On Tuesday, the fate of a groundbreaking school reform effort will go before the Los Angeles County Board of Education and the decision of whether to shut down the Locke High charter school in Watts will hinge on two different interpretations of academic progress.
In one version, Alain LeRoy Locke College Preparatory Academy is “chronically underperforming” so poorly that its 1,000 students would be better off if Locke High was returned to the control of the L.A. Unified School District.
In the other version, Locke High is helping students catch up academically and make significant gains — more than meeting the mark to remain in operation as a privately governed charter school.
The issue came to the county after the Los Angeles city school board in March voted 4 to 3 to remove the current operators of the school.
Seventeen years ago, Locke marked the first time in L.A. that an outside group took over a low-performing high school — continuing to take in all neighborhood students. Its fate now hinges on a last-ditch appeal to Los Angeles County education officials.
The county education staff also is recommending closure. But the charter school, operated by Green Dot Public Schools, has many community supporters. They say the data justify renewing the charter for a five-year term — if they can only get those in authority to look at it.
Do test scores show low academic performance?
Yes.
Last year, 28.1% of 11th graders tested as proficient in English language arts and 9.5% tested as proficient in math.
The performance was significantly worse the last time L.A. Unified was in control. In the 2007-08 school year, and on an easier state test, about 12% of Locke students tested as proficient in English language arts, and about 3% in math.
But even though scores are better, after 17 years, that’s not enough improvement, school district officials said, especially given that Locke’s test scores are lower than the state average, lower than at most other charter schools and lower than at nearby district-operated “comparison” schools.
Over that same period, Locke’s graduation rate improved from 43% to 72%, but that’s also lower than at surrounding district-run comparison schools.
What is the Locke evaluation based on?
Most of the evaluation is based on the annual state test in math and English language arts that students take in the 11th grade and a state science test that students take once during high school. Locke students did reasonably well on the science test, based on comparison schools, so the issue is math and English scores.
What data are highlighted by Green Dot and Locke supporters?
Locke educators say evaluators have bypassed a crucial element: academic growth.
That is, how much students have improved academically from when they started at the school.
A fundamental issue is that the state does not provide a growth metric that can be applied directly to Locke — or to any other charter high school evaluation. The 11th grade math and English tests and the high school science test stand alone, without a multiyear perspective, because the state doesn’t collect data from the prior year.
L.A. Unified and the county were not required to find other ways to assess how much the same group of students improved over time. And they did not. When Locke presented such data, the evaluators either declined to examine it or dismissed it as potentially flawed or not officially sanctioned by the state.
Locke’s data are based in part on widely used assessment tools that are available in the marketplace and that Green Dot relies on internally. But Green Dot also is using official state testing data in a more expansive way than the state does.
Essentially, Green Dot looks at the results of state tests for 8th graders; these tests indicate the academic level of students just before they enter Locke. And then Green Dot compares the 11th grade tests for these same students to assess their progress three years later.
Although the evaluators cited reasons to sidestep the Locke data, they never said it was wrong.
How relevant is the comparison of Locke with other schools?
The L.A. Unified and L.A. County school evaluators looked at three test score comparisons: the statewide average, other charter schools and nearby “similar” traditionally operated public schools. Again, the review looked at the 11th grade scores in isolation, without considering academic growth.
A direct statewide comparison may be unfair, in the view of some experts.
At Locke, 25% of students are learning English, compared with 12.6% of high school students statewide. At Locke, more than 8% of students are classified as homeless, compared with 4.8% statewide. At Locke, more than 20% have disabilities, compared with 14.3% statewide. And more than 90% live in low-income households, compared with 65.2% statewide.
In addition, nearly a third of Locke students are transitory or “non-stable,” completing less than the full year at the school, but still take the state tests if they are in school at testing time. Statewide, 11.6% of high school students are transitory.
The comparison with other charters is imperfect as well because other charters have an opt-in admissions process and tend to attract motivated families that research their options and seek out particular schools. Locke takes in every student who walks in.
Green Dot ended the current school year with 18 campuses, all in the L.A. area.
The nearby traditional public high schools have similarities to Locke. But collectively they have more stable families, fewer students learning English and fewer with disabilities.
But like Locke, their students are almost exclusively from low-income families and their scores have improved more than Locke’s in the last three years.
The nearby schools include those both in L.A. Unified and Compton Unified — two school systems singled out by experts for their rapid, recent rise in test scores.
Locke improved its scores, too, over that span on the 11th grade test, even if it wasn’t by as much.
How much did Locke students improve?
Green Dot looked at how its students scored on state tests when they were in 8th grade (in 2022) and then compared their 11th grade scores (in 2025).
Not all Locke students took an 8th grade test — some are recent arrivals to California. But among those who had 8th grade scores, 19.6% of that group scored as proficient in English. This same group of students improved to a proficiency rate of 37.8% on the 11th grade test.
Thus, the percentage of these Locke students who scored as proficient in English improved by 18.2 percentage points.
Over that same period, L.A. Unified 8th graders improved by 11.8 percentage points by the 11th grade. The state improvement over that period for that same group of students was 10.3 percentage points.
In math, the entering Locke students with 8th grade scores had a group proficiency rate of 6.8%, which improved to 13% by 11th grade.
Once again, L.A. Unified 8th graders and 8th graders statewide started off with higher scores, and improved at a slower rate: a rise of 6.2 percentage points for Locke; 2.9% for L.A. Unified; 1.3% for the state.
In math, there’s plenty of room for improvement for all. L.A. Unified’s math proficiency rate for 11th grade was 26.4%; for the state, 30.5%.
How reliable a measure is graduation rate in the evaluation of Locke, and what does it show?
Both Locke and nearby traditional schools have seen graduation rates soar over the last two decades. The district schools have significantly higher rates than Locke.
But evidence is scant that the higher graduation rates equate to more learning.
One factor that may boost the scores and graduation rates of district-operated comprehensive high schools is that they can transfer struggling students to nearby continuation schools. This smaller setting can be good for students, but it means that the test scores and graduation data of some struggling students may be removed from the original high school’s tallies.
Locke does not have an affiliated continuation school; administrators say their goal is to keep all their students.
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