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Kim Gittleson's report on charter schools' performance on the city's progress reports lets users sift through every school.

We already know that charter schools’ scores progress report scores fell even more than the district schools, just as happened with the test scores. Now, in the Community section, Kim Gittleson breaks the scores down and finds diversity.

The good:

5.  The best performing charter school was Democracy Prep Charter School, which received a score of 88.9 (compared to 99.8 last year) and was ranked in the top 1% of all schools citywide. Other charter schools that were in the top 5% of schools citywide were: Williamsburg Collegiate Charter school, KIPP Infinity Charter School, and Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School.

The bad:

3.  Merrick Academy and Girls Prep — two schools that were plagued with problems with staff and space, respectively — experienced large drops in their overall Progress Report Scores and percentile rankings. Merrick Academy’s overall score dropped by over 80 points and its percentile ranking fell from 76% of all schools to the bottom 3%. Girls Prep Charter School’s score dropped by 70 points and its rank dropped from the 82nd percentile to the 13th.

Girls Prep’s plummet is especially noteworthy, since the Department of Education has attempted to support the school’s search for space, with Chancellor Joel Klein at one point offering to use emergency powers to find space. The school’s prominent board of directors includes Boykin Curry and Eric Grannis, charter school leader and politico Eva Moskowitz’s husband.

Among those who have commented on Elizabeth’s post about journalist Jay Mathews’ seven KIPP myths are one of the charter school chain’s most vocal critics; a graduate of a KIPP school in Philadelphia; and Mathews himself. It’s a vibrant discussion and one you should check out.

One topic of debate is whether KIPP schools “cream” students — that is, whether the students who enter their lotteries are better prepared academically or socially, thus priming the schools to outperform their local competitors. In the comments section of Elizabeth’s post, Seth Andrew, the head of Harlem’s Democracy Prep Charter School, argues that other public schools are far more guilty than charters of creaming. He writes:

Traditional Public Schools “cream” far more than charter schools throughout New York. I attended NYC Public schools from grade k-12, and I always took a test before being enrolled. The NYC middle school process evaluates students by their test scores, grades, attendance, and even has parent interviews for a number of traditional public schools. Whether it’s great traditional public schools like FDA, Bronx Science, or Anderson, that require specific entry requirements or G&T tests, or traditional schools that select based on other factors, traditional public schools are far more guilty of “creaming” (both in terms of agressiveness and quantity of students effected) than charters could ever be. We have a legal mandate to enroll by a random lottery.

Democracy Prep Charter School students have been studying electoral politics all year. This is how it felt to be among them, and thousands of their peers, at the Harlem Armory today just after CNN announced that Barack Obama had officially became the country’s 44th president.

I reported in our feature today that the Harlem Armory inauguration party included a pre-written postcard to Obama, on which students were supposed to give their advice about how to improve America’s schools. Above Ayanna Mason, a 13-year-old eighth grader at Democracy Prep Charter School, gives me her advice. The video cuts off at the end but what she said is that good schools should get more funding, while bad schools should be shut down.

I also spoke to students at CIS 313, pictured in a video below, who said they hope Obama brings home the troops and ends slavery. (more…)

Students from 34 city public schools and and an influx of tearful well-wishers — including some members of the New York Guard, a family that traveled to Harlem from New Jersey, and city charter school lobbyists — filled the enormous Harlem Armory this morning to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration on three giant television screens.

Just before noon, some children squirmed while students and teachers spoke at a dais. Others sank into their seats and nodded quietly to the iPod music plugged into their ears. But when the CNN announcer declared that, although he had not yet been sworn in, Obama was now officially president, even the too-cool-for-school students stood up to scream. When he took the oath of office, children jumped up and down, grinning, and waved American flags. Adults sitting on the sidelines wiped tears from their eyes.

Douglas Noble, an eighth-grader at KAPPA II, said Obama caused him to reevaluate his dreams.

One former sloucher, Douglas Noble, a 14-year-old eighth-grader at KAPPA II, a middle school in East Harlem, had drawn a picture of Obama on a posterboard and written the words “YES, WE, CAN” at the top. “He showed every black person that, even though you’re at the bottom, you can still make it to the top,” Noble said.

He said Obama’s rise changed his life goals. He had wanted to be a basketball player, but now he’s set his sights on engineering. “Everybody wants to be a basketball player, but I want to be something that’s harder,” he said. “A basketball player, all you have to know how to do is dribble and shoot. An engineer, you have to know a lot more.”

Noble, who wore a hooded sweatshirt and a Yankees t-shirt, sat down for most of the day’s events, even as other students danced around excitedly, but he pushed his chair back and stood when Obama took the oath of office. “I’m showing my respect to Obama for making it,” he said.

The Democracy Prep charter school, a three-year-old middle school in Harlem which will extend into high school next year, organized the event, coming up with the idea of a party in their own neighborhood after the school’s plans to travel to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration didn’t transpire. A group of about 25 students sat on an inauguration committee that planned the alternative event. (A lone student supported John McCain.)

Their Harlem Armory party proved so popular that the entire floor of the Armory today was packed with round tables filled with children. Seats in upstairs bleachers were also filled. Students found blank poster boards and markers at their tables, and they filled the posters with pictures congratulating Obama.

Democracy Prep founder Seth Andrew made the event political, too. Next to the markers and posterboard were postcards pre-addressed to President Barack Obama at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The postcards said:

Dear President Obama:

I want to congratulate you on this historic day and ask you to keep your promise to support more school choice and parent voice in education.

The postcards also included room for students to write their ideas for how to improve America’s schools, and a request: “Please write back if you can.”

The executive director of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, James Merriman, sat in the crowd of students alongside Michael Thomas Duffy, who runs the Department of Education’s charter school office. Merriman addressed the crowd, and a press group that works with his organization, Knickerbocker SKD, handled the gaggles of press who converged in Harlem for the event.

“Out of all the choices, I wanted to come to Harlem,” said Cathy Salley, a mother from New Jersey who brought her children to the Armory for the day. “It’s the environment, it’s the camaraderie. This is an experience they’ll never forget.”

There were some moments when the entire room came alive, like when Obama took his oath and students stood up with him and put their hands over their hearts, and when Aretha Franklin sang. One girl, a student at East New York Prep Charter School in Brooklyn, registered a note of disappointment when she realized Obama himself would not be in Harlem. “I was excited because I thought I was going to see Obama,” she said.

The final time the room exploded came via a song the event organizers put on the loudspeaker, after fading out the sound of CNN. It was Natasha Bedingfield singing “Unwritten.”

Democracy Prep students get out the vote on Super Tuesday earlier this year. Photo: Democracy Prep.

Last month, students at Democracy Prep, a charter middle school in Harlem, traveled to City Hall to testify against term limits. Tomorrow, while regular public school students have the day off, they’ll be learning a different civics lesson by getting out the vote in their neighborhood, according to the New York Times’ City Room blog:

Democracy Prep, a charter school in central Harlem, will unleash its 300 zealots of civic engagement on the city, handing out fliers and otherwise trying to get out the vote in their neighborhood.

“We actually think that tomorrow is the most important day of the year to be in school, not out of school,” said Seth Andrew, head of the school, which is in its third year of operation and serves grades 6, 7 and 8.