FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin



October 21, 2005

--Three More Charter Applicants Advance
--Provision of Bill to Fund DCPS Facilities Would Harm Charters
--BOE to Hold Hearing on Charter Schools
--Progressive Policy Institute Calls D.C. Charters “Robust Reform”
--Capitol Hill Group on Warpath Against Charters
--FOCUS Publishes Charter School Facts

Three More Charter Applicants Advance

At its meeting on Monday evening the D.C. Public Charter School Board gave “conditional approval” to three more applicants hoping to open charter schools in the fall of 2006. The three, which had been granted “first stage clearance” in June, join four others that received conditional approval at the Board’s June meeting. Almost all applicants who gain conditional approval move on to full approval.

Six of the seven schools likely to open in 2006 participated in FOCUS’s charter school startup program. Seven of the nine new charter schools that opened last month also went through the FOCUS program. This past Saturday FOCUS began year three of its charter school startup training with an introductory seminar for 28 D.C. residents hoping to open charter schools in 2007. Charter school design workshops for serious candidates begin in November.

The schools receiving conditional approval on Monday were Academic International PCS (prek-8th; international/holistic education using the James Comer model), Septima Clark PCS (preschool-8th; challenging academic education for boys), and Washington Latin PCS (5th-12th; classical education). They join Friendship Tech (9th-12th; college prep for technical careers); City Collegiate (6th-12th; rigorous standards-based education for adolescents); Dorothy Height Community (prekindergarten-8th; rigorous academics east of the river); and Education Strengthens Families (preschool and adults: family literacy model).

Provision of Bill to Fund DCPS Facilities Would Harm Charters

A provision of the “School Modernization Financing Act of 2005,” a bill under consideration by the Education Committee of the Council, would repeal a section of the School Reform Act (D.C.’s charter school law) that requires the District to include charter school representatives in long range school facilities master planning and ensures that such planning take into account the needs of charter school students. The inclusion of charter schools was the result of a 2003 amendment to the Act urged on the Council by FOCUS.

The Modernization bill seeks to add $1 billion in funding to the DCPS capital budget over the next 10 years and would impose various requirements on DCPS, including detailed planning for the use of the funds. Education Committee staff have told FOCUS that the repeal of the SRA provision was not intended to block charter school participation in school facilities planning and that as the bill moves through the Council process a way will be found to ensure that the charter schools have a place at the table.

Nevertheless, FOCUS is opposed to the repeal and has asked Education Committee Chair Kathy Patterson to eliminate it from the bill. DCPS is just now defining the long-range facilities planning process it will undertake in the spring and is aware that the needs of charter school students must be addressed by the plan. In 1999-2000, when DCPS last developed a facilities plan, charter school appeals for inclusion in the process were rejected.

According to a recent study by the Brookings Institution and the 21st Century School Fund, DCPS controls approximately five million square feet of school space not justified by its enrollment, which has declined significantly since the first charter schools opened in 1996. Meaningful inclusion of the charter schools in this round of facilities planning and the requirement to plan for charter school students, not just for DCPS students, are essential to the preparation of a rational plan by DCPS.

BOE to Hold Hearing on Charter Schools

The D.C. Board of Education, which is toying with the idea of turning over to the superintendent its charter school oversight responsibilities, has scheduled a hearing for November 17 on “the status of Public Charter Schools in Public Education in the District of Columbia.” According to the hearing notice published by the Board, the purpose of the hearing is “to solicit public comments on the challenges and opportunities facing Charter Schools as a component of public education in the District of Columbia.”

It is not clear why the Board is holding the hearing or what it hopes to gain from public testimony. The Board is under pressure from the Congress and others to improve its chartering and charter oversight operations or to give up its charter responsibilities. While it appears that some Board members want to improve the Board’s charter oversight performance, others want to pass it to the superintendent.

In February of this year the Board decided not to charter any more schools until receiving recommendations on the subject from the superintendent. Board member Tommy Wells, quoted in the Washington Post [February 10, 2005, Metro, p. B-1],, said that the Board expected the superintendent to suggest the kind of charter schools the Board should charter, for example, bilingual schools or schools serving at-risk students. Wells added: “We want the superintendent to weigh in and share with us how charter schools can carry out his overall plan.”

