prep Grads for Data on System Improvements
Concerned that too many of California’s teacher preparation programs don’t measure up to the state’s high standards, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing is set to undertake a data collection program aimed at pin-pointing strengths and weaknesses of specific institutions. SI&A Cabinet Report

California School Districts Send out Far Fewer Pink Slips
Thanks to a boost in money for public education, California school districts have issued just 3,000 pink slips to teachers this year, a dramatic drop from the 20,000 sent out last year, the California Teachers Assn. reported Monday. LA Times

School District Discriminated Against Gay Students, ACLU Alleges
In a letter from the ACLU, the Hesperia Unified School District is accused of discriminating against gay and lesbian students, including refusing to allow girls to wear tuxedos to the prom. LA Times
See also: AP

Lockyer Seeks Legal Opinion on School Construction Bond Campaigns
California Treasurer Bill Lockyer sought a legal opinion Monday to determine if some local education officials and the municipal finance firms they employ are violating state law by campaigning to get school construction bonds passed. LA Times

Highland Park School Wins $110K in National Educational Contest
A Highland Park high school is $110,000 richer after two students beat 1,600 other schools to win a national educational contest. CBS LA

Failure to Protect Kids Costs Millions
Los Angeles Unified School District, the state’s largest district and largest recipient of the Proposition 30 tax increases, figures to be writing a big check soon. Unfortunately, this check won’t be going to support math, reading or arts programs. OC Register Column by Gloria Romero

CDE, Torlakson Lead Effort to Forge Ahead on Common Core Despite Challenges
There’s no shortage of skeptics when it comes to the plan to begin testing students in the new common core curriculum standards beginning in the spring of 2015. SI&A Cabinet Report

Committee Wrestles With Incorporating Graduation Rate Into API
As part of a push to measure how well a school is educating its students based on more than just test scores, California for the first time is planning to factor graduation rates into the state’s main measure of a school’s academic achievement. EdSource

Police Union Backs Nury Martinez for LA City Council
The union that represents officers with the Los Angeles Police Department endorsed a school board member for an open L.A. City Council seat in the San Fernando Valley Monday. KPCC

Union Wins Right to Represent Valley Charter School
The Los Angeles teachers union announced Wednesday night that it has won the right to negotiate a contract for teachers and counselors at a West San Fernando Valley charter school. LA Times

Open Letter to New York Mayor Bloomberg
Perhaps I haven’t pleased everyone in my pursuit to make our student’s education a priority, and by eschewing politics to pursue education reform I’ve offended the extremes of the education debate. Venice Patch Op-Ed by LAUSD Board Member Steve Zimmer

Slate Mailer Sleaze in L.A.
If you are on record as ever having voted in an L.A. municipal election, this month your mailbox will jam up with photo-filled mailers in advance of the March 5 primary for mayor, City Council, city attorney, controller, Los Angeles Unified School Board and community college trustees. LA Weekly

For First Time, a ‘Parent Trigger’ Without a Hitch
For the first time, a group of parents has succeeded in pulling a “parent trigger” on a struggling school without resistance. On a 7- 0 vote, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education on Tuesday afternoon quickly approved a petition to overhaul 24th Street Elementary. Hechinger Report

California Drops Out of ELL Assessment Consortium
California education officials have dropped out of a group of a dozen states that had organized around the need to develop a new English-language proficiency assessment that will measure the language demands of the Common Core State Standards. EdWeek

Beverly Hills High Wins County Academic Decathlon
Beverly Hills High School has won the Los Angeles County Academic Decathlon, earning a spot in the state competition in Sacramento next month. LA Times

Charter School Petition Is Approved
Plans to bring a charter school to Downtown got the green light from the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education this week. LA Downtown News

Changing the Debate on Charter Schools
As charter schools have dominated public discussion on education in the past several years, the debate at times has appeared to be between charter schools for the whole country or no charter schools at all. EdWeek Commentary

