Orange County charter school to tackle gaps

CHAPEL HILL -- A proposed charter school named for Chapel Hill's first black mayor is spotlighting the local school district's achievement gap.

Angela Lee, daughter of Howard Lee, the first black mayor of a predominantly white Southern town, has applied to open a charter school in Chapel Hill.

The Howard and Lillian Lee Scholars Charter School would "provide high-quality K-8 education that places each student on the path to college readiness and closes achievement gaps."

It would open in August 2012, serving 480 students as an elementary school and expand each year to eventually serve 700 students through eighth grade.

Howard Lee said the school would give students and their parents more options to help them succeed. The application is not meant to place blame or criticize the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

"It's not my goal to get in a debate with the local system and (I) certainly don't question the progress they're making with some students, but some students regardless of what progress is being made can benefit from a different environment," Lee said.

"Public school can never, in my opinion, rise to the point of having all students rise to the highest level because of the size and the diversity," he continued. "But a charter school, if it's run correctly, can take students and give them the more intensified attention that they can't get in the public schools."

Lee, a former state legislator and former director of the governor's Education Cabinet, left the cabinet in September to expand his Howard Lee Institute, which plans to build coalitions across the state between local groups and school districts to improve student performance.

Lee would not have a direct role in the new school, he said. His daughter is the lead applicant on a six-person team that would make up the board of directors for the school. In their application, they say a new elementary school is needed because the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district is overcrowded and because an achievement gap persists.

The application cites comments from school board Chairwoman Jamezetta Bedford, who says elementary schools are reaching their capacities and a district report that says at least two schools are already overcrowded. A new elementary school is scheduled to open in August 2013 in the Northside community.

Lee also cites the district's 2009-10 report card, which shows 95 percent of white students passed both the reading and math tests while 54 percent of black students did.

To narrow the gap, the Lee school would partner with National Heritage Academies, a charter school management company based in Michigan. Sixty-four percent of the 45,000 students the National Heritage Academies serve are black, and the group has raised black students' test scores, according to the application.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Superintendent Thomas Forcella responded to the application in a letter Friday disputing Lee's claims that the district hasn't made progress on closing the achievement gap. Black students' test scores have improved over a three-year period, he wrote.

"The proposal depicts only one year of data regarding the percentage of students proficient on End-of-Grade assessments," Forcella wrote. "In reality, the improvement rate over the last three years has been positive. The African American and Hispanic subgroups have progressed at twice the rate of improvement for the state as a whole. These two groups have narrowed the gap by over 10 percent."

The district reports that the percentage of black students proficient on the tests has risen from 47.7 percent in 2008-2009 to 58.8 percent in 2010-2011, an 11 percentage point improvement over three years. Hispanic students who have reached proficiency rose by 10 percentage points during that same period.

"I believe the technique we have in place and (are) putting in place over the next couple of years really will help us keep improving our minority students test scores by significantly close the achievement gap in the Chapel Hill Carrboro schools," Forcella said in an interview.

The percentage of white students proficient from 2008 to 2011 rose 0.2 percent, hovering at 95 percent.

Forcella has also said that if the charter school's aim is to attract minorities, it would siphon diversity from the district.

"We do not have high numbers of African-American students, and if many of those would leave to go to another school, I think that would have a detrimental impact on our school district," he said.

Efforts to reach representatives from the Lee Charter school for comment this week were unsuccessful.

The Lee Charter school is one of 27 applications submitted to the State Board of Education, said Joel Medley, director of the office of charter schools. They will be reviewed Tuesday and narrowed down the next day for final decisions in March, he said.