FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

October 4, 2006

--D.C. Schools’ Performance on NCLB Plummets; Tougher Test, Higher Standards Prevent Meaningful Conclusions This Year
--For Charters, Superintendent’s Facilities Plan, Touted as New Beginning, Continues Old Shell Game
--Superintendent, BOE Members Disavow Post’s Characterization of Intentions, Pledge Collaboration

D.C. Schools’ Success as Measured by NCLB Plummets; Tougher Test, Higher Standards Prevent Meaningful Conclusions This Year

According to information posted on the DCPS web site, 57% of D.C. public elementary schools (charter and system) passed muster under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in both reading and math in 2005. This year, only 19% did. At the secondary level, the decline was from 33% to 18%.

Preliminary analysis indicates that charter schools overall posted better results than the school system again this year, but also experienced a sharp drop in scores.

Under NCLB, 100% of each state’s school children must achieve “proficiency” in reading and math by 2014. Each state develops its own definition of proficiency and a plan for making sure that every student makes “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) toward that goal. For a school to “make AYP” in any particular year, a defined percentage of the students who took the test that year must score at the state-mandated proficiency level.

This year’s dramatic fall-off in school success as measured by NCLB is no mystery: new D.C.-wide academic standards were introduced this year, along with a new, tougher test aligned with them. At the same time, D.C. radically revised its definition of individual student proficiency for AYP purposes, from the 40th percentile in elementary reading and math to the 54th and 78th percentiles, respectively. Secondary math proficiency also was adjusted upward, from the 40th to the 54th percentile.

As if these three dramatic changes weren’t sufficient, this year the AYP bar also was raised. For elementary schools to make AYP in reading this year, 47.37% of their students had to score at the proficient level or above, up from 34.21% last year. In math, 40.28% of elementary school students had to score proficient or better, up from 25.35%. At the secondary level, the AYP bar was raised from 29.48% to 43.58% in reading and from 25.98% to 40.55% in math.

The bottom line is that this year’s individual school results can be used only as a baseline to measure improvement in the future; they say little or nothing about how much impact the schools are having today on the academic performance of their students.

But even next year and beyond, the notion, cemented in the public mind by the media, that “making AYP” is the be-all and end-all of school performance evaluation is painting a false picture of how inner city schools are doing. NCLB takes a sledgehammer approach to reform that is causing many improving and even high-performing public schools to look as if they were failing. By constantly moving the goalposts, it also almost guarantees that increasing numbers of schools will appear to be failing with every passing year. In the District as elsewhere, we need more sophisticated ways to measure student and school performance, beginning with the implementation of a District-wide data collection and reporting system that tracks the performance of cohorts of students over time.

FOCUS is analyzing this year’s charter school test scores and will report on their performance in an upcoming edition of the Bulletin.

For Charters, Superintendent’s Master Facilities Plan, Touted as New Beginning, Continues Old Shell Game

In September Superintendent Clifford Janey released to the public his long-awaited “Master Facilities Plan,” in which are revealed the details of a 15-year program to build 23 new DCPS schools and modernize another 101. The Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the MFP on October 18th, following a series of community meetings on the plan.

The MFP was mandated by the D.C. Council, which last spring passed a $2+ billion school modernization bill after the Board of Education resolved to “consolidate and eliminate” 3,000,000 square feet of space by July of 2008. DCPS is estimated to control over 5,000,000 square feet of space it doesn’t need to house its enrollment, which has declined by more than 20,000 in the last 10 years. The rapidly growing charter school movement badly needs the space to house its students, many of whom go to school in less than ideal spaces built as churches, offices, and warehouses.

Sadly, in the overview to the plan the superintendent radically reinterprets his mandate, stating that “the Board of Education has directed that we identify [three million square feet] that could potentially be leveraged for educational, operational, and even capital development enhancements” [emphasis added]. The result of this reinterpretation is that much of the “excess” space identified in the MFP is to be retained by DCPS for use as administrative or “swing” space. What space is to be made available for possible use by charter schools (more than half of which lack permanent homes) will be doled out over 14 years.

