Special Report
School Choice & Charters

Chicago Charter Network Specializes in Dropouts

By Lesli A. Maxwell — May 31, 2013 9 min read
Students are engaged in a science class at CCA Academy, a Chicago charter school that specializes in serving dropouts and students at risk of dropping out. Through the school's aquaponics program, in which fish and plants are raised together, students are exposed to hands-on science learning and a possible career path.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Last June, Chicago public schools officials announced that the district was on the cusp of setting a new record for graduation: Slightly more than 60 percent of students would earn a diploma in 2012.

Chicago’s record high is still roughly 20 percentage points below the national four-year graduation rate, but some of the progress the city has made in driving down the dropout rate over the past five to 10 years is because of a network of charter schools around the city that for more than 15 years has provided small, alternative programs that specialize in serving recovered dropouts or students at high risk of becoming dropouts.

The Youth Connection Charter School network—with 22 schools located in neighborhoods mostly on the city’s impoverished south and west sides—enrolls some 4,000 students and expects about 1,000 of them to graduate with a regular high school diploma this month. Of last year’s 1,366 graduates, 78 percent were accepted into a postsecondary institution, mainly community colleges, according to Youth Connection officials, whose estimates are based on graduates’ reports and verified enrollments through the National Student Clearinghouse.

The average student at a Youth Connection campus is 18. Nearly all of them are behind in credits, and many arrive with high school transcripts full of D’s and F’s. At the beginning of the 2012-13 school year, three-quarters of the network’s entering students were reading at a 6th grade level or lower, says Sheila Venson, Youth Connection’s executive director.

In addition to their twin goals of getting most students to earn a diploma and to enroll in a postsecondary institution, the schools aim to boost literacy levels for every student to at least the 10th grade, says Venson. Most of the schools are partnered with local higher education entities that provide students with opportunities to earn college credits as they finish high school.

“We are doing the heavy lift,” she says. “We are doing the job that wasn’t done in K-12 for these young people. Credit recovery cannot be the only education program we offer our students.”

‘Drop in the Bucket’

Youth Connection’s networkwide one-year graduation rate for 2011-12 was 84.4 percent, according to data from Chicago public schools officials.

In a speech last December at a public forum held to spotlight the city’s dropout problem, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the chief executive officer of the 405,000-student Chicago district, credited Youth Connection for reducing the system’s dropout rate by 7 percent over the past decade. Part of that decrease, Venson explains, is because many students who enroll at a Youth Connection campus are counted as transfers from the city high schools that they leave.

Returning Students: A Closer Look

Devonte Perry-McCullum, center, works on a photography assignment during his science class at Innovations High School, a reflection of the school’s emphasis on integrating the arts into core academic subjects. Innovations was the Chicago student's third try at high school. Now firmly back on track, Perry-McCullum was accepted to six of the seven colleges to which he applied this school year.

A sound-engineering class at Youth Connection’s Innovations High School helped hook Devonte Perry McCullum on education. Read his profile.

Kimberly Mitchell, who is set to graduate this month from CCA Academy, builds a water filter during a science class at the school. Mitchell says CCA's science program helped her discover a deep interest in environmental science.

Caring teachers, hands-on work, and a safe environment persuaded Kimberly Mitchell to take another go at high school. Read her profile.

Andrew Delgado, a student at Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School, discusses a geometry problem with one of his teachers. The graduating senior has already enrolled at Malcolm X Community College in Chicago, where he will work toward an associate degree in criminal justice.

Andrew Delgado got his second chance at a charter school for students who have already left school or are likely to. Read his profile.

Even so, the scale of the dropout problem in Chicago remains daunting. Despite the school system’s slow and steady progress in keeping more students, thousands still drop out or teeter on the edge of doing so every year.

“The seats [Youth Connection] can offer, even with serving more than 4,000 students, are a drop in the bucket for what the need is,” says Elaine Allensworth, the interim executive director of the Chicago Consortium on School Research, based at the University of Chicago.

