Nikhil Lakhanpal, an inaugural student and graduate of Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology, was part of a charter school experiment that catered to his interests in those nameplate subjects, and ultimately convinced him his future wasn’t in any of them.
Lakhanpal soon will attend Georgetown University and study international politics in the Middle East. He said it likely wouldn’t have happened without attending a charter school, which for four years offered him smaller class sizes, personal attention, a laptop of his own and flexible schedules, all resources hard to find in traditional schools.
“When I was making the decision to go to GSMST, it came down to whether I wanted to go to a regular school or have an opportunity to do something new and innovative,” Lakhanpal said.
This week, Atlanta will host the national conference for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, bringing together an expected 4,000 people at the Georgia World Congress Center to promote this alternative classroom concept and further explain it.
Georgia’s charter schools only narrowly outperformed traditional public schools in 2010, with 80 percent of them meeting scholastic benchmarks compared to 77 percent of traditional campuses, according to the state’s annual report on charters.
Georgia would seem an apropos gathering place for a national charter conference, considering its involvement. It is one of the few states to enable entire school systems to go charter. It had 89,000 students — more than 5 percent of those in public schools — enrolled in charters this past academic year.
And it has charter opposition that has drawn national attention, with the Georgia Supreme Court ruling last month that the Georgia Charter Schools Commission was unconstitutional. The ruling dismantled the organization, voiding operating agreements with 16 schools in a move that affects 16,500 students. An appeal last week likewise was rejected by the court.
Georgia also has been singled out for its wide variety of charter schools, which include those with themes, cybercampuses and startups launched by community boards that go it alone or partner with national firms.
Yet there is little protection to keep charters in operation, even beyond the state Supreme Court decision. Schools that don’t live up to their contracts can be shut down or restored to a traditional school.
“One of the differences between charter schools and traditional public schools is that charter schools are far more likely to be closed if they don’t perform well,” said Lou Erste, the state’s charter school director. “I don’t think there is any parent on earth that would want to see their child’s school stay open if it is not performing.”
The end of the school year for Imagine Marietta marked the end of its operation when the charter was turned down for renewal by Marietta City Schools over concerns about its financial stability, enrollment and academic performance. School officials also said its academic progress was not as high as other district elementary schools. Imagine Marietta met adequate yearly progress goals for students in all but one of its years in operation.
According to the state’s charter report, in 2010 only about 73 percent of students met or exceeded benchmarks in math, and nearly 89 percent hit that mark in reading. At Marietta Schools’ Sawyer Road Elementary, however, about 89 percent met or exceeded math goals, and 94 percent of students met or exceeding reading goals that year.
Once the inaugural class for Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology graduated last month, 100 percent of the students received diplomas and were accepted to college, a higher ratio than other schools in Gwinnett County. GSMST students outperformed all Gwinnett high schools on last year’s state graduation test; all GSMST students met or exceeded state standards in math and English compared to the district averages of 88 percent and 94 percent in each subject.
Statewide, however, the performance of charter school high school students lagged behind state averages in those subjects in 2010 as well as in science and social studies
GSMST uses equipment found in industry workplaces and universities such as MIT. In December, the school received $21,000 in corporate foundation donations to purchase a programmable personal fabricator, a computer-controlled tool that produces three-dimensional products by adding, removing and assembling atoms. The school has won district and state titles in robotics and has advanced to national tournaments, and it has dominated math competitions and science fairs.
School valedictorian Daniel (Seong Jin) Park, who took calculus classes at Georgia Tech in his junior and senior years, found a cohesive scholastic environment.
“I am very much still a nerd,” he said. “Here I have found really close friends I can talk with about hip-hop or ask some really philosophical questions. I was motivated to work harder.”
North Springs High School, which originally opened in 1963, is one of the state’s 35 conversion charter schools. It was reinvented by parents in 2007, when the community decided it was time for a change to better serve its growing population of international and low-income students.
A conversion charter school is formed when a community decides on a “common definition of what a good school is,” said Laura Stowell, Fulton County Schools’ charter liaison. “They can waive certain state and county practices. They can do things with ease because a lot of red tape is gone.”
The school has the flexibility from the state to adapt to its changing population and test scores. The community has an integral say in the education offered. Parents and students weigh in annually on surveys that share views on staff performance and expectations; they make funding decisions, junk programs that don’t work and propose new ones.
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