A state audit is criticizing how Louisiana's education department monitors charter schools.
The report from Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera's office found the education department weighed critical and non-critical violations equally in determining school performance ratings. The department, auditors say, should be judging charter schools based on the severity of a violation.
The education department says it is working to update the scoring system to more adequately account for differences in offense types.
The Advocate reports the audit also found the agency failed to ensure charter schools enrolled the required number of at-risk students. For two types of charters, 19 percent of schools failed to have the necessary number of at-risk students for the 2015-16 year.
Louisiana has 145 charter schools, public schools run by non-governmental boards, attended by 80,000 students.