FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

August 19, 2005

--Patterson Plans Charter School Hearing, Contemplates Law Changes
--Anniversary of Surplus Properties Promise Passes With No Action
--Standardized Testing Produces Good Results for Many Charters
--Two Charters Permitted To Co-Locate by BOE, Three Rejected; Police, Housing Authority Grab Buildings
--Senate Appropriations Committee Report Addresses Charter School Facilities, Performance Issues
--FOCUS Launches Third Annual Charter School Startup Program

Patterson Plans Charter School Hearing, Contemplates Law Changes

Kathy Patterson, chair of the Education Committee of the Council, will hold a charter school hearing in Council chambers on October 6. According to the notice published by her office, the hearing is designed to elicit testimony on such issues as “the diversity of the student populations served, school and student performance, the effectiveness of the chartering authorities in fulfilling their responsibilities, and possible amendments to the charter authorizing law.” The hearing also will deal with charter school compliance under the No Child Left Behind Act and will “consider and re-evaluate the various charter school funding mechanisms.”

Mrs. Patterson, who is in her first year at the helm of the Committee, is known to believe that the current education funding scheme in the District favors charter schools over DCPS schools. That scheme, known as the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, guarantees that every similarly-situated public school student in the District is funded at the same level. This funding follows the student to the school he or she selects. If a charter school is chosen, the money goes to that school; if a DCPS school, the money goes to the DCPS central administration, which then decides how much of it to allocate to the chosen school — always substantially less than the total amount. The result is that individual charter schools generally control much more money than do individual DCPS schools, even though the funding allocated to them by the formula is the same.

Council member Patterson has suggested that this “inequity” needs to be remedied, possibly by overhauling the Funding Formula, and her staff is researching how charter schools are funded in other states. It is not known whether she also is considering increasing the pressure on DCPS to keep less of the funding for central office and put more under the control of individual DCPS schools, which then, like charter schools, could use the money to fix decaying buildings, hire art and music teachers, and so on.

Oddly, in the notice the October 6 hearing is styled as an oversight hearing on the Public Charter School Act of 1996. This law, passed by the Council at about the same time as the D.C. School Reform Act, the controlling Congressional charter school legislation, is still on the books. However, by law it is inapplicable to the extent that it duplicates or is inconsistent with any provision of the School Reform Act which, for example, requires uniform per-student funding. What’s more, the chartering authorities, the charter schools, and the D.C. government have been operating exclusively under the School Reform Act since its passage in 1996.

Under the School Reform Act, the charter schools are required to be non-profit corporations and are expressly not part of D.C. Government or DCPS. In general, charter school accountability is the province of the chartering boards; the authority of the Council over the schools is limited to budget oversight consonant with the funding requirements of the School Reform Act. The chartering boards also have primary responsibility for charter school accountability under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Mrs. Patterson, known to be opposed to Congressional involvement in District affairs, has introduced legislation contradictory to the School Reform Act that would exempt DCPS from the Act’s requirement for annual funding based on enrollment and makes no mention of the charter schools. In response to a question from FOCUS the Council member stated that she would like charter school funding and DCPS funding to remain “equitable,” though not necessarily uniform.

Anniversary of Surplus Properties Promise Passes With No Action

The Williams administration has failed to make good on the mayor’s press-conference promise of August 18, 2004, to make five surplus buildings available to the charter schools. Meanwhile, two members of the Council have filled the vacuum by introducing bills that would designate two of the five buildings for non-charter purposes; another member reportedly has a non-charter purpose in mind for an additional building and developers have expressed strong interest in a fourth.

Administration confusion and delay are responsible for the inability of the charter schools to get their hands on these buildings. Mayoral staff waited for months after the mayor’s press conference before submitting the buildings to the Council disposition process, and the 90-day Council review period did not have time to run by December 31, 2004, the end of the last Council period. The administration and the Council then got into a lengthy dispute about whether the disposition approval request needed to be resubmitted in the 2005 Council period, starting anew the 90-day clock.

Finally, after several months the administration acceded to Council demands and resubmitted the disposition request. The request then sat for weeks in the office of the Secretary of the Council who, according to administration sources, felt it was improperly drawn and refused to pass it along to the Council for action. The request was still in limbo when the Council went out for its summer recess in mid-July.