Across the country, some 700 charter schools are identified as “alternative” and serving former dropouts, those at risk for dropping out, expelled students, and other high-risk students, according to 2012 surveys from two national charter school groups. That represents about 11.7 percent of all charter schools, says Nina Rees, the president and chief executive officer of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Despite interest among charter operators in serving a greater swath of the recovered dropout and at-risk population, Rees says growth has been slow in part because the schools would “be under the same scrutiny as regular schools for meeting state standards and graduation rates.”

“If there isn’t a different accountability system for these schools,” she says, “they aren’t going to look good.”

Deep Roots in Community

The Youth Connection programs have a long history in the city. Many of the schools have deep roots in the communities they serve and tend to draw students who dropped out of high schools nearby or in surrounding neighborhoods. The Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School, for example, opened in 1972 in Chicago’s heavily Puerto Rican neighborhood of Humboldt Park.

The CCA Academy, which serves students on the West Side of Chicago in the North Lawndale neighborhood, opened in 1978.

Before the schools were organized under a single charter in 1997, many were programs run by neighborhood-based community organizations that had individual contracts with the Chicago school system to provide an “alternative” setting for students who had already dropped out or who were not succeeding in the traditional high schools. A change in state law in the mid-1990s that would have taken millions of dollars in state aid from Chicago to pay for students enrolled in the community-based alternative programs prompted district leaders to organize them under a single, district-held charter as a way to protect the funding.

In the years since, the schools have mostly kept their distinctive instructional approaches and practices for re-engaging students, as well as the individual governing boards responsible for hiring principals. But within the charter structure, the Youth Connection schools operate under common administrative policies and procedures for enrollment, financial reporting, setting academic and other benchmarks, providing special education services, and setting minimum graduation requirements.

Downtown Setting

Innovations High School, which had been a fixture in the Bronzeville community on the city’s South Side for years, moved to a downtown high-rise on State Street three years ago.

“We’d been in a gang neighborhood with high unemployment, and we felt strongly that children in an alternative environment need to feel safe coming to school, and they needed to see lots of different kinds of working professional adults,” says LaShaun Jackson, a co-founder and the executive director of Innovations High. The move to downtown also put Innovations’ students closer to Harold Washington College, a community college where they take courses for college credit.

Its graduation requirements are rigorous: Students must complete a “senior portfolio” that includes applying to four- or two-year colleges and snagging an acceptance to at least one.

None of the schools enrolls more than 200 students. All offer online courses for credit recovery and use the same hybrid program that puts a teacher in the classroom with students as they complete their content online. But each school has its own engagement strategies, academic focus areas, and array of support services designed to meet the needs of students in their communities.

At CCA Academy, Principal Myra Sampson and her faculty have adopted urban agriculture and ecology, as well as aquaponics, as a key piece of their strategy to get students engaged not only in science learning but also in mathematics and other subjects. Aquaponics—which combines the raising of fish with the growing of food in a symbiotic relationship—has captivated numerous CCA students, Sampson says. A few years ago, with the help of a local foundation, students began raising perch and tilapia in large tanks, along with a variety of vegetable plants and herbs that are nourished by the nutrients from the water in the fish tanks.

“We’re trying to give them a chance for a different school experience than they’ve ever had,” says Sampson, who founded the school.

CCA Academy student John Crooks, left, works with Jason Axt, a design engineer, to create his own aquaponics system using a bathtub salvaged from the recycling center, a soda crate, and soda bottles. Aquaponics, which combines raising fish with growing food, has captivated numerous students at the school and engaged them in science.

It is now home to 600-800 fish and hundreds of tomato, basil, spinach, and mint plants that students harvest and either sell at markets or extract their essential oils. Some students have used their plants to decorate paper and letter stationery to sell.

