FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

January 28, 2008

--D.C. KIDS COUNT Report Confirms Substantial Achievement Advantage for DCPCSB Charters, Proving Merits of Charter School Autonomy, Increased Accountability — But Will Pols Pay Attention?
--Opinion Survey Shows Strong Public Support for D.C. Charters
--OSSE Analysis Debunks PCS Post-Audit Dumping Myth
--Mayor Transfers Surplus School Building Back to DCPS; The More Things Change....
--Raft of Recently Introduced Bills Would Affect Special Education and Other Programs, Slow Charter School Access to Facilities

D.C. KIDS COUNT Report Confirms Substantial Achievement Advantage for DCPCSB Charters, Proving Merits of Charter School Autonomy, Increased Accountability — But Will Pols Pay Attention?

The just-released 2007 “Every Kid Counts” report issued by D.C. KIDS COUNT, a collaborative of 16 D.C. organizations committed to improving the health and well-being of D.C. children, presents data that strongly supports the longstanding charter school claim that public charter schools, given the freedom to be more innovative in exchange for increased accountability, will improve student achievement dramatically better than traditional public schools. According to the report, an analysis of 2007 DC-CAS data shows that “of the DCPS students tested [in reading in grades 3-8 and 10] in 2007, 36 percent of students scored proficient or above....Of the PCSB students tested in 2007, 47 percent of students scored proficient or above....” [page 25]. On average, students at schools chartered by the Board of Education scored below the state average in reading.

The PCS advantage is even more dramatic at the higher grade levels, which contain the hardest to educate students: “[T]he difference in test scores between PCSB students and both BOE and DCPS students in the later grades is more than substantial. For example, the share of DCPS 8th-grade students scoring proficient or above in reading was 27% in 2007, while the percent of PCSB 8th grade students scoring proficient or advanced was 54% [page 26; emphasis added].”

Math scores showed similar disparities.

The D.C. Public Charter School Board, which has chartered two-thirds of D.C.’s 55 charter schools, is nationally known in the charter school movement for the quality of its chartering process and the comprehensiveness of its accountability program (see Bulletin 11/2/07 at http://www.focusdc.org/news/news.asp?View=Bulletins). The PCSB recently has been given jurisdiction over the eighteen schools that were chartered by the now defunct Board of Education, which did no better as a charter authorizer than it had done running the school system. Happily, a number of BOE charters are high performing and will have no trouble meeting the standards of the PCSB; the others will have to do better soon or will lose their charters (one revocation is already in process).

Only one of the 16 organizations comprising the D.C. KIDS COUNT Collaborative is connected with the charter school movement (FOCUS is not a member); the others are the Children’s National Medical Center, D.C. Action for Children, the D.C. Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation, the D.C. Dept. of Human Services Early Care and Education Administration, D.C. Learns, the D.C. Department of Health, the D.C. Public Library, DCPS, the East River Family Strengthening Collaborative, the Metropolitan Police Department Office of Youth Violence Prevention, the Office of D.C. Council President Vincent Gray, So Others Might Eat, Child and Family Services Agency, The Urban Institute’s Neighborhood Info D.C., and the Washington Hospital Center.

The clear conclusion to be drawn from the “Every Kid Counts” report is that the promise of the public charter schools — to improve student achievement in exchange for the freedom to be more innovative than schools controlled by the bureaucracy -- is being kept. But this conclusion is at odds with what many D.C. officeholders express in private (and sometimes in public): that the charter schools are “not accountable” and that they are performing no better than the traditional public schools. These beliefs make it possible for the government to ignore charter school pleas for space in which to house their students, for police protection, and for equitable funding (DCPS was just given $81 million dollars outside the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula), when it should be encouraging the charter schools and supporting the tens of thousands of parents who send their children to them.

The data also support the conclusion that one of the quickest and best ways to improve the school system would be to give charter-like autonomy to as many system schools as possible; Chancellor Rhee evidently is considering this idea.

