Students at the state's first public charter school aren't performing any better than they did before the school gained charter school status, according to a state audit.

Students at Wai'alae Elementary Public Charter School, "while still among the highest scoring in the public school system, do not show a higher level of achievement since the school received its charter," said a report released yesterday by the Office of the Auditor.

"In fact, the school may have slipped, in mathematics," the report said.

However, the executive director of the state's 27 charter schools said the school's continued high test scores shouldn't be discounted.

"Here's a school doing very well that completely changed to a new curriculum and more or less they're still doing well," said Jim Shon. "One of the key things of charter schools is they're an incubator of experimentation and alternatives for curriculum and governance. If you set up a lab for anything, you don't say, 'Here's your lab and every experiment has to be successful.' "

The auditors also compared test results of Wai'alae graduates attending the neighborhood middle school to those of students who graduated from other schools in the area, before and after Wai'alae received its charter.

"The analysis indicates that Wai'alae students no longer clearly outscore their peers the way they did in the pre-charter period," the report said.

The school considers statewide standards-based tests such as the Stanford Achievement Test poor measures of student achievement, but has not adopted alternative objective measures to demonstrate its achievements to policymakers and the community at large, the report said.

The auditors were especially critical of the Wai'alae school board, which they said "suffers from dissent, lacks structure and leadership, keeps poor records, and has not matured into a body focused on the school's long-term future."

"The board's vague policies and inadequate oversight have resulted in instances on noncompliance with purchasing requirements, gaps in measures ensuring health and safety of students, and a financial management system that is poorly suited for the school's needs," the report said.

The school, the state Board of Education and the Charter School Administrative Office, in response to a draft of the report, generally agreed with its conclusions but also disagreed in some areas and suggested clarifications.

Shon, the charter schools' executive director, said there have been no resources allocated for board training for charter schools. He said that under recent school-reform legislation, training is provided for new school councils, but no money was given to charter schools for the same thing.

He said that the organization is working toward additional board training and certification programs.

On the larger issue of testing and results, charter school administrators believe Wai'alae school is not required to improve its state test scores over pre-charter levels, citing experimentation as a major reason for the creation of charter schools. And Shon pointed out that Wai'alae is still scoring well above most schools.

Shon said in general, the charter schools are trying to add good evaluation techniques to the project-based learning approaches and are beginning to look to the Mainland "to see if there are other ways to test performance-based" learning other than multiple-choice tests.

Wai'alae Elementary became the state's first charter school in 1995. It serves nearly 500 students from kindergarten through fifth grade. About half of the students live outside the neighborhood it serves.

In January, a report from the auditor's office criticized the state's charter school law as lacking clear authority and responsibility assignments, which contributes to a lack of oversight of the state's 27 charter schools.

The criticisms were contained in the audit of the Na Wai Ola Waters of Life Charter School on the Big Island. The audit said that defects in the charter school law and the lack of oversight by the state Board of Education contributed to the school's financial crisis.