Thank you to everyone who attended AAPF16 in Coronado last week. We enjoyed insightful presentations from a variety of respectable experts from across the country.

Be sure to check the Twitter hashtag #AAPF16 for photos, comments, and links to presentations from the event.

We are already looking forward to AAPF17 - November 16-18, 2017 in the same place: Coronado Island, California. Registration is open now.

The following is an article from Education Post by Nelson Smith  on May 9, 2016.

Nelson Smith is a frequent presenter at the Alternative Accountability Policy Forum and he leads an effort by charter school authorizers to develop a policy basis for alternative school accountability measures.

A few years ago, the California Charter School Association revealed Golden State charter performance didn’t align to the usual bell-shaped curve, but instead was clustered at the highest- and lowest-performance levels, creating a U-shaped curve.

The 2016 Building a Grad Nation Report, released today by GradNation, suggests that the same is true for charter graduation rates nationally:
"Charter schools, shown to have mixed performance outcomes across states, also had mixed results in terms of graduation rates, with more than 3 in 10 charter schools reporting graduation rates of 67 percent or less and 44 percent with graduation rates of 85 percent and above.

This suggests that more than any other school type, charter high schools tend to either do very well or very poorly in graduating their students."

So first, a big high-five to all those charter high schools outperforming the national grad rate! But before taking the axe to those low-grad laggards over at the left side of the U-curve, let’s pause a moment to consider some of the annoying limitations in this data.

For starters, charter high schools tend to be located in urban areas. So when the report makes an invidious comparison between the 7 percent national rate of low-grad district schools versus a rate of 30 percent for charters, the next question has to be: How do those charters compare to the schools their students would actually have attended? Alas, we only get state-level numbers.

The report concedes that there’s a lot of overlap in three groups of schools—charter, alternative and virtual—that collectively make up for about half of all low-graduation rate high schools and tries to present some disaggregated stats.

Federal data on “alternative schools” is notoriously bad and almost certainly undercounts the number of charters serving highly at-risk populations. One table in the report says D.C. has no “alternative” charter high schools, which will come as a surprise to kids at Next Step and Maya Angelou.
A four-year graduation rate is largely irrelevant to a charter (or any) high school that seeks out highly-mobile students and former dropouts, especially when their program is based on mastery of subject matter rather than seat time. (To its credit, Grad Nation calls for routine reporting of five- and six-year graduation cohorts for all schools. That’s allowed under Every Student Succeeds Act and should quickly become the norm.)
These gaps in data and understanding have been going on too long. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers has been working in the “alternative accountability” vineyard since 2012, and it’s disconcerting that four years later, we’re still seeing global comparisons with too little acknowledgement of differences in school mission and population.
All that said…Let’s sharpen that axe. Once we’ve sorted through all these apples and oranges, there is still a set of charter high schools that are not performing at acceptable levels. We’ve grown impatient with virtual schools that explain low achievement by claiming that their students are exceptional—and then can’t produce the evidence.

Charter schools need to do their job. Those that set out to offer four years of college- and career-ready education for a largely mainstream student body have no business letting one-third of them fail to graduate—and those that do should face stiff questioning at renewal time.

Nelson Smith is a frequent presenter at the Alternative Accountability Policy Forum and he leads an effort by charter school authorizers to develop a policy basis for alternative school accountability measures.

The Public Policy Institute of California has released a penetrating look at accountability measures for alternative schools.  In the study, PPIC researcher Paul Warren recognizes that for many alternative schools, including dropout recovery schools, four-year graduation rates and other traditional measures of accountability, are failing to recognize school and student success.

“The state’s four-year graduation rate is a good example of an important performance indicator that does not work as intended in the alternative school context. Few students attend alternative schools for four years—or even one full school year. Moreover, students may arrive at an alternative school having failed several classes. The state’s methodology for graduation rates makes alternative schools accountable for the academic deficits created while students attended the regular high school.”
 
The report recognizes that a meaningful accountability system should look at both the alternative school as well as the school of origin.  This important study makes three primary recommendations for California that are relevant to all states.
 

• First, hold both alternative and regular schools accountable by employing more accurate and useful performance indicators, based on the complexities of the alternative school experience.
  
• Second, performance data for regular schools need to include data on almost all students who attend alternative schools so that regular schools have a stake in their success.
  
• Third, learn more about the experience of alternative school students to clarify and strengthen its system of alternative schools to ensure that schools are eligible for alternative metrics only when they serve truly at-risk students.
  

