The Dallas Morning News writes about charter schools in SE Dallas.

The news is not good. The charter is wasting a bunch of money on non-essential administration. The superintendent hires relatives and cronies. And test scores, frankly, are awful. See article.

But the worst thing is that the mis-managed charter, the A+ Academy, a K-12 school posted generally better TAKS scores than did the Lancaster K-12 school district.

According to the AEIS website, for A+ Charter
TAKS Met 2006 Standard (Sum of All Grades Tested, EXCLUDING grade 8 Science)
(Standard Accountability Indicator)

                                           A+      LISD  
                        State   District  Campus  District



  Reading/ELA   2006     87%      75%      75%     73%
                2005     83%      64%      64%     67% 

  Mathematics   2006     75%      50%      50%     50%
                2005     71%      35%      35%     42% 

  Writing       2006     91%      74%      74%     81%
                2005     90%      65%      65%     79%

  Science       2006     70%      49%      49%     37%
                2005     63%      32%      32%     31%

  Soc Studies   2006     87%      84%      84%     67%
                2005     87%      79%      79%     71%

  All Tests     2006     67%      43%      43%     37%
                2005     62%      30%      30%     31% 

I suppose the charter school that botches its financial reporting could be helping TAKS takers cheat on the tests. And that every score, however low, in the Lancaster district is at least honestly earned.

I hope that's the reason.