Judge May Dismiss Sex Lawsuit Against Former LAUSD Chief Ramon Cortines
A judge said Wednesday he was inclined to grant a motion by lawyers for former Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the educator made unwanted sexual advances to a male LAUSD employee.  LA Daily News

API Rewrite Getting Fast-Tracked, Graduation Rates Come First
Under pressure to quickly add new indicators for school success into the Academic Performance Index, a state advisory panel recommended Tuesday a point-scoring system that would reflect the number of students who’ve graduated. SI&A Cabinet Report

Report Questions Impact of Brown’s Finance Formula on Career Tech
In proposing to give school districts money with fewer strings attached, Gov. Jerry Brown is confident that local school boards and superintendents are best able to make the right decisions so that all students can graduate ready for college and work. A report released today questions that assumption. EdSource

Alliance of Big City School Districts Aims for More Healthful Meals
L.A. Unified and five others are striving to make wholesome food a national standard. They’re working on biodegradable trays and utensils as well. Each district has been assigned a specific project. LA Times
See also: LA Daily News

Elementary Students Experience Their First Opera
A partnership with the Opera, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Department of Transportation and City Councilwoman Jan Perry’s office offers schoolchildren the opportunity to attend the performance. LA Times

Help School Districts by Letting Them Raise Their Own Tax Revenue
Gov. Jerry Brown wants to help inner-city schools at the expense of suburbanites. But there must be a better way to assist the disadvantaged than to trigger class warfare.  And there is. It is to give school districts a better opportunity to raise their own tax revenue. LA Times Opinion

Quick Action Contemplated on New Assessments, API Rewrite
The Public Schools Accountability Act Advisory Committee, which has only held one meeting, is working on incorporating into the state’s school accountability system graduation rates and proof that students are adequately prepared for college and career. SI&A Cabinet Report

State Board Shifts Policy on Eighth Grade Algebra
The State Board of Education ended a decade-long controversial policy of pushing eighth graders to take Algebra I when members voted unanimously Wednesday to strip California’s Algebra I standards from the state’s eighth grade math standards. EdSource

LA Schools Reinventing Art Education
The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest public school system in the United States with some 700,000 students. In early 2012, “art for the sake of art” became no longer affordable, and the LAUSD Board of Education proposed that its elementary arts budget be reduced to zero. Epoch Times

Mother of Twins, Lawyer and Activist Goes After Anti-Charter Zimmer
Kate Anderson, an activist mom and successful attorney with political chops will try to oust Steve Zimmer, the Westside’s man on Los Angeles Unified School Board, in March 2013. LA Weekly

Lawsuit Against Teacher Tenure Laws, Seniority Rights Advances
Supporters of a lawsuit to make it easier to remove ineffective teachers hailed a court ruling Friday that will allow them to proceed with efforts to overturn teacher tenure laws and seniority rights. LA Times

A Smarter Way to Grade Schools
Unlike in the rest of the U.S., California’s SB 1458 rightly assigns just a portion of student test results into the API school rating formula. How the rest will be determined is the question. LA Times Editorial

L.A. Schools Science Center in San Pedro Struggles to Stay Open
The Christensen Math Science and Technology Center in San Pedro is a beleaguered survivor of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s budget cuts. LA Times

As you can see, LAUSD’s API score showed significant improvement, climbing 16 points to reach 745, but was still below California’s statewide goal for an 800 API score. When it came to the district’s AYP score, which is a broader federal measure of how a school district is progressing, LAUSD did not meet AYP target goals for student performance or graduation rates. LAUSD did, however, meet participation rates in math and English/language arts.

LAUSD was not alone in its struggle to meet AYP goals, and both AYP and API are incomplete measures of school effectiveness.

