An Oak Cliff-based charter school that prevents high-school dropouts is now under governance by the State of Texas because of widespread problems that have caused woe to students who’ve already struggled to stay in school.
That’s according to reporting by the Dallas Morning News.
Texans Can Academy, which has 15 campuses in Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, Garland, Houston and San Antonio, was among the first in Texas to receive a “charter” to operate a public school outside of local school districts, in 1996.
The charter school, which enrolls about 4,700 students, inflated attendance numbers in 2020 and was required to repay millions in public funding, the newspaper reports.
The Texas Education Agency recently renewed the school’s charter for 10 more years with the stipulation that the academies come under the agency’s governance.
“Just this semester, school leaders discovered that a grading error led to more than 140 students being told they would have to retake a class or pass an exam to retain credit,” the newspaper’s Emily Donaldson reports.
Texans Can Superintendent James Ponce says the school has already made some improvements, such as standardizing systems across all campuses, but staffers told the newspaper they want school leadership to take more responsibility for failures.
The story, which is free to read, goes into detail about a linchpin incident — a teacher who resigned and left without entering grades — as well as speculation on how these screwups have affected students, many of whom have little parental support.