 
The Public Policy Institute of California's report is available at:  http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_516PWR.pdf

Several organizations including Our Piece of the Pie, High School for Recording Arts (HSRA), and SIATech schools collaborated on a new report, Seizing the Moment: Realizing the Promise of Student-Centered Learning, which includes information on new and improved learning strategies. These new methods provide students with advanced learning tools  that allow them to become more prepared for a successful future. Students are attended to on a more personal level and students are able to learn at their own pace. In the long run, students are empowered through transparency and self-ownership of their education.
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Chris Sturgis of Competency Works wrote an article about student-centered learning. Read more here.

Pictured above are representatives from the organizations who collaborated on the “Seizing the Moment” report which was presented in Washington, DC, on May 3, 2016. Several of them will be in attendance at the 2016 Alternative Accountability Policy Forum in Coronado this October.

​Last year, Susan Miller (State University of New York), presented with a team of experts about finding meaningful accountability measures for over-age under-credit students.  As the article below explains, that work is impacting  students’ lives today.
http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2015/09/28/for-charter-schools-serving-overage-or-homeless-students-typical-metrics-dont-add-up/#.VgrYp3nJAdW
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This year, leaders of that effort will present at the 2015 Alternative Accountability Policy Forum in San Diego  by answering the question, What Key School Design Elements Effectively Support Off-Track Youth?
Leslie Talbot, Aretha Miller and Robert Clark will lead a Conversation Session that includes a “gallery walk” of perspectives and collaboration to learn from each other, determine how the Pathways to Opportunity Project findings may fit other school systems, synthesize the information, and garner consensus.  

The 2015 Alternative Accountability Policy Forum will include 6 conversation sessions intended to build on attendee’s expectations of collaboration and networking by providing a modicum of structure which builds on the in-house expertise.  Conversation sessions are led by education leaders with recognized national expertise in the Conversation Session topics and experience in convening veteran practitioners.   The Policy Forum also includes 24 presentation sessions on topics ranging from Understanding Trauma Exposure to WIOA Implementation.

​If you haven’t registered for the Nation’s leading conference about policies and practices supporting off-track youth, join us today!

NoDropouts.org published an article this week entitled "Why we can't measure dropout recovery students the same way as we measure others." The post was in response to data presented to the Duval County School Board in Florida. The school board responded to district data on credit completion of the district's dropout retrieval programs. The programs were criticized for the low number of credits earned by its students. The NoDropouts.org article illuminates issues when it comes to evaluating dropout retrieval.

From the article: "Dropout recovery programs serve students who have already left school once before. Often these students have come and gone multiple times. Research tells us these students are commonly years behind in credit attainment, and even further behind in actual educational attainment.

"In most cases, they’re still facing the issues that pushed them out of school in the first place — and in many cases those obstacles have only increased in the time they’ve been away from school."

The presentation of such skewed data in Duval County is further evidence of the relevance of alternative accountability and the need to create more appropriate methodologies to evaluate the success of schools focused on serving overage and undercredited students.

Read "Why we can't measure dropout recovery students the same way as we measure others."

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has published a new report featuring best practices utilized by successful dropout recovery high schools. 

The report, Over-Age, Under-Credited Students and Public Charter Schools describes the role of charter schools in dropout recovery efforts across the Country.  The NAPCS study utilizes an extensive research base to describe the challenges of serving dropouts in terms of limited school options and economic burdens.  The report provides case studies to highlight five successful strategies for dropout recovery: competency-based progression; project-based learning; real-world application; flexible calendars and holistic student supports. 

The NAPCS report recommends four policies at the state and national level to support re-engaging America’s most underserved students: 

1.       Understanding the population and what works by collecting relevant data;

2.       Facilitating partnerships for providing comprehensive wrap around services;

3.       Providing equitable funding; and

4.       Allowing alternative accountability measures.

These policies are consistent with those contained in the 2012 Alternative Accountability Policy Forum Recommendations.  Representatives of the featured schools will be in attendance at this year’s Alternative Accountability Policy Forum in San Diego, California on November 14th and 15th.   

Download the report, Over-Age, Under-Credited Students and Public Charter Schools.

A recent article from EdSource addresses a growing focus in accountability systems of looking at students' social and emotional development.

Seven school districts in California are piloting measurement tools in an effort to quantify growth in non-cognitive factors. The districts are collaborating as the California Office to Reform Education (CORE). They are creating a School Quality Improvement Index in which 20% of a school's score will be measures of social and emotional factors.

Read more about the story from EdSource.