Opinion Poll Shows Strong Public Support for D.C. Charters

According to a public opinion poll recently commissioned by FOCUS, the public is far ahead of the politicians in their support for the District’s public charter schools. The poll, conducted in November by the Glover Park Group, a nationally-known D.C.-based polling firm, shows that 49% of D.C. residents favor the charters, while 19% are opposed and 32% aren’t sure. The percent favoring charters was highest in Wards 7 and 8 (55%), followed by Wards 1-3 (52%). Forty-five percent of residents in Wards 4-6 favor charters (as opposed to 21% opposed); Ward 6 is home to the virulently anti-charter school group Save Our Schools, while Ward 5 has been the scene of recent zoning battles involving charters.

When the respondents were given a simple definition of “charter school,” [autonomous pubic schools given the freedom to innovate to improve student achievement in exchange for greater accountability] the “unsure” figure dropped dramatically and the percent favoring charters increased to 64% District-wide and to 70% in Wards 7-8, 57% in Wards 4-6, and 69% in Wards 1-3.

OSSE Analysis Debunks PCS Post-Audit Dumping Myth

One of the favorite claims of the anti-charter forces in D.C. has been that charter schools enroll significant numbers of students prior to the October enrollment count that they intend to get rid of after the count is audited (only students enrolled by the count date are funded), forcing DCPS to educate them while the charters keep the money. Because the state has never had a student tracking system, those asserting this claim had no evidence to support it. Even so, it became widely accepted by D.C. politicians, evidently including the new DCPS chancellor, whose speeches began to reference the supposed inequity soon after her arrival in D.C.

The truth is now out. Appearing before the Committee of the Whole on December 4, Chief State School Officer Deborah Gist, under whose leadership a student tracking system finally has been implemented, testified that only 109 students transferred from public charter schools to DCPS following the audit. This figure represents just two-tenths of 1 percent of DCPS enrollment, and pales in comparison to the hundreds of students who transferred within DCPS following the audit and the nearly 1,200 new students who enrolled in either the charter schools or DCPS following the audit and for which the schools receive no funding.

Mayor Transfers Surplus School Building Back to DCPS; The More Things Change....

Charters in the District are experiencing another Yogi Berra moment: it’s deja vu all over again as the Fenty administration has transferred a long-empty surplus school building back to DCPS. The school system claimed to need the former Reno School for “additional programming, including early childhood education, pre-kindergarten, and specialty programs in music and arts....” Fenty’s predecessor, Tony Williams, transferred two surplus buildings back to DCPS in 2002 over the strenuous objections of the charter schools. DCPS, which at the time had around 3 million square feet of space it wasn’t using (the figure today exceeds 5 million), claimed to need the two buildings for special education, among other purposes, but did nothing with either building except watch them rot. One of the buildings, the former Bruce School, was finally taken back by the mayor and made available to the charter schools in 2007; the other, the Addison School, not that far from Reno, continues to crumble.

The School Reform Act, D.C.’s charter school law, gives the charters a right of first offer on all surplus school buildings (and on all excess space still under the control of the school system), whenever the space is to be sold, leased, or transferred, but the requirement has regularly been ignored by the government and the school system. This has forced the majority of the charters to locate in expensive commercial space, often lacking basic amenities such as playgrounds, gymnasia, and libraries.

Raft of Recently Introduced Bills Would Affect Special Education and Other Programs, Slow Charter School Access to Facilities

Three bills introduced in the Council over the last two months would impose significant burdens on the public charter schools if enacted into law. Two other bills could make it more difficult for the mayor and chancellor to get more surplus and underutilized DCPS space into the hands of the charters.

Special Education, “Financial Literacy,” and Green Buildings

The Special Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007 [B17-0371], introduced by Carol Schwartz and five other Council members and co-sponsored by another three, would require all public schools in D.C. to re-evaluate all IEP’s (Individual Education Plans) in accordance with a “detailed plan” to be developed by the state superintendent of education. The bill also would require the superintendent to develop a plan specifying the “curriculum and program modifications” and “facilities modifications” that each public school would have to make to “accommodate special education students.”

