A LOOK AHEAD * With its permit up for renewal, Vaughn Elementary prepares its case as critics ask . . . Are Charter Schools Making the Grade?

With its computer-filled classrooms, extended school year and fat budget, the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center has become a national symbol for what charter schools can accomplish.

Innovative and trend-setting are just some of the words visitors, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, have used to describe the Pacoima elementary school, where trees are pruned, classrooms are colorful and parent-volunteers seem everywhere.

But with Vaughn’s original charter up for renewal, and with scores of similar campuses envisioned statewide, a key question remains: Are charter schools really better?

Vaughn’s record would indicate that they are a mixed bag, better off than many campuses in many respects but also ordinary in many ways.

A review of test scores, attendance rates and other measures of achievement reveals that Vaughn lived up to part of its promise but fell short on some accounts in its initial five years.

The school failed to raise test scores by the 15 to 20 points its founders had pledged. Still, its students performed better than counterparts at nearby campuses--no small feat in a neighborhood where almost all the children are poor enough to qualify for free lunches.

Attendance hovers at an enviable 95%, higher than the district average for elementary schools. And autonomy has allowed the campus to add 14 classrooms, 20 days of instruction and dozens of computers.

Yet, despite the lack of state and school district interference afforded by its charter status, the school’s curriculum and textbooks remain essentially the same as those of other campuses.

High Marks for Improvement

Educators give Vaughn high marks for its gains.

“I don’t think there’s a more improved school in the state, when you consider where they started,” said Delaine Eastin, the state superintendent of public instruction. “They didn’t go from the bottom 10% to the top 10%, but they’ve gone from the bottom to the middle of the pack. Given their limitations, that’s a very good curve of improvement in five years.”

Vaughn probably will get an extension of its charter status, but its administrators still must formally ask the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education to continue its mandate, which its founders and those of three other charter schools are scheduled to do today. The others are Fenton, Open and Westwood schools.

The board will decide in two weeks, after it reviews an outside evaluation of Vaughn, whose progress is widely viewed as a barometer of the charter movement itself. The program’s renewal comes at a time when the state has raised the cap on the number of charter schools from 100 to 250 in the 1998-99 academic year. It will authorize 100 more every year after that.

By most accounts, Vaughn was a mess before becoming a charter school. The school posted some of the lowest test scores in the district, including 5th-percentile reading scores for second-graders in 1992.

The campus was bitterly divided between black and Latino teachers who were feuding over bilingual education, and between teachers and the principal they accused of harassment. There were complaints from parents--many of them immigrants from Mexico and Central America--who said they felt unwelcome.

The turmoil was reflected in test scores, which were among the lowest in the district.

A new principal, Yvonne Chan, who had been principal at Sylmar Elementary School, arrived in the spring of 1990. She made headlines as soon as she arrived by pedaling a bicycle along a maze-like route through the campus to demonstrate how it had long been cluttered by a paving project.

The idea of starting a charter school originated among teachers after one of them heard about the reform movement at a professional conference.

“We wanted change,” recalled third-grade teacher Emilia Ortiz. “We had nothing to lose, but everything to gain.”

Since then, the campus has received two of the most prestigious awards in education, the U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon Award in 1996 and the California Distinguished Schools Award in 1995.

Scores have risen in two-thirds of Vaughn’s classes on the Comprehensive Basic Skills Test and the Spanish-language equivalent, Aprenda. But the promised 15- to 20-point increase has yet to materialize for all pupils, and not all grades posted consistent gains.

“It’s truly hard to say we did meet our charter goals,” Chan told her teachers during a recent faculty meeting. “However, if you go by comparison, we did pretty well.”

Language Barrier

A weakness at Vaughn, where more than 80% of the pupils speak limited English, is the rate of those achieving enough fluency to be designated proficient in English and moved out of the bilingual education program.

In 1991, 2.6% of Vaughn’s limited-English students were reclassified as English-proficient, while 3.3% made the leap districtwide. In 1996, 5.4% of Vaughn’s limited-English students were declared proficient, compared to 6.4% districtwide.

