Charters Spotlight Their Results Compared To Other Metro Schools

Nashville’s charter schools are highlighting their performance related to the rest of the district. Charters represent a vast majority of the city’s schools that achieved top growth scores for student improvement.

The Tennessee
Charter
School
Center
issued a press release making the comparison
— 70 percent of the schools to achieve level 5 TVAAS scores, which are meant to measure student improvement, were charters.

There are the longer school days, extra services to engage parents and regular testing to catch students before they fall too far behind, says Carol Swann, who oversees the district’s nearly two-dozen charters. She acknowledges that in most instances, charters also have the advantage of parent buy-in, because families have chosen to be there.

“If you make a choice in something, then maybe you’re a little more invested as a family in making sure that that choice is successful,” Swann says.

Charter skeptics have seen the implied parental involvement as an unfair advantage, accusing the privately-run schools of
strategically poaching students.

But Swann says it doesn’t have to be a bitter rivalry with district-run schools. She says charters were meant to be so-called ”
labs of innovation.”

“We should be asking, what are you doing to be successful, and is there a way we can replicate that? That was the promise of charters to begin with,” she says. “They were not supposed to be competition.”

Increasingly, though, they are seen that way by much of the Metro school board, which is currently ignoring a state mandate to help charters identify and contact potential students.

“Collaboration is key,”
Tennessee
Charter
School
Center CEO Maya Bugg says in a statement. “As we continue to seek innovative ways to reach and teach students, there are definitely some best practices worth learning from in these outstanding, high-quality, public schools.”