Since taking control of 38 surplus school buildings in March of 2000, the administration has made only four available to the charter schools, which have a legal preference to acquire them. During this same period the administration, over strenuous charter school objections, has turned back five of the surplus buildings to DCPS, contributing to their excess space problem, and has sold or leased several others to commercial developers and other non-school entities.

It is expected that the administration will resubmit the five buildings for Council review sometime in the fall.

Standardized Testing Produces Good Results for Many Charters

A number of D.C.’s charter schools performed very well on the spring 2005 Stanford 9 Test, according to results published last week by the chartering boards. While, as expected, most of the best performing schools were elementary schools, as a group, charter high schools and middle/junior high schools achieved outstanding results when compared with school system schools.

KIPP D.C. Key Academy (DCPCSB, grades 5-8) was the highest-performing charter school. Among KIPP students, 80% of whom are economically disadvantaged, 97% are doing math at or above the national average and 60% are reading at or above the national average. Seventy per cent of KIPP students scored “proficient” in reading for purposes of the No Child Left Behind Act and 97% scored proficient in math.

At the elementary level, high performers in reading and math were Capital City (DCPCSB), Community Academy (BOE), Friendship Chamberlain (DCPCSB), Friendship Woodridge (DCPCSB), Hyde (BOE), Ideal (BOE), and Elsie Whitlow Stokes (BOE). These schools enroll an average of 73% economically disadvantaged students, yet, on average, 67% of their students scored proficient in reading and 66% in math. Students at D.C. Preparatory Academy, a second-year charter school, were outstanding in math: 88% scored at the proficient level.

In addition to KIPP, two other middle/junior high schools scored well. The students at Paul Public Charter (DCPCSB) and Friendship Blow Pierce (DCPCSB) averaged 62% proficient in reading and 70% proficient in math. Among the high schools, 56% of SEED (DCPCSB) students scored proficient in both reading math. At Friendship Woodson Collegiate Academy (DCPCSB), also a high school, 56% of the students were proficient in math.

Taken together, students at the six charter middle/junior high schools to which the NCLB Act applied this year averaged 48% proficiency in reading and 54% proficiency in math. This compares to the DCPS average of 39% proficiency in reading and 35% in math. The DCPS percentages drop to 35% and 30%, respectively, when two non-comparable schools are eliminated from the calculation. These two schools, Deal Junior High and Hardy Middle School, average 36% disadvantaged students, compared to 73% for the remaining DCPS schools and 73% for the charter schools.

Charter school performance at the high school level, though lagging that at the middle/junior high school and elementary levels, still far exceeds the performance of comparable DCPS schools. The 11 charter high schools average 25% proficiency in reading and 36% in math; the 13 non-selective DCPS high schools average 11% proficiency in reading and 17% in math.

As has been reported in the press, a significant number of charter and DCPS schools did not “make AYP” this year, that is, did not see enough of their students reach this year’s target proficiency levels required by the No Child Left Behind Act. Moving an increasing number of students toward proficiency in reading and math as defined by NCLB is undoubtedly important, but this snapshot of student performance on test day does not tell the whole story. For example, as pointed out by the D.C. Public Charter School Board in a recent press release, 19 of the 23 Board schools that serve students tested this year meaningfully improved in both reading and math. And the students at many of both Boards’ schools are performing beyond the required proficiency percentages.

Accurate information about student performance at each individual public school is essential if parents are to make sound decisions about which schools to choose for their children. Neither chartering board, however, nor DCPS, nor the State Education Office collects or reports student and school performance data in a meaningful way. School leaders, teachers, parents, and the public are missing much of the key information they need, especially how much each school is able to improve the performance of students who stay in the school over a period of years.

Two Charters Permitted to Co-Locate by BOE, Three Rejected; Police Department, DC Housing Authority Grab Buildings

Paying scant attention to legal requirements and giving great weight to the views of small groups of community members, late last month the Board of Education voted to permit charter schools to co-locate during the upcoming school year at just two under-enrolled DCPS schools. Charters had made offers to co-locate at five of the schools, but the Board, heeding the recommendations of small groups comprising school personnel and community activists appointed by DCPS to review the co-location offers, rejected their applications. The D.C. Housing Authority and the Metropolitan Police Department were favored over charter schools for co-location at two of the buildings; community objections torpedoed co-location by anyone at a third.