Another of the many serious flaws in the 1,000 page plan is that DCPS badly overestimates the number of buildings it will need in the future. Sticking their heads deep in the sand, the plan’s authors project that charter school enrollment, which over the last four years has swelled by approximately 2,000 students per year, will increase by only 200 students a year beginning next year, and that DCPS enrollment, which continues to sink, will start to grow. These bizarre projections appear to be based only on wishfull thinking and on pie-in-the-sky estimates of the number of families with children who will be moving into the District (none of whom, evidently, will be enrolling their children in charter schools).

Despite these and other problems with the plan, FOCUS has learned that nearly everyone on the BOE is expected to accept the superintendent’s so-called right-sizing recommendations. The Council and the Senate D.C. Appropriations Subcommittee, however, may not be nearly as accommodating. In the debate over the modernization bill, several Council members expressed skepticism about DCPS’s willingness to downsize, and the Senate D.C. Subcommittee has repeatedly expressed impatience with DCPS’s failure to make meaningful amounts of space available to the charter schools.

This past summer DCPS took steps to deflect this criticism, seeking “letters of interest” from charter schools (and others) on six potentially available spaces. But of these, only one is to be made available in its entirety for long-term lease. At 302,000 square feet and with an “open plan” design, however, it is highly doubtful that this building will be useable by the charter schools. As to the other five spaces, one will be available for only a year and another for around five years; and only some of the space at the remaining three will be available for co-location — at one of them not until 2009-10. Meanwhile, two DCPS spaces now occupied by charter schools will no longer be made available for co-location because of DCPS program consolidations.

Going forward, much of the additional “excess” square footage identified in the MFP will be reserved for use by DCPS itself. For example, DCPS will keep control over nearly a million square feet for use as swing space and more than 300,000 for administrative offices. As to the million or so square feet slated for possible non-DCPS uses, 417,000 won’t be available until at least 2016; of the remainder, it is not clear when much of it will be made available or whether it will be made available to the charter schools. DCPS has in mind public-private development partnerships for a number of these sites, and for others mixed uses that may make the sites undesirable to the charter schools.

Community protest, much in evidence at the public meetings that have taken place so far, is likely to reduce the available space even further.

Superintendent, BOE Members Disavow Post’s Characterization of Intentions, Pledge Collaboration

In an unusual off-site meeting Tuesday morning, Board of Education Vice-Chair Rev. Carolyn Graham, Superintendent Clifford Janey, and three other board members disavowed comments attributed to Janey and one of his top aides by Washington Post reporter Dion Haynes in an article that appeared in Saturday’s paper. A small number of charter school representatives attended the hastily-called 8:00 a.m. meeting.

According to the Post, the Superintendent expressed his intention to intervene directly in charter schools that failed to make AYP. The paper said he would “introduce teacher training programs and quarterly assessments at the 42 troubled charter campuses overseen by both authorities.” He also intended to “monitor improvement plans drafted by principals and teachers and put one of the Board of Education charter schools on a year-round calendar.” “’This will happen in October,’” the Post quotes Janey as saying. “’We will have an approach consistent with what we do with [failing schools] in DCPS as a school system.’”

At the Tuesday meeting, Janey said that his views were misrepresented. “We all know that when you sit with a reporter fact can lead into fiction.” Rather than intervention, Janey said, his intention is to fulfill his responsibility as chief state school officer by providing more services to all public schools, including charter public schools. Both he and Graham insisted that there was no intent to stage a “takeover” of the public charter schools.

It was evident at the meeting, however, that Janey, who also serves as chief state school officer, still feels that he has some right to intervene in schools chartered by the Board of Education, as opposed to those chartered by the D.C. Public Charter School Board. “I did talk with [Haynes] about my role with the schools chartered by the Board of Education, especially about intervention in one of our schools,” he said at the meeting.

But under D.C. law, schools chartered by both boards are entirely independent of the school system and otherwise share the same legal status. Nor can Janey intervene in the charter schools by putting on his chief state school officer hat: under NCLB, in states like D.C. where charter school accountability is the responsibility of the charter authorizers, not the SEA, it is the former that have sole authority to intervene in schools whose performance does not measure up to NCLB standards.

Beyond the discussion of the legal niceties, there was much talk on both sides of the importance of collaboration between the charters and the school system, which the assembled felt should be working together as independent equals to find ways to improve the academic well being of all public school students in the District. To this end, Reverend Graham suggested that a follow-up meeting be scheduled without delay, to which all assented.

FOCUS will continue to closely monitor both the superintendent and board to make sure that the independence of the charter schools is being respected.

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