District/School Administration Administration
The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

Uphams Corner Charter School - Recommendation for Vote on Revocation of Charter

In December 2008, the Board discussed my recommendation for revocation of the charter of Uphams Corner Charter School (UCCS) based on the school's failure to meet the conditions imposed in 2007 when the Board renewed its charter, and a lack of sufficient progress to warrant additional conditions or probation. This month, the Board is scheduled to vote on my recommendation. Representatives of the charter school have been invited to address the Board at the January 27th meeting before the vote.

The motion before the Board is framed as a statement of intent to revoke the charter effective June 30, 2009. The school's board of trustees may, if it chooses, request an administrative hearing on the revocation. If we do not receive a request for a hearing within 15 days after the school receives notice of the Board's vote, the Board's revocation action becomes final.

The following information provides an overview of my reasons for making this difficult recommendation. The attached Site Visit Report provides additional information and context.

Uphams Corner Charter School

UCCS, a Commonwealth charter school, is located in and chartered to serve Boston. The school opened in 2002 and the charter was renewed with conditions in 2007. UCCS is chartered to serve grades 5 through 8 with a maximum enrollment of 200. In 2008-2009, UCCS is serving approximately 174 students in grades 5 through 8 and reports a wait list of four. The school draws virtually all of its students from Boston.

The school's mission statement reads: "Uphams Corner Charter School offers an academically rigorous, rhetoric centered education in the liberal arts and sciences, leading to sound understanding, earnest reflection, self-discipline, integrity, and action. Our community is devoted to outstanding student performance and whole character formation. We will graduate all our students as powerful, articulate, moral citizens, working for the benefit of all."

On October 7, 2008, the Charter School Office conducted a site visit to UCCS. Before the visit, the site visit team reviewed the school's Year Six Site Visit Report, the school's 2007-08 annual report, a Progress Report on Renewal Conditions provided to the Board in December of 2007, the school's Accountability Plan, board materials, and recent internal and external assessment data. On site, the team reviewed curricular documents and other information provided by the school. Team members conducted group and individual interviews with trustees, administrators, teachers, students, and parents, and conducted classroom observations.

The site visit had four purposes:

• to review the progress that the school has made in meeting the conditions imposed by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education,
• to corroborate and augment the information contained in the school's annual report,
• to investigate the school's progress relative to its Accountability Plan goals, and
• to provide evidence that will support decisions regarding the school's charter.

Report on Conditions

The following conditions were imposed at the time of the school's charter renewal in 2007.

Condition 1: By June 30, 2007, Uphams Corner Charter School shall have submitted to and received approval from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for the following items:

• A school improvement plan, consistent with the Department's standards for a District Plan for School Intervention.
• A charter school Accountability Plan, including goals and annual benchmarks regarding academic success, organizational viability, and faithfulness to charter. The Accountability Plan must be aligned to the school's plan for improvement as referenced above, and must include the school's plan for achieving Adequate Yearly Progress in the aggregate and for all statistically significant subgroups in English language arts and mathematics.
• All relevant amendments to its charter, in accordance with 603 CMR 1.11.

Status: Not fully met. The school improvement plan was received and approved in a timely manner. A draft Accountability Plan was received by the Charter School Office on June 28, 2007, but was not finalized until March 2008. An amendment request was received and was approved by the Board of Education on October 30, 2007.

Condition 2: By June 30, 2007, the school shall engage a consultant, who shall be approved by the Commissioner, to review the school's leadership structure and provide training and assistance to strengthen the school's management.

Status: Not fully met. UCCS received approval from the Commissioner to engage the proposed consultant in June 2007. The consultant issued a report about school leadership but was not contracted to provide training or assistance to strengthen school management, as required by the condition. In September 2008, the school hired a leadership coach to work with the interim executive director, interim principal, and vice principal.

Condition 3: By December 2007, Uphams Corner Charter School shall have met or shall be making substantial progress toward the benchmarks set forth in its approved Accountability Plan.

