- D.C. opens center to help drop-outs get back to school
- Parental and teacher engagement at Ahead of the Curve Conference [Center City PCS mentioned]
D.C. opens center to help drop-outs get back to school
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
October 20, 2014
District officials announced Monday the opening of a new centralized office dedicated to helping young high school dropouts get back on track to earn a diploma or GED.
The Youth Reengagement Center in Northeast Washington represents the latest effort to overhaul the city’s public education system by bringing back young adults who had given up on school.
“We can’t financially or morally allow something like this to continue to happen,” Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) said at a ribbon-cutting event, referring to the bleak outcomes for high school dropouts.
Those without a degree are far more likely to live in poverty, become incarcerated and rely on government support.
“We want to get as many of these people back on a path, a constructive path, as we possibly can,” he said.
The District is home to at least 7,493 people ages 16 to 24 who last attended a D.C. public school from 2006-2007 to 2012-2013 and dropped out, according to an analysis by the Office of the State Superintendent for Education that is expected to be released in a few weeks.
That number represents about 14 percent of all city residents in that age group.
More than 40 percent of those considered “disengaged” live in wards 7 and 8. Nearly 60 percent are male, and the vast majority — 86 percent — are African American.
The reengagement center — which has an annual budget of $473,000 and six full-time employees — is modeled after similar programs in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago, officials said.
It centralizes work that a lot of agencies, nonprofits and schools are already doing, with the goal of making a bigger impact on the problem.
In a Department of Employment Services building next to the Minnesota Avenue Metro station, the center has a wall of windows and a row of computers at which people can fill out job applications or play educational games.
Snacks are on hand, and shelves are filled with free school supplies. Visitors can use a comfortable couch in the corner to relax.
“We want this to be a place where young people will come and say, ‘Hey, I did not have anything else to do today. I’m not in class. I’m not at work, but I don’t want to hang out on the street,’ ” said Ja’Sent Brown, director of the center, who has experience coordinating education programs for homeless youth in the city.
Case managers will work with young people to find a fitting school or GED program, and they will help with getting students assessed and enrolled.
The managers also will address the underlying challenges that made school so difficult in the first place by connecting youths to services for housing, child care, transportation and employment.
“We’re going to be with them for one year. One year solid. Holding their hands, encouraging them, telling them, ‘You can make it. You can do it,’ ” Brown said.
The center opened Monday, but 20-year-old Henry Douglas had connected a month ago while the office was getting unpacked.
Douglas moved to the District last winter from Los Angeles, where he had tried to make it as a street performer doing hip-hop dancing.
“I was 19. No job. No money. No home,” he said during the event. “I was falling into a deep hole that I did not know how to get out of. Every day I would walk around the street trying to find a way to support myself.”
Douglas was staying with his sister, who sent him to the Department of Employment Services.
When he did not qualify for any programs, he received a referral to a case manager at the reengagement center.
Just a few weeks later, Douglas said, his outlook has significantly improved.
He is working at Marshalls and as a custodian at Howard University. He plans to enroll at Ballou Senior High School. He also is on a waiting list for housing.
“I can tell you I’m a different person than I was last month,” Douglas said.
Parental and teacher engagement at Ahead of the Curve Conference [Center City PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
October 21, 2014
I was extremely fortunate to be able to attend the afternoon sessions last Thursday of the Ahead of the Curve: Implementing the Common Core State Standards in DC conference organized by Fight for Children and the DC Public Charter School Board. The meeting was held at the beautiful and modern Discover Education building in Silver Spring, Maryland. I began my visit by joining a breakout session entitled "Building a Foundation for Family Engagement in the Common Core State Standards" led by Regan Kelly, director of leadership development, Flamboyan Foundation, and featuring Shavonne Gibson, principal of the Brightwood Campus of Center City Public Charter School.
I have been interested for a long time in becoming more acquainted with the Flamboyan Foundation's work since many of the school leaders I have interviewed that serve with low income children (Lars Beck of Scholars Academies comes immediately to mind) have taken advantage of their parental involvement strategies. Ms. Kelly did not disappoint. She began her presentation by placing up on the screen a list of 20 activities schools often perform in order to increase parent engagement. These include such things as school newsletters, interactive homework, and performances and showcases. She then asked the group of educators gathered around a large conference table to rank the ones which they thought have been shown to be most effective. There were nine that she informed us rise to the top which include classroom observations, modeling of learning support strategies, positive phone calls home, parent help on learning projects, parent help on administrative tasks, goal-setting talks, weekly data-sharing folders, home visits, and regular, personalized communications.
The highlight for me was a description of a new way of conducting parent-teacher conferences called the Academic Parent Teacher Team (APTT) meeting. These 75 minute sessions take place in a group setting with parents being provided data as to how their child is performing in reading and math compared to the class as a whole. (The data is coded using numbers to keep the identity of the individual students anonymous.) Parents are taught the methodologies used to arrive at these figures and then practice taking the assessments themselves. Finally, the moms and dads are taught techniques, in my example using games that can be played with the children, to reinforce what is being taught in the classroom. I've included a link to a video that shows an example of an APTT meeting at Stanton Elementary, a DCPS facility run by Scholars Academies.
Ms. Gibson supported the tools described by Ms. Kelly that she has implemented at her Center City campus to improve parental engagement. She was an early adopter of the APTT and described providing her parents with a daily wake-up call to ensure that kids make it to school during the week. Ms. Gibson explained that only once a student demonstrates consistent attendance do the early morning communications cease.
After the hour and a half meetings the approximately 140 attendees were invited to join together for the closing discussion. This one featured Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup Education, and was moderated by Helen Westmoreland, a deputy director of the Flamboyan Foundation. I am exceedingly familiar with Gallup's employee engagement research through my job at the George Washington University Hospital and Mr. Busteed's remarks were in many ways similar to data I had seen in the past.
He began his address by talking about the unfortunate politicization of opinions toward the Common Core Standards. He said that only two years ago 62 percent of the public had not heard about the Common Core; now 81 percent are familiar with the term. Mr. Busteed explained that support for the standards breaks down along party lines. Among Democrats 53 percent are in favor of the standards and 76 percent of Republicans are against them. What Mr. Busteed was most concerned about was the way people are learning about the Common Core. Half of the public, he revealed, find out about the subject through the media. He asserted that only 17 percent of individuals hear about this topic through teachers and just 9 percent know about it through schools.
His discussion around teacher engagement was equally fascinating. Gallup customarily relies on 12 questions answered on a scale from one to five, with five being best, to determine the level of employee engagement or happiness at work. He said that teachers score the lowest of any profession including doctors, lawyers, and firefighters, on the inquiry "At work, do my opinions seem to count?" In response to a topic I asked about the Gallup executive director related that there are two other questions that primarily drive teacher work satisfaction. Those include "In the last seven days I have received recognition or praise for doing good work?" and "In the last 12 months someone has talked to me about my progress?" He added that in general teachers are an especially satisfied group concerning their career choice so that if schools work on improving teacher responses to these three areas then engagement can be raised to an exceedingly high level.
The meeting concluded with small group discussions around the points Mr. Busteed had made and then there was a cocktail reception to close out the conference. In all it was a most enlightening way to spend the latter half of my day.