Another bill, the Financial Literacy Council Establishment Act of 2007 [B17-0434], introduced by Mary Cheh and three other members and co-sponsored by an additional eight, would require the chancellor, state board of education, and state superintendent of education to “develop a plan to establish and implement a financial literacy education program for District high school students.” The bill also would establish a “financial literacy council” to help the mayor further the financial literacy of D.C. residents.

A third bill, the Green Schools Amendment Act of 2007 [B17-0435] introduced by Cheh and three others and co-sponsored by another seven, would amend the Green Building Act of 2006 [D.C. Law 16-234] to establish a timeline for imposing green building requirements on public schools, including public charter schools. If the bill passes, all public schools would have to meet LEED* certification standards by the beginning of the 2020-21 school year. Beginning immediately, public schools would have to use “every practicable means to ensure” that construction and renovation are done in accordance with green standards and also to use green appliances; and beginning in 2009, each public school would have to be inspected for compliance with the LEED Compliance Checklist.

[*Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. This is a green building rating system designed by the United States Green Building Council]

As far as is known, the drafters of these bills did not discuss their content with the charter schools or their advocates prior to the bills’ introduction. Nor, apparently, did the drafters take into account the provisions of D.C.’s charter school law, the School Reform Act, which protects the charters from attempts by government officials to control their programs and practices. Specifically, the SRA gives each charter school “exclusive control” over its expenditures, administration, personnel, and instructional methods; also, the SRA, in a sweeping rejection of government interference in school operations, exempts each charter school from “District of Columbia statutes, policies, rules, and regulations established for [DCPS] by the Superintendent, Board of Education, Mayor, [and] District of Columbia Council....” It is clear from this language that the drafters of the SRA did not want the government imposing on the charter schools the requirements that, inevitably, it would want to impose on the school system.

The charters do, of course, have to obey health, safety, and civil rights laws, including special education laws. Even so, it is not at all clear that the Council has the authority to require schools that are in compliance with federal special education laws to redo valid IEP’s or to make curricular or program modifications not required by federal law.

Facilities

Two other bills, if passed, could delay and otherwise limit charter school access to surplus and excess public school property. The School Closing Fairness and Accountability Act of 2007 [B17-0536], introduced by Marion Barry and Harry Thomas Jr., and co-sponsored by Yvette Alexander and Kwame Brown, would enable schools recommended for closure to avoid that fate by co-locating with charter schools, day care programs, other educational programs, or “agencies related to economic development.” No mention is made in the bill of the right to first offer on these properties guaranteed to the charter schools by the School Reform Act. The bill also requires that the chancellor make “all efforts... to preserve a school in its location.” If her efforts are unsuccessful she is to make a “preliminary recommendation” to the mayor to close the school; if the latter agrees to the closure he must forward the recommendation to the Council, which must then hold a hearing and “approve [the recommendation] in whole or in part.”

Finally, the Public Land Surplus Amendment Act of 2007, [B17-0527] also introduced by Barry and Thomas and co-sponsored by Phil Mendelson and Kwame Brown, would establish an onerous and time-consuming process for disposing of D.C. surplus property, including public schools. Under the bill, when seeking council approval to sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of a property, the mayor would have to provide the council with a “detailed explanation” of why the property has no alternate use under the District’s Master Facilities Plan, Community Development Plan, Comprehensive Plan, Strategic Neighborhood Area Plan, Comprehensive Housing Strategy, or 10-year Plan to End Homelessness. In addition, for each building the mayor would be required to prepare a cost-benefit analysis of the proposed disposition and describe the “social factors” that he considered before proposing the disposition. Prior to submitting all of this information to the council, the mayor would have to hold a minimum of two public hearings and mail a notice of the hearings to all houses in the same zip code as the property. As if all of this weren’t enough to ensure that few if any properties could be disposed of, the bill would permit any member of the public to sue to stop the disposition, either on behalf of himself or of the public at large.

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