Previous posts: No NCLB Waiver — No “Freeze”, Testing Problems at 2 LAUSD Schools

Measuring the Worth of a Teacher?
L.A. Unified School District’s Academic Growth Over Time measurement system, based on students’ progress on standardized tests, spurs debate over fairness, accuracy. LA Times

State Strips 23 Schools of API Rankings for Cheating
Teachers helped students correct mistakes on standardized tests, prepared them with actual test questions or left instructional posters displayed in the classroom during testing, according to school district reports. LA Times

Proposition 30 Analysis: Does California Need More Tax Money?
Even if the measure fails, funding for schools is expected to increase 21 percent from 2012 to 2015 because of economic growth. The $6 billion trigger-cut figure stems from the fact that he and the Legislature started the budget year by assuming that Proposition 30 would pass. Daily News

Brown Brings Prop. 30 Campaign to L.A.’s Grand Central Market
Fighting for support for his tax-hike initiative to help fund education, Gov. Jerry Brown aims his message at Latinos. LA Times

Scare Tactics — and Scary Protests Over Prop. 30 — and Some School-Based Advocacy May Be Illegal
With less than two weeks before the Nov. 6 elections, officials have been stressing the potentially devastating impacts on public education if the measure fails. But some critics call these methods scare tactics and in at least one case say the educators’ efforts violated election laws. Daily News

State Auditor Takes a Closer Look at LAUSD Misconduct Cases, Practices
State auditors are expected to finish in the coming weeks a formal review of how Los Angeles Unified handled claims of misconduct lodged against teachers and other employees, including whether district officials followed all applicable laws. SI&A Cabinet Report

LAUSD Board Member Steve Zimmer Honored as Elected Official of the Year
Los Angeles Board of Education Member Steve Zimmer is being honored Saturday as the 2012-13 Elected Official of the Year by the California Association of School Counselors. Patch / Press Release

A Lot is New Under the Hood in High School Auto Shop Classes
Auto shop’s long skid in the face of budget cuts and a shift toward college-prep classes may be reversing. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the San Diego Unified School District. LA Times

Also see stories from the Daily News, Ed Source, City News Service, SI&A Cabinet Report

The Times also reports that two L.A. schools this year were stripped of an API score because of mistakes or misconduct by a teacher.

Overusing Test for Special Ed Students Inflates API Scores
A deeper look at the results shows not only inflation contributing to the gains but also a substantial policy shift toward lower expectations for special education students in California. Ed Source

California’s New School Budget Math
Add 30 and 38, and what do you get? In California, the answer is zero. The ballot propositions are on the verge of cancelling out each other to produce a big, fat zero. Prop Zero

Obama, Romney Have Similar Basic Views on Education
Both candidates want test scores to be part of teacher evaluations, support extra pay for effective instructors and back the growth of charter schools. One difference is Romney’s support for vouchers. LA Times

Charter School Not Entitled to Choose its Location
The Los Angeles Unified School District did not violate the charter schools initiative by offering to locate a charter school in adjoining classrooms at Belmont High School, contrary to the wishes of the charter school’s directors, this district’s Court of Appeal ruled.  Metropolitan News-Enterprise

LAUSD Axes Successful Art to Grow On Program Right After Unanimous Board Vote to Bring Fine Art Back
The program pays artists to train hundreds of parents to take art into elementary classrooms project by project. It was so successful that today it touts having  served 8,000 kindergarten through 8th grade students a year, has 150 volunteers and 17 private and public schools that participate throughout the Harbor area. City Watch

Former LAUSD School Board Member John Greenwood Dies
Former Los Angeles school board member and Coro Foundation President John Greenwood of San Pedro died unexpectedly early Thursday morning. Daily Breeze

Under the new law, supported by LAUSD and an array of business groups, student test scores will account for no more than 60% of high school API scores, leaving room for other factors in assessing a school’s success. The new API won’t start until 2016. Senate majority leader Darrell Steinberg, who sponsored the bill, said in a statement:

“For years, ‘teaching to the test’ has become more than a worn cliche because 100% of the API relied on bubble tests scores in limited subject areas. But life is not a bubble test and that system has failed our kids. By balancing testing with factors like graduation rates, and measuring how prepared our students are for entering college and the workforce, SB 1458 will spur the system into delivering higher quality education combining real-world relevance and academic rigor.”