But involving the superintendent in chartering decisions or charter school oversight would violate the School Reform Act, D.C.’s charter school law. The Act has a number of provisions relevant to this question, all indicative of the drafters’ intent that there be a firewall between the charter schools and DCPS. For example, the Act defines charter schools as public schools that are not part of DCPS. Additionally, the Act specifies that no DC employees other than employees of the chartering boards can have anything to do with chartering decisions. The Act also specifies that no law, regulation, or policy that is applicable to DCPS can be applied to the public charter schools.

In addition to running afoul of the law, breaching the charter school-DCPS divide would violate the vital principle of charter school autonomy from central control by the school system. This autonomy protects charter schools from burdensome regulation and the imposition of the “one size fits all” mentality that squelches creativity in school system schools around the country.

Progressive Policy Institute Calls D.C. Charters “Robust Reform”

A comprehensive study of D.C.’s charter school movement released by the Progressive Policy Institute on October 4, 2005, found that “[t]he District of Columbia’s experience with charter schools compellingly demonstrates that they are more robust than other reforms.” According to PPI, in the 2004-2005 school year 54.4% of charter school students tested proficient in math as against just 44.19% at DCPS. In reading, the charter school proficiency figure was 45.4% versus 39.14% for DCPS schools.

An earlier study by FOCUS found that charter schools were dramatically outperforming DCPS schools at the middle and high school levels (Bulletin August 19, 2005).

The PPI report made a number of recommendations that its authors felt would “make District charter schools even more successful than they have been to date.” Among these were breaking the DCPS monopoly on facilities, incorporating charter school space into the District’s development plans, closing low-performing charter schools, expanding outside support and technical assistance for charter schools, and improving data collection and reporting. PPI also recommends that the Board of Education “become a quality authorizer or get out of the business.”

The Progressive Policy Institute is affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council. Its mission is “to define and promote a new progressive politics for America in the 21st century.”

Capitol Hill Group on Warpath Against Charters

In spite of (or perhaps because of) the success of the D.C. charter schools, a small but vociferous group of Capitol Hill public school parents is aggressively promoting the idea that charters are bad for public education in the District. Calling charter schools “an affront to home rule” and asserting that some charter schools “accommodate racism” in their programs while others seek to appeal to D.C.’s affluent white families, the anti-charter school group Save Our Schools has launched a campaign to halt the growth of D.C.’s wildly popular charter school movement.

Providing a choice of public schools to D.C.’s most disadvantaged residents, the charter schools now enroll upwards of 19,000 students, 99% of whom are members of minority groups and nearly 80% of whom are economically disadvantaged.

The group gained attention in September of 2004 when it sued the mayor, the Council, the Board of Education, the Public Charter School Board, the U.S. Secretary of Education, and Two Rivers Public Charter School, a Capitol Hill startup, charging that the “diversion” of funds to public charter schools was damaging DCPS and resegregating the schools. The suit is still pending.

At a recent Education Committee hearing, SOS president Regina Arlotto and member Dr. Lee Glazer urged committee chair Kathy Patterson to introduce legislation calling for a moratorium on chartering. In response, Patterson distributed a legal opinion by the Council’s general counsel that she had sought in the fall of 2004, shortly after the SOS law suit was filed. The opinion makes clear that the Council lacks the power to limit the number of public charter schools or to place a moratorium on the issuance of charters.

In a four page bold-type handout, Arlotto and Glazer say that at one of the District’s most successful charter schools, whose students, like those of most D.C. public schools, are almost all African-American, “segregation is taken as a given, and racism is accommodated rather than challenged.” Other charters, integrated but still majority black, are attacked for allegedly having “curricula and marketing strategies designed specifically to appeal to white, relatively affluent families, many of whom are part of Mayor William’s gentrification scheme.”

In addition to advocating for a moratorium, the group also has spoken against co-locating charter schools in underutilized DCPS schools. DCPS currently has five million square feet of space it doesn’t need to house its students.

FOCUS Publishes Charter School Facts

FOCUS has published a three-page fact sheet designed to inform the D.C. public and policymakers about the District’s charter schools and to dispel the many misconceptions about their funding, enrollment, accountability, and performance. The fact sheet is attached and may be duplicated for use by the Bulletin’s readers.

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