The School Reform Act, D.C.’s charter school law, requires that charter schools be given a “right of first offer” on school space no longer needed by DCPS — approximately 5 million square feet according to a recent study by the 21st Century School Fund and the Brookings Institution. The Board, however, though finally acceding to years-long Council pressure to give up some space to the charters, decided to permit non-charter entities to make concurrent offers on buildings sought by the charter schools. The community groups appointed by DCPS to review the offers were then permitted to compare all the offers, charter and non-charter, and recommend non-charter offers over offers by the charter schools, undermining the charters’ legal preference.

Another factor contributing to the low number of co-locations was significant Board delay in approving the co-location plan. The plan, first submitted to the Board in March of 2004, was not approved by the Board until late April of this year; a series of community meetings and a public hearing delayed the process for another two months, and the Board decision on the offers did not occur until mid-July. Most charters needing space were unwilling to wait until a month before the opening of the school year to make facilities arrangements and so did not offer to co-locate.

A third factor dampening charter school interest in co-location was that the Board decided to permit only one-year leases in case any of the excess space might play a key role in the superintendent’s “Master Education Plan,” scheduled to be released in December. The Board promises long-term leases on any future co-locations in space that may be identified as excess by the plan.

Senate Appropriations Committee Report Addresses Charter School Facilities, PCS Performance Issues

If the Senate Appropriations Committee gets its way, the mayor will “expeditiously” make more surplus school buildings available to the charter schools and by February 1 will obligate $4 million appropriated by Congress last year toward one or more charter school incubator facilities.

In the report accompanying the Senate version of the FY 2006 D.C. Appropriations Act, the Committee notes that of the 38 surplus buildings transferred to the mayor by the Control Board in March of 2000, seven have been sold for economic development and many of the rest are being used by DCPS or by the D.C. Government or are vacant.

The Committee also directs the mayor to start spending the money it allocated last year for one or more charter school incubators. The District has $9 million to spend on incubators (facilities in which new charter schools can spend their first few years while they build up the cash and expertise to acquire a permanent space) -- $4 million from Congress and $5 million from a federal grant — but has not moved to acquire any property. The Committee directs the mayor (his State Education Office controls the funds) to work with Sallie Mae’s Building Hope Charter School Facilities Fund to get the project moving.

Expressing concern that a number of charter schools failed to make “adequate yearly progress” this year, the Committee “strongly urges” the mayor and Council to compare the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act with those of the School Reform Act “and make any legislative changes necessary to ensure consistency between the two acts regarding the promotion of school quality.” Specifically, the Committee urges that the School Reform Act be amended to permit the chartering authorities to close charter schools for academic reasons before the end of their fifth year of operation, which under current law is the earliest a school can be closed for failing to achieve the academic goals stated in its charter.

Charter schools in D.C. can be closed by their chartering boards at any time for financial mismanagement, failure to follow the law, or material breaches of their charters. The Congressional drafters of the School Reform Act, however, were aware that, unlike the implementation of sound accounting practices, boosting student academic achievement in urban schools cannot be done overnight. This is especially true for schools that struggle in their earlier years with serious facilities problems and other distractions from their academic mission. Although there’s nothing sacrosanct about the five year mark, an accurate picture of how a charter school is doing cannot be had in the first few years of operation.

Of course, having itself passed the School Reform Act, Congress is free to amend it; the mayor and Council, however, are prohibited from amending the Act in a way inconsistent with its terms.

Focus Launches Third Annual Charter School Startup Program

On October 15, FOCUS will kick off the 2006 version of its charter school startup program with a free half-day introductory session for those who are thinking about starting a public charter school in the District. The program, which will include a “tour” of D.C.’s charter school landscape and answer the question “Are you Ready to Start a Public Charter School?” will be repeated on November 5.

The startup program will continue on November 19 with an all-day School Design Workshop. At the workshop experts will discuss such topics as Standards and Curriculum, Instruction and Professional Development, Developing a Literacy Program, and Meeting the Needs of Special Education Students and English-Language Learners. A second, half-day, School Design Workshop covering the business and real estate aspects of starting a charter school will be held on December 3. Participants in the School Design Workshops receive a copy of FOCUS’s comprehensive Guide To Starting A Public Charter School in the District of Columbia, 3rd Edition.

Seven of the nine new charter schools opening this fall are graduates of FOCUS’s 2004 startup program. Seven of the eight schools still on the road to opening in the fall of 2006 went through FOCUS’s 2005 program.

Those interested in attending one of the introductory sessions should contact FOCUS at 202/387-0405.

Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
1530 16th Street, NW #104
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 387-0405 phone
(202) 667-3798 fax
www.focusdc.org