by Richard Vineyard

The Nevada State Public Charter School Authority (SPCSA) appears to be on the verge of closing the Nevada Connections Academy (NCA), an online K-12 charter school of 3,300 students, based entirely on a single accountability framework data point that applies only to the high school grades: the school’s 4-year Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR).

By way of background, Nevada recently strengthened the accountability provisions in its charter school law. Senate Bill 509, which passed in 2015, itemized a host of reasons an authorizer could use as a rationale to close a school. Most of these reasons are routine and logical: bankruptcy, material breach of charter or charter contract, endangering health and safety of children, etc.

But one provision of this statute gives a charter school authorizer the power to seek to close or reconstitute the board of a charter school if it has a graduation rate “of less than 60 percent.”

At first glance, this may seem reasonable. After all, a 60 percent graduation seems like a pretty low bar. But should this single academic metric that applies only to the high school grades be a justification for closing an entire K-12 school of 3,300 students? That’s exactly what the SPCSA is attempting to do.

When you dig into the details, the SPCSA’s action looks very heavy-handed. It is true that the school’s four-year ACGR has been well below 60 percent for several years. Data from the school records supports quite convincingly the argument that the low grad rate is a by-product of the fact that fully half the students in its last two graduating cohorts were already significantly credit deficient when they came to NCA as juniors or seniors.

Knowing this, it’s no surprise - nor is it a sign of school failure - that many of NCA’s high schoolers don’t graduate on time. And it certainly makes no sense to close the school based solely on this statistic. That would be holding NCA accountable for the performance of the students’ prior schools.

The school has argued that the ACGR is a flawed metric for schools that enroll lots of credit deficient kids, and that the SPCSA should consider NCA’s full academic performance before it considers any closure action. It is hard to disagree.

If you look at NCA’s most current academic metrics reported on the state’s web site, the SPCSA’s closure action is mystifying. The latest available reading proficiency rates show the school is above state average - in some grades by as much as 12 percentage points - in every tested grade. The school’s math proficiency rates were slightly lower than state average, but not significantly.

On all the other available performance measures - scores on end-of-course exams, 10th grade science exams, and scores on the ACT - the school scored above state average on every one of them. It is true, the school was included on Nevada’s list of low performing “Priority Schools” in 2015. But the sole reason for that listing was the fact the school’s grad rate is below 60%, so that doesn’t clear anything up especially considering the fact that the graduation rate for students who attend all four year of high school at NCA and non credit-deficient transfers is more than 80 percent.

In NCA, we have a school that by almost every academic measure is performing well within the band of acceptability, and the one measure it falls short on - ACGR - has what appears to be a legitimate explanation. The decision to consider closure is inexplicable.

We may never know exactly what is motivating the Nevada SPCSA, but Nevada’s charter law arguably does give them the power to do this. I voiced this concern in the recent hearing where the closure action was being considered, because what the SPCSA is doing raises some very serious accountability policy issues.

Is it ever acceptable for a charter school sponsor to close a school based on a single academic metric when all the other academic performance metrics show the school to be performing acceptably? In 2009 the Legislature required that the state Department of Education develop a measure of school performance that weighted academic growth as a significant factor in measuring school performance.  The Nevada School Performance Framework includes multiple measures of student growth and achievement in addition to testing proficiency and graduation rates. With all of the data available for use in creating a multi-dimensional picture of how schools work to raise student achievement, basing any decision on school accountability on a single measure is unacceptable.  A school closure action should always be based on a comprehensive analysis of a school’s performance over time. But Nevada’s current charter law allows a sponsor to ignore this core principle of accountability.

State charter law should not give charter school sponsors the power to close a school based on a single academic metric. As the SPCSA has shown, even when that power is discretionary, a sponsor may be tempted to use it. Sponsors can be motivated by all sorts and manner of goals not always congruent with ensuring a robust system of parental options. They should not have the power to give the death penalty to schools for what might amount to a misdemeanor.

SB 509 says the SPCSA “may” close a school with a low graduation rate, but does not require it. The fact that it is discretionary obviously means that the legislature intended that a sponsor would do some deeper analysis before closing a low grad rate school.

They should ask questions like: how many students were already behind when they enrolled? How did those credit deficient students perform? Are they engaged and accumulating credits? Did they stay for a fifth year?

The point is, the 60 percent ACGR threshold should not be a hard trigger for accountability, it should be a starting point that results in further analysis, especially when an action as severe as school closure is being considered— which in this case would disrupt and displace 3,300 students. The analysis should make sure that the school is truly low performing, and is not just being mismeasured by an accountability metric that doesn’t adequately account for factors such as student mobility, previous academic standing, and credits earned during their tenure at NCA..

Finally, in addition to the academic impact of schools like NCA have on their students, they also have measurable impacts on the communities in which they operate.  These community impacts and the supports that they generate from the parents and community members associated with the school should be evaluated as part of any decision to move toward closure.  The sheer numbers of parents and community members attending SPCSA Board meetings to present testimony on behalf of NCA, should dramatically raise the bar to warrant a decision to move toward closure.

The Authority has refused to consider any of these questions. When asked if they considered any data other than grad rate, its director, under oath, stated “there is no other information relevant to these proceedings.”

Academic growth, like the growth of a child, is not always accurately measured by a ruler, (how tall are they this year), but sometimes more accurately with a scale (how much was added since the last measurement) or another evaluation tool. Using only one measure of academic performance can at best provide a limited answer to the question of how well a school is educating their students.

It appears that the Nevada SPCSA is determined to move forward on closing down NCA on the basis of an isolated academic metric while willfully ignoring the slew of academic performance data that shows the school to be solidly in the acceptable range.

Traditional public school districts across Nevada are faced with many challenges. Overcrowded and understaffed classrooms, outdated facilities, and programmatic cuts as a result of budgetary constraints are but a few. One has to ask why we would take away a well-performing, comprehensive school of choice for so many students who have either already been failed by the traditional system or whose prospects when entering such a system are at best limited.

Dr. Richard Vineyard spent 17 years at the Nevada Department of Education. In his role of Assessment Director of the Office of Assessment, Data, & Accountability Management, he supervised the development and implementation of all state level assessments in Nevada.