Imari Bearden, a 19-year-old senior at CCA Academy, dropped out of North Lawndale High School at 17. She struggled to read and fell so far behind in credits that she “didn’t see the point of going back.” Two months later, Bearden regretted her decision, but knew she couldn’t return to North Lawndale. She’d heard about CCA Academy, enrolled, and was quickly drafted by teachers to join the school’s fledgling aquaponics program.

“For the first time in my life, I got to know my teachers,” she says. “And I got help with my reading.”

Bearden says the small school—located in an old bottle-cap factory in the heart of a neighborhood hit hard by drugs and gang violence—is “nothing like it is out on the streets.” She graduates this month and is considering enrolling in Chicago State University’s aquaponics program. (Chicago State is a CCA Academy partner.)

At the end of last year, CCA Academy was one of the network’s top-performing schools on a number of accountability measures monitored by the public school system. The school posted strong growth in reading and math skills and had a one-year graduation rate of 91.2 percent among seniors who had been enrolled in the school for at least 125 days. On measures of student engagement, the academy didn’t rank quite as highly. But by the midpoint of this school year, the school had already shown growth on two measures related to engagement—its attendance rate and its “stabilization” rate, the latter of which is the percentage of students who have remained enrolled for 125 days or more or who have graduated within a year of enrolling.

Gauging Track Record

As of January, two network schools with ratings that put them in the category of “needs improvement” at the end of last school year had moved up one level to “performing.” Thirteen were rated as either “advanced” or “distinguished,” the top two rankings in the accountability system.

And though Chicago school officials last year expressed some concerns that the network had slipped in some performance ratings and decided to renew Youth Connection’s charter for three years—rather than five—the two sides are currently negotiating to extend the accord to five years, Venson says.

Students at the academy maintain an aquaponics program in which plants and fish are raised together in a symbiotic system. The program has become the school's most important tool for re-engaging students.

Deciding what it means to be a good “alternative school” is a tricky, still-evolving process, says the Chicago Consortium’s Allensworth. “One hundred percent of these students in alternative settings have failed at other schools,” she says.

At the same time, Allensworth says more research is necessary to understand the conditions and factors that lead to success in alternative settings.

Sampson, the CCA’s principal, says there is no magic formula, but every setting needs a few essentials, such as staff members willing to keep their commitments to students who’ve had few positive experiences with schooling.

“All of us who work with this population need to remember that none of this is about their inability to learn,” she says.

Editor’s Note: Because of the differences in calculation methods and time periods, the reported graduation rate for Chicago in this story differs dramatically from the rate reported by the EPE Research Center.
A version of this article appeared in the June 06, 2013 edition of Education Week as A Chicago Charter Network Stanches the Flow of Dropouts

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School Choice & Charters Tracker Which States Have Private School Choice?
Education savings accounts, voucher, and tax-credit scholarships are growing. This tracker keeps tabs on them so you don't have to.
School Choice & Charters Opinion What's the State of Charter Schools Today?
Even though there's momentum behind the charter school movement, charters face many of the same challenges as traditional public schools.
10 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
School Choice & Charters As Private School Choice Grows, Critics Push for More Guardrails
Calls are growing for more scrutiny over where state funds for private school choice go and how students are faring in the classroom.
7 min read
Illustration of completed tasks, accomplishment, finished checklist, achievement or project progression concept. Person holding pencil tick all completed task checkbox.
Nuthawut Somsuk/iStock/Getty
School Choice & Charters How a District Hopes to Save an ESSER-Funded Program
As a one-time infusion of federal funding expires, districts are searching for creative ways to keep programs they funded with it running.
6 min read
Chicago charter school teacher Angela McByrd works on her laptop to teach remotely from her home in Chicago, Sept. 24, 2020.
Chicago charter school teacher Angela McByrd works on her laptop to teach remotely from her home in Chicago, Sept. 24, 2020. In Montana, a district hopes to save a virtual instruction program by converting it into a charter school.
Nam Y. Huh/AP