How the charter folks fool the press

This is kind of a classic, though it's from the hinterlands.

From a story in the May 16, 2007, L.A. Weekly on Mayor Villaraigosa's effort to remake LAUSD ("Antonio Remakes School Board / But with 43,000 kids fleeing LAUSD to charter schools, will mayor follow?") by Janine Kahn:

Locke isn’t the first large L.A. school to seek a conversion to independent charter. In 2003, Granada Hills High School broke L.A. Unified’s hold. It now earns an impressive 9 out of 10 on the statewide test-score rankings, and was recently named one of California’s 39 certified charters — a designation of excellence.

California Charter Schools Association President Caprice Young says Granada officials got tired of being told “you can’t have that discipline plan, you can’t have the teachers staying after school, you can’t have a longer school year — Granada said, ‘Forget it. We know what the kids need.’”

This assumes but doesn't state that Granada Hills' scores improved after it became a charter.
I checked the school's API for the years before it became a charter in 2003.

2000-01: 9/9
01-02: 9/8
...
05-06: 9/8

I assume the reporter was snookered rather than helping to promote the deceit.

I don't know how much of an honor it is to have made the charter folks' list of 39 top state charters. Included on the list is San Francisco's own Edison Charter Academy — the musty, largely forgotten mediocrity that was the center of a hype frenzy five or six years ago.

— Caroline