Last year 62 of North Carolina’s 211 charter schools were rated as low performing or continuously low performing, and state officials want to bring that number down.
The Charter School Review Board started this month bringing officials from low-performing charter schools to Raleigh to outline their plans for improvement.
The first to present was Charlotte’s American Leadership Academy, which used to be Aristotle Prep. Director Carmi Green told the board her school moved into a new building in east Charlotte, and it’s more or less making a fresh start.
"We brought about a transition to a new school building. We brought about, starting over with about 72% population of teachers and staff, new leadership team, as well as a 70% student population," Green told the board.
The state’s goal is to reduce the number of low-performing charter schools by 10% a year. Many of them are clustered in the Charlotte region.
One of those, Ridgeview Charter School in Gastonia, was originally up for a vote this week on cutting off its public funding because of low test scores. But the board delayed that vote until March.