HAS THE BOSTON Renaissance Charter School gotten its act together, or will the curtain come down? That’s the question facing the state Board of Education, which renewed the school’s charter in 2005 for another five-year term, but under strict conditions that come due in February of this year.

It’s been a shaky 12 years for Renaissance, which was one of the first charter schools to open in Massachusetts, in 1995. The school’s charter was renewed after its initial five years, despite lackluster academic performance. When the charter came up for renewal again in 2005, however, state education officials expressed serious reservations. “It’s clearly not a success story,” state education commissioner David Driscoll told CommonWealth in the summer of 2005, following the board’s vote to renew the charter on a conditional basis (see “In Need of a Renaissance,” CW, Fall ’05).

That renewal came on the heels of a tumultuous year at Renaissance. Mounting concerns about academic performance prompted a vote by the school’s board of trustees in December 2004 to fire headmaster Roger Harris, a move the trustees reversed a month later under heavy lobbying from black political leaders. Talk of yet another vote by trustees against Harris in the spring of 2005 was cut short when Driscoll stepped in and pushed for the school to move ahead under its existing leadership.

But the state made it clear that it expected to see substantial academic improvement. The inspection report that the Department of Education relied on in its renewal decision was blunt in its assessment of the school’s first 10 years: “There has not been any significant increase in overall student performance [at the Renaissance School] during the course of its charter.”

In giving Renaissance another chance, the Board of Education attached three conditions to be met by the school, which at that time served 1,400 students, primarily African-American, from kindergarten through eighth grade. Among them was a mandate to phase out the school’s seventh and eighth grades, where performance was deemed especially poor. In addition, Renaissance was required to show by February 2007 that it is making “substantial progress” on its internal five-year accountability plan and also demonstrate that it is on track toward meeting the federal No Child Left Behind goal of all students reaching proficiency in math and English by 2014. The NCLB determination is based on a measure of “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) that relies most heavily on MCAS scores to gauge academic performance.

So far, scant progress appears to have been made toward the school’s internal accountability goals of 50 percent of students reaching proficiency in English and 25 percent in math by 2010. The school’s most recent MCAS proficiency scores were 34 percent and 20 percent, respectively, largely unchanged from 2003. What’s more, the school failed the crucial test of annual progress toward federal proficiency goals. In AYP assessments released in October, Renaissance was “identified for improvement” in English, a designation that comes after two consecutive years of failing to meet improvement goals, and in math deemed in need of “corrective action,” a label applied after four straight years of inadequate progress in a subject area.

The state warned Renaissance that such performance could result in the school being put on formal probation or having its charter revoked. But what the state will now do is unclear. The director of the state’s charter school office, Mary Street, says that, as of late December, she is still preparing a report based on a November site visit, and the department declined to make Driscoll available for an interview.

Harris, the school’s headmaster, did not return a phone message, but the chairman of the Renaissance board of trustees, Monroe “Bud” Moseley, says the school is making “demonstrable progress,” and that new systems have been put in place to raise achievement levels in the future.

Although Driscoll will make a recommendation about the school’s future, the decision ultimately rests with the state Board of Education. Christopher Anderson, who was appointed board chairman in November, says he has little patience for mediocrity in charter schools, which are supposed to be innovative, high-achieving alternatives to district public schools.

“In the case of charter schools, if they’ve been given a warning once, I don’t see what the options are other than nonrenewal,” says Anderson.

Renaissance is the largest charter school in the state, and some have speculated that its size and popularity with families have insulated it from the level of scrutiny and accountability to which other charter schools have been held. Two years ago, at the time Renaissance received its second five-year charter renewal, two other Boston schools were closed following their initial five-year charter.

In December, Driscoll recommended that another Boston charter school, the Uphams Corner Charter School, be shut down at the end of its first five-year charter because of low test scores. Anderson asked Driscoll to consider giving Uphams Corner the Renaissance treatment, renewing the charter with conditions, in order to give the school a chance at a turnaround.

But Renaissance seems to keep getting more chances. Board chairman Moseley says that Driscoll indicated to him in recent conversations that his school’s charter will not be revoked, and Renaissance leaders appear to be counting on that. In late November, they announced plans to sell the 13-story building in Boston’s Park Square that Renaissance has occupied since its inception and build a new facility, possibly in Mattapan.