Status: Not met. UCCS did not meet this condition because the school did not have an approved Accountability Plan in place by December 2007. The school's current Accountability Plan was approved by the Charter School Office in March 2008.

Condition 4: By December 2008, Uphams Corner Charter School shall demonstrate that it is an academic success by providing evidence that the school has met or is making substantial progress toward meeting all benchmarks in its 2007-2012 Accountability Plan and has made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in the aggregate and for all statistically significant subgroups in English language arts and mathematics for 2008.

Condition 5: By December 2008, Uphams Corner Charter School shall have completed the necessary property acquisition and fundraising to permit a relocation of the school to the Uphams Corner area no later than September 2009.

Status: Minimal progress. At the time of the site visit, the board had not done any in-depth planning for the financial requirements involved with obtaining a new facility, either to lease or purchase. Subsequent to the site visit, the Charter School Office has learned that the site considered to be most probable by the school is most likely to be acquired by another charter school. In the site visit focus group, the board reported that, at this time, they do not know where they will be located in September 2009 and they plan to make a decision by the December 2008 deadline.

Additional Information

The attached site visit report provides additional information in the three areas of charter school accountability, including the following:

1. Faithfulness to Charter
   • The school is not consistently implementing the education formats stated in the original charter. Site visitors did not see evidence of Socratic inquiry techniques, use of rhetorical skills, or community orientation during classroom instruction or in curricular documents.
   
   
2. Academic Success
   • In year seven, the site visit team found that the school has not yet created a comprehensive curriculum. The curriculum is lacking a complete set of scopes and sequences, unit plans, and internal assessment documents.
   • Curricular unit plans are identical in ELA, science, and mathematics for fifth and sixth grade, requiring students to repeat the same studies for two years.
   • Student behavior has impacted the quality and quantity of learning:
     • During the year seven site visit, a majority of students were not engaged in class activities and did not answer teacher questions.
     • In over half of the classrooms, site visitors observed that students ignored posted rules or did not receive consequences for their misbehavior. In approximately 20 percent of classrooms, teachers did not have control over the class.
   • In the three years that eighth grade students have taken the MCAS science exam, no eighth grade student at UCCS has reached proficiency.
   • In 41 out of 45 comparisons conducted, the performance of UCCS students on MCAS mathematics exams was lower than students in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) at a statistically significant level. In 29 of 31 comparisons conducted, the performance of UCCS students on the MCAS ELA exams was statistically equivalent to that of BPS students.
   
   
3. Organizational Viability
   • In the past seven years, UCCS has occupied three different facilities, none of which were located in the Uphams Corner neighborhood.
   • UCCS has struggled with student enrollment, both in attracting students and in maintaining enrollment.
   • Since the 2005-06 school year, UCCS has been able to attract only enough students to fill one of two intended sections in fifth grade. In the past three years targeted fifth grade enrollment was 40 students and actual enrollment ranged from 15-18 students.
   • For the last several years, the school has lost large numbers of students from one year to the next. For the 2006-07 school year, of the 135 fifth through seventh grade students enrolled on Oct. 1, 2006, 42 (or 31 percent) either withdrew during the school year or did not re-enroll for the 2007-08 school year. The school reports a similar pattern for the 2007-08 school year.
   • As a result of student attrition and in order to maintain fiscal solvency, the school has accepted large numbers of students into all grades at the beginning of and throughout each school year for the last several years. This has substantively affected the school's culture and academic program.
   • UCCS has struggled to retain teachers. Teacher attrition rates have been persistently high, ranging from a low of 31 percent in the 2005-06 school year, to a high of 61 percent in the 2006-07 school year.
   • The year seven site visit team found that the board of trustees is not effectively addressing critical school problems, such as the required acquisition of a permanent facility or the selection of a new executive director.
   
   

If you have any questions or require additional information, please contact Mary Street, Director of Charter Schools, at 781-338-3200; Jeff Wulfson, Associate Commissioner, at 781-338-6500; or me.

Uphams Corner Charter School Year 7 Site Visit Report