A judge said Philly’s Memphis Street Academy charter school must close

A federal judge ruled Monday that Memphis Street Academy must surrender its charter and close, finding that the school didn’t meet academic conditions that were part of an agreement with the district.

The Port Richmond charter school — with a student body ranging from 86 to 90% Black or Hispanic at the time of its legal challenge — had argued it was the target of racial discrimination by the Philadelphia School District, a frequent point of tension in debates about the city’s charter schools. But U.S. District Court Judge Chad Kenney said the district had used a “racially neutral” framework to evaluate the charter.

“Instead of uplifting its students, MSA blames their demographic backgrounds for its own shortcomings,” Kenney said in the decision. “These excuses deprive MSA’s students of the education they deserve.”

Ashley Redfearn, CEO of American Paradigm Schools, a management company that runs Memphis Street and three other charter schools, said the charter, which serves about 500 students in grades 5-8, is reviewing its legal options.

Memphis Street plans to open this fall, Redfearn said.

“There’s nothing in this judgment forcing an immediate closure,” Redfearn said Tuesday. “I can’t imagine the school district, with only a few weeks before school, would want to disrupt that stability.”

Imahni Moise, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia school board, declined to comment Tuesday, saying the board does not comment on litigation.

Charter schools are publicly funded, but independently run. In Philadelphia, about one-third of public school students attend charters, which are authorized to operate by the school district.

The board moved to close Memphis Street Academy in 2022, after it failed to meet conditions it had previously agreed to with the district in order to stay open.

While the district had initially granted Memphis Street a charter in 2012 under its Renaissance charter program — which turned struggling district schools over to charter operators — it recommended the charter for nonrenewal five years later, citing poor academic performance.

Rather than close, however, the charter signed a deal with the district in 2018, allowing it to stay open as long as it met certain benchmarks, and promising to surrender its charter if it didn’t. Among the conditions: increasing test scores in math, and decreasing the number of chronically absent students.

When the charter didn’t meet those standards, the board voted in 2022 to exercise its surrender clause.

Along with a group of parents, Memphis Street then sued the district, arguing that it had made decisions based on metrics that were biased against Black and Hispanic students — Pennsylvania standardized tests and attendance measures, areas where those students historically underperform.

Black-led charter schools have repeatedly accused the school district of bias, saying their schools are disproportionately targeted for closure and denied expansion opportunities.

A district-commissioned investigation refuted that claim — with a report in 2023 that said there were no “intentional acts of racial discrimination or bias, based on the race of a charter school leader, committed by any members of the Board of Education, School Reform Commission, or the Charter Schools Office.” Charter leaders, however, said the report ignored concerns about the effect of the district’s practices on minority-led charter schools.

Memphis Street Academy argued its students were unfairly compared to the district as a whole, which has a smaller share of Black and Hispanic students (about 71%) than Memphis Street.

In Monday’s decision, Kenney said a district-wide comparison wasn’t used to determine that Memphis Street failed to meet academic standards during its initial five-year charter term; rather, the charter wasn’t meeting expectations that it would turn around the school. Memphis Street’s academic performance declined in that first term, with math scores in particular falling from 23.26% of students scoring proficient, to 2.95%.

And Kenney said the standards Memphis Street agreed to meet as part of its 2018 charter were “almost exclusively” based on comparisons to its own performance or a group of similar schools, not the district as a whole.

“There is no evidence in the record to suggest that the facially-neutral 2018 Charter, along with its academic conditions and Surrender Clause, are racially discriminatory,” Kenney said.

And while most Philadelphia charter schools have student bodies that are at least 85% Black or Hispanic, Kenney said, only 2 of 98 charters evaluated by the district over the years under its charter school framework have been nonrenewed.

That doesn’t include charters that closed before completing formal nonrenewal hearings, or charters like Memphis Street, which had agreed to give up its charter without hearings if it didn’t meet required conditions.

The district is currently revising its charter evaluation framework, which encompasses academics, operations and finances.

Redfearn said Tuesday that while Kenney didn’t find “intentional discrimination,” the decision didn’t invalidate complaints about bias. The judge said that, based on evidence presented by plaintiffs, a “fair-minded jury” could find there was “discriminatory impact” from the district’s charter evaluation framework.

The decision “does not mean there’s not still concerns about what implications are, looking at the test scores in the way they’re looking at them,” Redfearn said.