The Daily Times

The state Board of Education will hold a public hearing today to review the Blount County Board of Education’s decision to deny HOPE Academy’s application.

After nearly six months of discussions between Innovation Education Partnership Inc. and the local board, the fate of Tennessee’s first suburban charter school will rest with the state board.

Dr. Gary Nixon, the state board’s executive director, will serve as hearing officer. Each side will have 20 minutes to make its case.

Director of Schools Rob Britt; Troy Logan, fiscal administrator and supervisor of school nutrition; Dr. Jane Morton, supervisor of instruction and assessment for grades 6-12; and Scott Kirkham, supervisor of special education, will argue school system’s case.

Dr. Don Bruce and Tab Burkhalter Jr. will argue HOPE Academy’s case.

After both sides have stated their case, the state board will allow 15 minutes for public comment. Each side will then have five minutes to make their closing arguments.

The meeting is expected to adjourn no later than 12:45 p.m. State officials will allow additional written comments after the hearing, and comments will be received by the state Board of Education until Dec. 6.

If the state board finds the local board’s decision was contrary to the best interests of the pupils, school district or community, the state board will remand the decision to the school board with written instructions for approval of the charter. The state board’s decision is final and not subject to appeal.

Expected arguments

HOPE Academy has already passed its first appellate hurdle. Tennessee State Treasurer David H. Lillard Jr. has ruled that establishing HOPE Academy would not have a substantial negative fiscal impact on Blount County Schools.

So, both sides are expected to focus on the charter school’s academic potential. Both sides are also expected to use state achievement and value-added data to argue their points.

Officials declined to share the details of their presentations due to the appeal’s ongoing nature.

‘Great application’

Stakeholders are extremely interested in the outcome of today’s hearing.

“HOPE (Academy) has a great application,” said Matt Throckmorton, Tennessee Charter School Association’s executive director. “However, the application process has been a little bit adversarial.”

But, it hasn’t been unusual.

Most charter schools follow a similar approval pattern, Throckmorton said. “When you have a charter school in your backyard, it’s greeted with fear and apprehension,” he said. “These feelings remain even after they’re approved. When people see that their fears never took hold and students are doing well, we start to see that school’s characteristics showing up in other schools. I’ve seen this cycle over and over. It repeats itself.”

HOPE Academy will serve as an innovation zone, he said. “It’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) focused, and Blount County will show this flow of information, back and forth, from the charter to the district like every other one. It’s why charters will never take over the world. When districts get a charter school, they tend to adopt their curriculum.”

Throckmorton also didn’t think Blount County would lay off employees to establish the charter school. “I’ve never heard of any teachers being fired because of a charter school,” he said. “Teaching positions are usually eliminated through attrition. In the end, Blount County will be like every other district in this nation. They’ll approve the charter school and make their adjustments. If an example existed where a district had to lay off teachers to fund a charter school, they’d be the poster child for the anti-charter (school) movement. The fact that there’s not one out there tells me that it doesn’t exist.”

Community members have nothing to fear, he said. “I appreciate their apprehension and concern. However, it’s nothing new. Charter schools have been in many communities like Blount County, and they’ve worked out well. HOPE (Academy) is a great applicant, and they have a great application. It’s going to be a great school.”

Big gamble

However, local educators are questioning whether HOPE Academy can be effective.

On Nov. 18, Alcoa Education, Blount County Education and Maryville Education associations took out a full-page advertisement against charter schools. The ad expressed opposition to allocating local funds for a charter school.

“The charter school concept sounds wonderful,” said BCEA President Grady Caskey. “It’s the panacea ... a real utopian reform movement that solves our problems from now to eternity. However, the reality is far from it.”

He cited “Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States,” a 2009 report issued by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University.

Tennessee wasn’t included in the study, which was the first detailed national assessment of charter schools. The longitudinal, student-level analysis covered more than 70 percent of the nation’s charter school students.

CREDO found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools; 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than public schools; and 46 percent of charter schools demonstrated no significant difference.

The report also found student success was affected by state policies.

CREDO found states that placed limits on the number of charter schools, or caps, reported significantly lower academic growth. They also found states with multiple charter school authorizers reported lower academic results than states with fewer authorizers.

Additionally, the report found states with appeals processes saw a small but significant gain in student performance.

The results are very compelling, Caskey said. “Only 17 percent perform better than public schools. When you’re talking about statistics, the facts don’t lie — but you can lie about facts. So, I don’t know why we’d want to funnel tax dollars into schools that have been proven to not achieve any better. As a taxpayer, it seems like a big gamble to put more than $1 million into something that might work.”

Throckmorton questioned the report’s merits, because it didn’t account for state expectations and captured a lot of newer schools.

“Tennessee has different expectations than many of those states,” he said. “The study also covered a lot of new charters. In Tennessee, the majority of our charter schools were established within the last five years. We’ve seen that it takes about five years to hit its academic and cultural strides.

“Plus, the CREDO study didn’t look at other things besides those two things. They’ve since looked at charter schools in New York City that have been open for more than three years, and they’re doing wonderful things. They’ve closed the achievement gap between minorities.”

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