The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) has created a series of reports to help charter schools and interested stakeholders more deeply understand the performance of the California charter schools movement. These reports will be expanded over time to include regional snapshots of performance, different lenses through which to measure and map the momentum of charter schools and nuanced views on which to understand how charter public schools measure up – not just in comparison to traditional public schools but also among various types of charter schools. The first report in this series is CCSA’s 2011-12 Academic Accountability Report Card.

More information can be found at www.calcharters.org/advocacy/accountability

CCSA has taken a lead in measuring charter school performance statewide by looking at how schools are adding value to their students’ education, regardless of the gifts and challenges that their students bring to the door.

One example of this is CCSA’s metric, the Similar Students Measure (SSM), which measures patterns of school performance while taking into account the student body served. It identifies schools that persistently exceed or fall short of a prediction based upon how students with similar backgrounds performed statewide. Thus, while many traditional accountability metrics can unfairly punish schools serving disadvantaged populations, the SSM is a proxy “value-add” metric that takes into account student background to more closely hone in on the school’s performance.

The CCSA Accountability Framework combines the SSM with measures of academic status and growth over time to create a construct for assessing the performance of the charter movement and to set minimum performance standards for charters at renewal. This three-dimensional framework enables CCSA to establish minimum criteria for renewal that are rigorous yet also give schools credit for growth and for taking on traditionally disadvantaged students.

CCSA Academic Accountability Report Card

This Report Card shows school results on the CCSA Accountability Framework and CCSA’s Minimum Criteria for Renewal. The Minimum Criteria for Renewal represents the minimum performance standard for CCSA’s support of a charter school at time of renewal. Report Cards are available for all charter schools but the Minimum Criteria for Renewal is only applicable as CCSA’s accountability metric for non-ASAM schools four years and older. The Report Card also shows whether schools are at risk of revocation, as per the State Board of Education’s Revocation Regulations.

If you have any questions about the Report Cards please contact accountability@calcharters.org or datarequest@calcharters.org.

CCSA Regional Snapshot

The Regional Snapshots allow comparisons of charter and non-charter performance across various CCSA regions, counties, districts and other localities. The reports utilize API scores and CCSA’s Similar Students Measure to compare enrollment and academic performance of significant subgroups, examine longitudinal performance, and identify high impact schools and those below CCSA's Minimum Criteria for Renewal. The Regional Snapshots also provide a list of charter schools with key contact information for each region.

CCSA Attribute Snapshot

The Charter Attribute Snapshots allow comparisons of the performance of charter schools by various attributes (such as conversions vs. start-ups or autonomous vs. non-autonomous charter schools) across CCSA regions, counties, districts and other localities. The reports utilize API scores and CCSA’s Similar Students Measure to compare enrollment and academic performance of significant subgroups, examine longitudinal performance, and identify high impact schools and those below CCSA's Minimum Criteria for Renewal. The Charter Attribute Snapshots also provide a list of charter schools with key contact information for each region by attribute type.

CCSA Snapshot Maps

Snapshot Maps allow users to create maps of charter schools in various CCSA regions, counties, districts and other localities. These maps can be customized to display charter school attributes such as start-up and conversion charters or autonomous and non-autonomous charters. The Snapshot Maps also provide a list of charter schools with key contact information for each region.

CCSA School Comparison Snapshot New

The School Comparison Snapshot report shows a charter how it compares to the comparison schools on enrollment and multiple measures of academic performance, including , API status, API growth, English language arts and math proficiency, and CCSA's Similar Schools Measure (SSM).

CCSA Special Education Service Sharing New

The purpose of this report is to make Special Education service information available for charters. With this report, charter schools will be able to refer students to other schools that offer services they may not provide, be able to potentially share services with another school, locate other charter schools that are interested in hiring a mutual provider, or be able to get a list of all of CCSA fully approved contractors within the State.

Charter Opportunity Index New

The purpose of this report is to identify neighborhoods, and schools within neighborhoods, where parents have the fewest high quality educational choices using a combination of academic, demographic, and geographic data. Based on a "Charter Opportunity Index" score ranging from 0 to 100, with 0 indicating a low need and 100 indicating a high need for better educational options, this report reveals and defines areas that could benefit most from charter school growth.

Similar Students Measure (SSM) Snapshot New

The Similar Students Measure (SSM) Snapshot allows users to create maps displaying charter and traditional schools and their results on the SSM, which identifies schools that persistently over- and under-perform a prediction based on student background. In addition, users are able to filter results by the school performance on Academic Performance Index (API) and the California Standards Test (CST).