Public, charter schools close in discipline rates

LOWELL — The fight over charter schools in the state is surrounded in a bog of arguments, including the question of discipline.

But at least in the Lowell area, out-of-school suspension (OSS) rates for most charter schools don’t vary significantly from the average rates for similar grades in their sending districts, according to a Sun analysis of 2014-2015 state data.

In the city, Lowell Community Charter Public School and the Collegiate Charter School also had overall discipline rates — which include suspensions, expulsions, and removals — lower than the average for similar grades in the Lowell Public School system.

And compared to area districts, most local charter schools keep students throughout the school year at roughly the same rates, according to 2015 data.

Discipline and student retention have become part of a myriad of arguments thrown into the battle for more charter schools in Massachusetts.

Voters in November will be faced with ballot Question 2, which would allow up to 12 new charter schools or expansions every year. Priority would go to underperforming districts like Lowell.

Opponents of the question argue that charters eventually push their tougher students out, dumping them back in their home district in the middle of the school year.

But when compared to similar grades in their main sending district, Lowell charters had OSS rates lower than Lowell Public Schools.

LCCPS, which serves an elementary and middle-school population, had an OSS rate of 2.7. The Collegiate Charter School of Lowell, which serves similar grade ranges, had a rate of 1.7.

Both of those are lower than the Lowell Public Schools’ average elementary and middle-school rate of roughly 5 percent.

Lowell Middlesex Academy Charter School, which serves at-risk high-school students, had an OSS rate of 14.4. Though higher than Lowell High’s rate of 8.6, it’s lower than the average of both LHS and the alternative LeBlanc Therapeutic Day School, the other school in the district that serves high-school grades.

Yet in the suburbs, Innovation Academy Charter School in Tyngsboro had a higher OSS and overall discipline rate than most of its nine sending districts.

Its OSS rate of 3.9 is higher than the average middle- and high-school rates of Groton-Dunstable, Littleton, Chelmsford, Tyngsboro, Tewksbury, Westford and Billerica. So is the school’s overall discipline rate of 3.9 percent.

Stability rates for 2015 are also not significantly different between area charters and their sending districts, with the exception of Lowell Middlesex Academy Charter.

Those rates determine the number of students who start and end the school year in the same school.

Lowell Middlesex Academy Charter Executive Director Margaret McDevitt said many students come with challenges, such as anxiety or depression, that may make it difficult to learn. Poor attendance might drive others to the school.

But the data, she said, does not define the school.

The school’s low stability rate of 52 percent may also be due to a number of other options students might pursue midyear if the traditional classroom environment just doesn’t suit them, she explained. Those include programs such as YouthBuild or Job Corps.

“When a student, we find that they’re struggling too much, we want them to transfer so they don’t drop out,” she said.

But 2015-2016 attrition rates — which show how many students do not return to the school the next year — were slightly higher at some charters when compared to entire districts.

The Collegiate Charter had the highest attrition rate in the area, at 9.9 percent.

Director Frederick Randall said that though the rate may be high in comparison, the school only just finished its third year of operation.

“Our attrition percentage rates went significantly down this year, despite our student numbers increasing,” he said. “This indicates a more true pattern developing.”

The number-one reason parents have chosen to leave, he said, is because of previous facilities issues.

Until this year, the school had been operating in temporary housing while it waited approval for a new building.

Innovation Academy Charter also had a higher attrition rate than the majority of its sending towns.

Head of School Greg Orpen said that could be due to a number of reasons — students might miss their friends from their home district, or transportation might be a problem.

“I think it’s just, to some extent, a reality of one, being a regional school,” he said. “And two, being a school of choice.”

Although Lowell-area charters may not entirely support this argument, Lowell Public Schools don’t necessarily set a gold standard for comparison.

This year, the district was among 25 identified for high disparities in suspension and expulsion rates between students of color or those with disabilities.

Ten of those 25 are charter schools.

And nationally, one study from the Center for Civil Rights Remedies found that charter schools suspend students at a slightly higher rate than non-charter schools in both elementary and secondary grades.

The study lists Roxbury Prep Academy in Boston as one of the highest-suspending charter schools in the nation.

“The concern is that if you’re going to argue to expand the number of these schools, there’s not really enough scrutiny,” said Daniel Losen, director of the center and author of the report.

But among different subgroups — based on race and disabilities — suspension rates for charter schools and non-charter schools were minimally different. At most, the rates varied by just seven percentage points.

Yet Losen cautions against interpreting the data to pit charter schools against non-charters.

He argued that charters should be better than non-charters, and not just roughly equivalent to them, if they’re working well for the investment of public dollars.

“There are some really super-high-suspending charters that don’t get the kind of attention that they deserve,” he said.

The analysis of 5,250 charter schools found that 1,093 of them suspended students with disabilities at higher rates than other students.

But Massachusetts Charter Public School Association spokesman Dom Slowey disagrees with the study’s claim that the rates feed a “school-to-prison pipeline.”

“In order to fill the school-to-prison pipeline, the child would have to leave school,” he said. “Not just go back to the district, but they’d have to drop out.”

Parent satisfaction surveys done at many charter schools have found that they like a high level of discipline, Slowey said.

“If it’s really shown that any of our schools are targeting certain populations or they’re out of whack with the norm, then the Department of Education has been very clear that they want suspension rates to come down,” he said.

Beyond out-of-school suspensions, one study by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice found that charter schools account for a disproportionate number of disciplinary actions, according to 2012-2013 data.

Though they make up only 4 percent of the state’s public schools, 14 percent of schools with discipline rates over 20 percent were charter schools, the report found.

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