Chalkbeat Indiana reports on the innovative way that a failing charter school fixed its problems: It changed its name! Ignite Achievement Academy is now the Genius School! There!
Single-digit proficiency rates. Plummeting attendance. A work environment described in a former employee’s lawsuit as “one big mess.”
Ignite Achievement Academy came to and left Indianapolis Public Schools within just four years under challenging circumstances. Some low test scores from Elder Diggs School 42 — the traditional school Ignite took over — dropped even lower on Ignite’s watch, while attendance fell below the district average and staff retention rates became the worst in the district.
These falling scores and other poor metrics led Ignite to become just the second charter school to not have its partnership renewed with the district’s innovation network.
Yet despite the school’s challenges, the mayor’s Office of Education and Innovation (or OEI) – the school’s authorizer – has allowed the school to continue operating as an independent charter school under a new name.
Ignite has transitioned from an IPS-affiliated restart charter school to the Genius School, an independent K-6 charter school in a new location near the city’s Fairgrounds neighborhood. It is on probationary status due to poor performance.
Brilliant! The failing Ignite Achievement Academy School is now the Genius School!
You can’t make this stuff up.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Genius.
But is it Stable Genius, like that possessed by the Rightful President in Exile?
“You can’t make this stuff up.”
It’s said that truth is stranger than fiction.
This is bad, but it’s not much different than what happens to failing traditional public schools which continue on forever no matter how awful they are.
What you call “failing public schoools” are schools with high proportions of the neediest kids. They need help, not closing. More teachers, smaller classes. Closing schools doesn’t help kids. Charter schools close due to incompetent management, high teacher attrition, or greed.
This school charter school also serves the neediest kid in the city (96.2% of the student are identified as economically disadvantaged) but with less funding, which research confirms leads to high teacher attrition.
The games continue. As public schools we must always remember that the failed system is used to blame our teachers. Until we change that , nothing will change as evidenced by the last 15 years. IT’S THE SYSTEM STUPID. LETTER GRADES ARE LIES, GRADE LEVELS ARE MOOT, THE FAILURE SYTEM PUSHES KIDS INTO THE STREETS AND WE CONTINUE TO PUSH KIDS INTO THAT SMALL BOX OF WORD GAMES AND MATH RIDDLES
Is it no wonder people believe things the village idiot wouldn’t? We must make the leap away from the test so they can think again. Put Our debate coaches in charge of the schools. And if charter fools say we are changing away from the test to avoid accountability, tell them to do what’s physically impossible to themselves.
I agree, in particular, with your conclusion!
Sounds like a “shell game”. That’s what happens when an entire private sector education industry getting its money form the public is allowed to operate in the dark in secret outside the legislation that guides public schools that get their funding from the same public source.
The public schools are held accountable.
The charters are not held accountable.
Ignite “Achievement” should have gone down in flames.
As a former employee of this school, I believe they deserve a chance as long as the leadership has learned some valuable lessons. Yes this is a name change but the change in name has been a part of the plan for expansion for many years. Yes there were many, many things that the school’s leadership got wrong. I know that there were many things they got right as well. Children do not gain anything from a school “going down in flames” or failing. If you care about children enough to talk about it on the internet, support the children by offering support to those in leadership. I wish them all the best because the children deserve it.