By Lauren Roth, Orlando Sentinel
When state grades came out for elementary and middle schools in July, charter schools were responsible for an outsized share of the F's. And when high-school grades are released in coming days, three Orange County charters, all run by the same company, are poised to continue that trend.
Aloma, Chancery and Sheeler high schools, which work with students who are years behind in school or have dropped out, all expect to earn F grades. But citing the schools' unique mission, the county School Board last week granted a fourth charter to the same management company, Accelerated Learning Solutions of Miramar.
The new school will be called Sunshine High and located in or near the Edgewater High School zone.
"These are last-chance, dropout schools," said School Board Chairman Bill Sublette. "The board views them very differently than Imani," he said, making reference to a Pine Hills charter elementary school that the board shut down in the spring amid academic and financial failings.
The last time Orange County had three failing high schools was five years ago, when Evans, Oak Ridge and NorthStar Charter High got F's. The district has never had more than three high schools fail in a single year.
Like the School Board, the state sees these alternative charters as different from other struggling high schools despite low graduation rates, high turnover and low FCAT scores. Starting next year, Aloma, Chancery and Sheeler will earn "School Improvement Ratings" — declining, maintaining or improving — instead of grades. Statewide, 74 alternative schools earned such ratings for 2010-11.
Despite this, Chancery High will likely face a future School Board hearing on whether to continue its charter after receiving F grades two years in a row, a violation of its contract.
But school officials say the grade isn't a reflection of their true performance.
"There are too many good things happening to have that grade," said Angela Whitford-Narine, Chancery's former principal.
At Chancery recently, students worked on computer terminals in a brightly decorated school in a South Orange Blossom Trail strip mall. Like many for-profit colleges, the school has a full-time staffer dedicated to enrollment and runs multiple sessions of classes. All of the teachers are certified, and the principals at all three schools have master's degrees.
Gemima Hippolyte, a 17-year-old junior, said she transferred to Chancery after a year at Oak Ridge.
"I'm not the kind to drop out. I want to do courses faster," she said.
But though the classes that students take are based on the same Florida standards as traditional courses, they have far less depth. Students said they complete credits, the equivalent of an entire course, in a month or less.
For a literature class, students answer questions on books based on summaries instead of reading the texts themselves.
Jean Antoine, 18, just finished English 4 in about two weeks by staying for multiple sessions. The 18-year-old junior left Evans High School last year when he found out he wouldn't have enough credits to graduate.
"I've learned more here in a week than I would in a month in school," he said.
Based on the data available, it's hard to tell whether the schools are as successful as they claim.
The three schools say they had 236 graduates last year, but the state gave them credit for only 89 who graduated on time, a graduation rate that varied from 12 percent at Aloma to 26 percent at Sheeler.
By comparison, Mavericks High in Osceola, which is expanding to Orange County with a similar online-based credit-recovery program next year, had a 43 percent graduation rate. Within Orange County, Workforce Advantage Academy Charter, which teaches work skills and academics to students at risk of dropping out, had an 83.2 percent graduation rate.
Officials with Chancery and its sister schools said many of their students are years behind in credits and might graduate late. The advantage of their model, they said, is that classes are self-paced, with individualized support from teachers in each computer lab.
But John Saez, 19, said the online model wasn't for him. He left Aloma about two years ago after earning two credits in five months. He ended up graduating from another charter school last spring.
Many students such as Saez leave the three schools, including nearly 1,300 during the 2009-10 school year. Few returned to their home schools, and several hundred graduated.
Orange County School Board member Rick Roach said the district should copy the best innovations of alternative charter schools such as Workforce Advantage and Chancery.
"If you can show us something, we should replicate it and benefit from it," he said. "We haven't really taken advantage of that."
Tafari Huggins said he wouldn't have succeeded without an alternative option. A former Jones High football standout, he had too few credits to graduate until he went to Chancery. He caught up on credits and graduated a few weeks ago. He's headed to Alabama A&M, where he will play football and run track.
"Because of schools like Chancery, I can say I'm still alive. I beat out the predictions. I have no kids. I'm not in jail. I'm going to school," he told the School Board last week.
"Schools like Chancery give kids hope."
lroth@tribune.com or 407-420-5120. Follow her on Twitter @RothLauren.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-charter-schools-defend-reputation-20111217,0,7080098.story
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