Chan said Vaughn lags because the school has a higher percentage of limited English speakers.

Vaughn and the district share common ground when it comes to instruction.

Although Vaughn is free to design its own curriculum, it has patterned its course work after the state guidelines followed by the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school also uses many of the same state-approved textbooks that appear in classrooms elsewhere.

For example, Shelley Feldman’s fourth-graders study California history just like thousands of their counterparts across the state using the standard text, “Oh, California.”

Across campus, Carol Howard’s fifth-graders learn fractions by piecing together colorful plastic pie slices, a method of hands-on instruction popular throughout L.A. Unified.

Instructors say it’s not what they teach that makes Vaughn different, but how the school showers a wealth of resources on its students.

Vaughn has had great success at winning contributions, including a $321,000 grant from the RJR Nabisco Foundation.

The school has successfully fought to recoup several hundred thousand dollars from L.A. Unified--for example, gaining nearly $150,000 the district had charged to administer funding for poverty programs.

It has more than $4 million in the bank.

With money to spare, the school has hired a librarian, a science teacher and a physical education coach--resources no longer available at other elementary schools.

Even before Gov. Wilson’s initiative to reduce class sizes two years ago, Vaughn began shrinking the numbers of students in its classes, aided by the addition of 14 classrooms on adjacent land once occupied by a house used by drug dealers.

When Wilson unveiled the state-funded program in 1996 for first and second grades, Vaughn jumped ahead of other Los Angeles schools and immediately reduced kindergarten through third grade to the targeted goal of 20 students per teacher.

Now the school is adding another building so it can further reduce grades four and five to the 20-to-1 ratio.

More Computers, Longer School Year

Meanwhile, Vaughn’s year-round calendar has been eliminated. Instead, all of the 1,140 students attend school together for 200 days, 20 more than the state standard.

The school provides one computer for every four students--compared to one for every 13 students in L.A. Unified--divided among its classrooms and three computer labs.

A family center on campus offers everything from immigration counseling and clothes to medical care and part-time jobs.

Parents say the school has given them a greater voice. “The power is in my hand,” said Elsa Rojas, who sits on the school’s business committee. “If Dr. Chan is doing something I don’t like, she can be fired.”

Although many Vaughn teachers credit Chan with smart decisions, some accuse her of abandoning the division of power spelled out in the charter.

“Dr. Chan runs the school. That’s the bottom line,” one instructor said.

Indeed, Chan, who sits on the school’s business committee, sped through a new proposal for teacher pay at a recent meeting amid virtual silence. As Chan ticked off the new pay scale, parents seated at the end of the lunch table rubbed their eyes and looked dazed.

“I don’t understand half of it,” one teacher whispered, cupping her chin in her hands. “That’s why I’m quiet.”

Chan acknowledges that she keeps a firm grip on financial matters.

“Every decision that has financial risk, that’s me,” Chan said.

Also unfulfilled is the charter’s mandate that every parent volunteer 30 hours a year. Participation has flagged, prompting the school to recently declare that students whose parents don’t meet the requirements will not be allowed to return the next year. Similarly, students who come to school without Vaughn’s requisite uniforms will be sent home to change clothes.

Some Teachers Complain

Chan’s bold style also has alienated some of her senior teachers at the top of the pay scale who complain that she favors less expensive novices. The campus employs 63 instructors.

The senior instructors say Chan has done little to help them extend five-year leaves of absences they took from the school district to teach at Vaughn. Last week, seven teachers--all veterans of the classroom--decided to resign from Vaughn and return to the district rather than lose their seniority and lifetime health benefits.

“She looks at us and sees dollar signs,” said one teacher who earns more than $60,000 a year, about twice the base salary of a beginning instructor.

Chan says she has lobbied on the teachers’ behalf from the beginning.

But even as the veterans grouse in one breath, they say the school is far more inviting than before the charter. Teachers regularly collaborate, they say, and parents have become fixtures on campus.

“Certainly there’s a climate of optimism there never was before,” said Stan Stern, a third-grade teacher. “Problems are still there, but you get a feeling they will be solved.”