So what will comprise the other 40% of API scores? The bill leaves that up to the State Board of Education, although it could include graduation and dropout rates, Advanced Placement test scores, and the number of students moving on to four-year universities.

Over at Ed Source, John Fensterwald writes:

“SB 1458 reflected widespread frustration that the heavy weight given to multiple-choice reading and math exams was narrowing the focus on what was taught, encouraged weeks of test prep, and distorted priorities, with science, the arts, and vocational and career tech programs given short shrift. That’s why SB 1458 had strong support in the business community, with regional workforce organizations and the California Manufacturers and Technology Association among those behind it.”

Governor Brown’s Modest Proposal
If Prop 30, which raises California sales tax from 7.25 percent to 7.5 percent and increases the income tax on those earning over $250,000, goes down in flames, Governor Brown will likely make good on his promise to cut $4.8 billion in public school funds. That could mean wiping out an additional 15-20 schools days from the 2012-2013 academic year. HuffPo Opinion

UC to Pay Damages in Davis Pepper-Spraying
The University of California will pay damages of $30,000 to each of the 21 UC Davis students and alumni who were pepper-sprayed by campus police during an otherwise peaceful protest 10 months ago, the university system announced Wednesday. LA Times

For-profit Colleges Ordered to Be Transparent
For-profit colleges will have to be more forthcoming about information they’ve considered proprietary up to now. Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation yesterday that requires for-profit colleges to inform prospective students about their accreditation status, salaries, student loan default rates, and whether graduates have found work in the fields they were trained for. Ed Source

“We’re Still Hungry!” Student Lunches Leave Stomachs Rumbling
A YouTube video created by Kansas students echoes concerns heard in Los Angeles over new dietary guidelines that slash the calorie count of school lunches. NBC 4

Torlakson’s teacher panel finalizes report on improving quality SI&A Report: A blue-ribbon state panel on improving teacher quality in California calls for more rigorous monitoring of preparation programs and more aggressive enforcement of state standards, sources familiar with the report said Thursday.

Teachers union gives another $6.9 million to Prop. 32 fight LA Times: California’s largest teachers union is literally doubling down to fight Proposition 32, the November ballot measure that promises to eliminate special-interest money in politics.

Heat wave costs LAUSD more than $400K in AC repairs Daily News: Los Angeles Unified maintenance crews racked up more than $400,000 in overtime repairing overloaded air-conditioning units during the heat wave that swamped the region during the opening days of school, officials said.

Manhattan Beach students caught in middle of teacher pay dispute KPCC: After contract negotiations with the small school district broke down, the Manhattan Beach Unified Teachers Assn. issued a number of directives last week to its roughly 300 members, including to: not commit to letters of recommendation; not sponsor or advise clubs; not open their classrooms before class, at lunch, or after school; and not volunteer for extracurricular or additional duties.

Oakland Unified cuts off funds for private school, but troubles remain California Watch: Oakland distributed $474,344, more than any district except the far-larger Los Angeles Unified School District.

Public School Teacher, Reveals Night Job As Sex Dominatrix HuffPo: Darlene has been a school teacher at a southern California school for nearly 20 years, but she also spent 18 of those also playing the role of a professional dominatrix at night. For her, the two roles didn’t have any major contradiction.

‘Drug free’ clubs launch at Santa Clarita high schools LA Times: The new “drug free” social clubs at Santa Clarita high schools offer field trips, dances and counseling. But there’s a catch: Members must agree to random drug tests.

The API Index is the single number used to reflect a school’s progress, based on statewide testing. Traditionally timed to coincide with the start of the school year, the API release has instead been pushed to October 3, 2012.  That’s an additional month after the release of individual test score results — which have also been postponed — and are now due on August 31st. (Los Angeles Times)

According to the CDE, more time is needed to investigate last spring’s testing scandal – when students allegedly took hundreds of photos of the standardized test and posted them on social networking sites. If you don’t have time to hunt down CDE’s buried press release, click here.