A PROPOSAL to nearly double the enrollment at a Lynn charter school has set off an acrimonious debate in the North Shore city of 100,000 residents, and it’s landed the state’s acting education commissioner in the no-win position of having to render an interpretation of state regulations that will please one side but leave the other deeply disappointed.
At issue is the wording of a regulation adopted following passage of 2010 law that allowed for an expansion of charter schools in Massachusetts.
Charter schools, which are publicly funded but operate independently of district school systems, have often faced opposition from local officials because public dollars follow the student under the state’s school finance system. Despite that built-in strain over school funding, KIPP Academy Lynn, which opened in 2004 and enrolls 1,600 students kindergarten through 12th grade, and the Lynn Public Schools have managed to forge a largely positive relationship over the years. Most recently, they partnered on a program involving high school students from KIPP and the Lynn district in which the two systems shared best practices and jointly counseled students on college and career readiness goals.
But that era of good feeling is giving way to a tension-filled dispute over KIPP’s proposal to add 1,300 new seats. The immediate question fueling the controversy is whether KIPP meets the standard set out in state regulations to be considered a “proven provider” of quality education.
In 2010, when the Legislature approved a bill allowing an expansion of charter schools, it attached several conditions to any would-be expansions. Until that time, charter school spending was limited to no more than 9 percent of net school spending by the local district system where charters were located. The new statute doubled that limit to 18 percent of school spending, but only in those districts that fell in the lowest-performing 10 percent of all districts based on student MCAS scores. In addition, applicants for new charter seats under the expanded cap had to meet the “proven provider” standard set by the state.
To be considered a proven provider under the regulations, a charter school applicant must, among other requirements, have a record of operating a charter school in which students had MCAS proficiency and growth scores in English language arts and math that were similar to averages “for all students in Massachusetts in comparable grades, over no less than a three-year period for cohorts of students.”
In a November 1 letter to acting education commissioner Russell Johnston, Lynn officials argued that KIPP clearly does not meet the proven provider benchmark based on grade 3-8 MCAS scores. Its math proficiency rates over the last three years for those combined grades have ranged from 2 to 8 percentage points below the state average. Its English language arts proficiency rates have been anywhere from 9 to 15 points below the statewide average.
“It strains credulity to suggest that the KIPP ELA proficiency rates are similar to state averages, as the regulations stipulate,” said the letter, co-signed by Superintendent Evonne Alvarez, Mayor Jared Nicholson, the president of the Lynn teachers union, and four members of the city’s state legislative delegation.
KIPP leaders, meanwhile, have zeroed in on scores among its 10th grade students. There, KIPP students have had higher English and math proficiency rates than the state average in each of the last three years, except for in math in 2023, when 41 percent of KIPP’s 10th grade students scored proficient compared with the statewide average of 50 percent.
Nikki Barnes, executive director of KIPP Massachusetts, said the school should be judged on its strong results in 10th grade – as students near graduation – especially because of KIPP’s focus on college readiness. “Given the K-12 trajectory of a student at KIPP Lynn, we are certainly a proven provider by the time that student is in 10th grade,” she said.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said Johnston, the acting education commissioner, has not yet evaluated the evidence on whether KIPP meets the standard to be considered a proven provider.
Whether an applicant needs to show MCAS scores similar to state averages for all grades that are tested or can show that for some grades or even a single grade, as KIPP is arguing in touting its 10th-grade results, isn’t spelled out exactly in the regulations. A spokesperson for the state education department said the commissioner can consider all available evidence and that there are unique aspects to every application.
Johnston is expected to make a decision by the January monthly meeting of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The proven provider designation has become the flashpoint of the debate over KIPP expansion because the school must first meet that standard to have the overall merits of its expansion proposal considered. But the heated rhetoric driving the arguments on both sides is rooted in the broader claims about funding and the school demographics that have long animated the charter school debate in the state.
Lynn officials say the district funding concerns that are always at play in charter school proposals are magnified in current debate. Lynn Public Schools students have struggled to regain the learning lost during the pandemic disruption, a challenge school leaders say has been made even harder by a surge in the district’s enrollment of English learners.
The decline in the district’s MCAS scores since COVID caused Lynn to fall into the bottom 10 percent of all districts statewide – the trigger that increased the charter school cap there and allowed KIPP to submit its expansion proposal.
Testifying last week before the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Mayor Nicholson said approval of the expansion proposal would deliver a major blow to the district’s efforts to help students recover from the impact of the pandemic.
“Adding those seats would absolutely devastate the turnaround efforts that are already underway and starting to have success,” Nicholson said, claiming the district budget would be cut by $24 million once all the new KIPP seats are filled. “Slashing the budget in a district that was hit hard by the pandemic is no one’s idea of a good policy,” he said.
Nicholson and Lynn school officials have also taken exception to KIPP claims that its students represent the full range of diversity in the city. While 88 percent of KIPP students are Hispanic or Black, the Lynn Public Schools enroll nearly three times the share of English learners as KIPP. Of the district’s 17,000 students, 43 percent are English learners compared with 15 percent of KIPP’s student population. District leaders often complain that charter schools enroll fewer higher-need students.
Barnes, the KIPP leader, said the school has increased its outreach efforts to immigrant organizations in the city to recruit more English learners. She said there are constraints in the state’s charter school regulations that end up limiting enrollment of immigrant newcomers to the city. Unlike the district system, she said KIPP cannot enroll new students throughout the year. The school accepts applications between October and February, after which a lottery is held to award seats for the fall, as prescribed by the state.
As for the longstanding claim that charter schools divert money away from district schools, she says the district has no special claim over charters on the public dollars that fund education. “The money is for the people of Lynn, it’s for the families and students,” she said. “We are a public school authorized by the state and held accountable by the state.”
For his part, Nicholson said battles over charter schools and school funding, which almost always play out in lower-income communities, are a regrettable, if inevitable, conflict.
“Honestly, I think it’s a shame that the way the system works is that it forces the community to be pitted against itself,” he said. “The KIPP students and families are Lynners and are my constituents. At the same time, we have a responsibility to look at what the impact is on the community as a whole and act in the best interest of all our students, and this expansion really runs counters to that.”
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