FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

September 3, 2008

--Sixty Charters Greet Students on 96 Campuses
--Improvement in DCPS Academic Performance Shows that D.C. School Reform Isn’t A Zero-Sum Game
--Teacher’s Union President Says Charter Competition Driving Improvements in DCPS Student Achievement
--For Washington Post, Back to School is All About DCPS
--Government, Pleading Poverty, Misses Conversion School Payment; Concurrently, “Reprograms” Charter School Funds to Other Agencies and Finds $15 Million for DCPS

Sixty Charters Greet Students on 96 Campuses

As many as 26,000 D.C. public school students are expected to take seats this year in the ever more popular public charter schools, which now number 60 on 96 campuses. The official enrollment count won’t be held until early October, but estimates vary from a low of 25,996 (D.C. Public Charter School Board) to a high of 26,476 (Chief Financial Officer). The lower figure would represent an increase of approximately 18% from last year. Charter school enrollment has grown by an average of around 14% per year since 2000.

Six brand new charters are welcoming students this year, including Washington Yu Ying PCS, a Chinese immersion, International Baccalaureate school opening with pre-K through first-grade students; and the seven-campus Center City PCS (pre-k through eighth), a Catholic school conversion. The other new schools are Achievement Preparatory Academy (opening with grades four and five); Excel Academy (an all-girls school opening pre-S through K); Imagine Southeast (opening with pre-K through third; single-gender classrooms); and Thea Bowman (opening with fifth and sixth).

In addition to the six new schools, four existing schools are opening new campuses: Capital City (upper school); Community Academy (elementary); D.C. Preparatory Academy (pre-S—pre-K); and Washington Latin (eighth and ninth).

Improvement in DCPS Academic Performance Shows that D.C. School Reform Isn’t A Zero-Sum Game

Some members of the D.C. Council have argued that DCPS can’t improve as long as parents continue to send their children to charters in ever-increasing numbers. These members have suggested that a moratorium on chartering or a cap on charter school enrollment is required to stop the outflow from DCPS [see 4/15/08 Bulletin at http://www.focusdc.org/news/news.asp?View=Bulletins]. DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee, however, has taken the opposite view, stating repeatedly that whether DCPS improves has everything to do with how DCPS operates and nothing to do with the charter schools, and she’s said thanks but no thanks to limiting parental choice to protect the school system from competition.

We now know that Rhee was right. DCPS students improved significantly on the 2007-2008 DC-CAS (D.C.’s standardized test), a year when seven new charter schools opened up and DCPS enrollment sank by 6%. This proves (we hope once and for all) that DCPS, whatever its size, can do well in a flourishing public school choice environment. And the scores of charter school students went up, too, putting the lie to the zero-sum argument.

Teacher’s Union President Says Charter Competition Driving Improvements in DCPS Student Achievement

>From an interview with George Parker in Teacher Quality Bulletin, August 29, 2008:

“Have your views of the role of the union changed over time? How?

“I think it has a lot to do with the landscape in the system right now. We have the second highest number of charter schools—-56 or 57 charters. So we are in a competitive market here in D.C..

“The union has now had to take on a dual role. Previously our main concern was bread and butter issues--to make sure teachers have good benefits and working conditions. We didn’t have to be that concerned about keeping children in [D.C. schools]. But now around 21,000 of our students are in charters and around 45,000 in public schools. We lost 6,000 students last year. The charter schools have created a competition where the very survival of the union and the job security of our teachers is not dependent on the language in our contract. It is dependent on our ability to recruit and maintain students because we are funded pretty much by the number of students we have enrolled in the public system.

“It puts the union in a different light. It's not just the contract that protects jobs but also student enrollment.

“We are expanding our professional development because that impacts student achievement and if parents perceive we improve student achievement then we stand a better chance of getting students back who moved to charter schools. The more students we have, the more teachers we can employ, and the more security we can develop in terms of jobs.“

Mr. Parker tells it like it is; let’s hope someone is listening.

[TQ Bulletin is a monthly e-mail newsletter of the National Council on Teacher Quality]

For Washington Post, Back to School is All About DCPS

D.C.’s 60 public charter schools barely registered in the annual “Back to School” edition of the Washington Post’s “District Extra.” Of a total of approximately 320 column inches devoted to DCPS and the charters, the latter merited just 16 column inches of text in one of the 11 back-to-school articles.

For the Extra, charter schools might as well not exist. Their students evidently are incapable of reflection (“Students Reflect on a New School Year”); their new principals face no challenges (“For 46 New Principals, Schools Present a Serious Ultimatum: Succeed or Leave”) and their school buildings require no work to get them ready for the new year (“From Obsolete to State of the Art”).

We wonder how many more charter schools need to open, and how much more their enrollments need to increase, before these schools and their students become visible to local news departments (not to mention gain the support of D.C. politicians — see article below).

Government, Pleading Poverty, Misses Conversion School Payment; Concurrently, “Reprograms” Charter School Funds to Other Agencies and Finds $15 Million for DCPS

The Fenty administration missed a legally-mandated $4.25 million payment owed to Center City PCS on July 15, claiming that it would not be able to locate the money until October 25 (when the second of four FY 2009 quarterly payments to charter schools is due).

Center City is the product of the conversion of seven formerly Catholic schools. The Fenty administration and the Council refused to include funding for the school in the FY 2009 budget, ostensibly because formal approval of the conversion by the D.C. Public Charter School Board would not come until mid-June, after the budget already had been sent to Congress for approval. The administration and some Council members then campaigned against the conversion, claiming that there were no funds in city coffers for the 600 or so D.C. resident students who would move from the Catholic schools to the new charter school in the fall.

After approval of the conversion on June 16, the government acknowledged that it had an obligation to fund Center City’s students, but claimed that it would take until October 25th to find the money to do so.

But in the midst of this supposed funding shortage the government managed to find $15 million to cover “unforeseen spending pressures within DCPS,” while at the same time “reprogramming” $8 million of unspent FY 2008 charter school funding to two government agencies that find themselves a little short on cash.

The government claims that under its rules FY 2008 money can’t be used to cover FY 2009 expenses. Perhaps. But the government also claims, falsely, that under the law it couldn’t make the July 15 payment to Center City from the fund it drew on to make that payment to the other 59 charter schools because Center City wasn’t included in the ‘09 budget. The truth is that the government had a legal obligation to make the Center City payment from that fund or from another fund of its choosing. In any case, as has been proven many times, the government always manages to find the money (at any time of the year) for its own priorities. Does anyone really think it would have failed to come up with the four million dollars if the former Catholic school kids had enrolled in DCPS schools?

As to the $15 million transfer to DCPS, the majority of the money appears to be intended to cover DCPS operating expenses in excess of its FY 2008 budget. Under the School Reform Act, charter schools are entitled to a pro-rata share of this funding, but will not get it, just as they did not get a share of an $81 million supplemental appropriation to DCPS last school year.

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