- D.C. charter schools deserve equal funding
- Reconsidering standardized test score data [Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS mentioned]
- How to expand who gets gifted services
D.C. charter schools deserve equal funding
The Washington Times
By Nina Rees
October 21, 2014
As Washington gets ready to select a new mayor, D.C. voters should insist that to get their vote, a candidate should pledge to provide all students in the District equitable treatment when it comes to school funding — a moral and legal requirement the current and previous mayors have ignored.
The sad reality is that the D.C. government has been underfunding charter schools for years, and now parents of charter school students are suing to force the D.C. government to provide these students the funding they are supposedly guaranteed by law.
D.C. law states that every public school student in the District should be equally funded according to a specific funding formula, but the city government simply ignored this requirement by underfunding charter schools. Each year, D.C. charter schools get between $1,600 and $2,600 per student less than traditional schools. As a result, over the course of eight years, D.C. charter school students have missed out on more than $770 million in funding.
This happens in a number of ways. For instance, the D.C. government pays public charter schools for the students they actually enroll — as shown by a government audit — but they pay traditional D.C. public schools on the basis of the number of students the government estimates will attend. It continuously overestimates the number. When the D.C. government pays for these phantom students, there’s less money available for real kids.
Public charter school students also get shortchanged because D.C. government agencies provide tens of millions of dollars in free services to regular public schools, while charter schools have to pay for these services out of their own, usually insufficient, budgets. To make matters worse, the D.C. government makes up the deficit for D.C. Public Schools when it overspends its budget, while charter schools that spend more than budgeted are on their own.
This intentional or unconscious institutional hostility to charter school and those who attend them affects the 45 percent of D.C. students who attend such schools, 74 percent of whom are black. By underfunding them, the D.C. government is not only breaking its own laws, but penalizing often excellent schools to subsidize schools that aren’t doing nearly as well. Students attending the city’s charter schools consistently outperform their traditional public school peers on standardized tests. Underfunding has been allowed to go on for too long, even though charter school students are more likely to come from low-income families.
It would be one thing if these schools weren’t performing. Students who attend and graduate from the city’s charter schools have an on-time graduation rate fully 21 percent higher than the average for D.C. public schools, which means more of their students have a shot at a college education.
East of the Anacostia River, where poverty, unemployment and crime are highest, charter schools have had their biggest impact. Charter students outscore their public school counterparts in reading and math by 18 percentage points in one ward and 28 points in the other.
Imagine how much more charter schools could do for D.C. students if they had the resources they should.
The charter schools who have filed the lawsuit aren’t asking the D.C. government to make up for past underfunding, but simply to provide equal funding in the future — as the law requires. This isn’t a question of pitting the financial interests of charter schools against the financial interests of traditional schools. This is about making sure that a student benefits from the same amount of funding whether he or she attends a traditional public school or a public charter school. That’s simple fairness.
The success of D.C.’s charter schools has had positive spillover effects for the rest of the city’s schools. Under the leadership of two reforming school chancellors, Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson, and with the example of the reforms implemented by charter schools, student test scores and graduation rates have risen across the board. This is an educational renaissance that D.C. students, parents and teachers can be proud of.
The law in the nation’s capital is clear, and the District’s charter school have proven their value. The court case filed by the D.C. charter school community exposes the inequality in funding that D.C. officials have allowed to continue for too long. This year’s candidates for mayor should be required to insist that all our children, especially those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, get equal education funding, regardless of which public school they attend.
Reconsidering standardized test score data [Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
October 21, 2014
Standardized test scores such as performance on the DC Comprehensive Assessment System (DC CAS), SAT, or Advanced Placement exams are often the primary measurement of assessing school quality. As parents, teachers, and administrators, we want to know how our students are performing against college and career readiness metrics, with an eye on preparing youth for success in the next steps of their lives.
At Thurgood Marshall Academy, a high performing charter high school in Ward 8, we also look to another data point , one that receives scant public attention, for evidence of a school’s value: Median Growth Percentile (MGP).
MGP is a particularly salient data point. As a chart of a students’ academic growth, MGP shows the impact of our school’s programming over time, providing information on how much students outgrew their peers at other schools on the 10th grade DC CAS since they last took the test in 8th grade.
In 2012, Thurgood Marshall Academy students had the highest high school MGP in both reading and math, at 75.1 and 81.4, respectively. This means that our 10th graders scored better than 75.1% of their peers in reading, and better than 81.4% of their peers in math among those peers who had similar test scores as they did in the 8th grade. By comparison, the average MGP for Ward 8’s DCPS and public charter high schools was just 55.72. Had our students attended these neighboring schools, their likelihood of achieving dramatic academic growth in just two years would have been significantly lower.
Academic growth is also important when comparing Thurgood Marshall Academy to other high-performing schools because we work with a wide range of students. As a stand-alone, non-selective high school, Thurgood Marshall Academy accepts any student in the city who is admitted through the My School DC lottery. We have no academic requirements for admissions, and we don’t have a feeder middle school pattern. Our students, 85% of whom reside in East of the River communities, come from 60 different area middle schools. The vast majority of our 9th graders arrive with math and reading skills well below grade level, most often in the 5th – 6th grade range. We have just two years to make sure our students are prepared for the challenge of what comes next: college and career.
As 9th and 10th graders, our students’ futures are on the line. With so many entering high school with reading and math skills far below grade level, we have the dual challenge of preparing our students for college while simultaneously bringing them up to grade level proficiency.
As middle schoolers, post-secondary options for most of our students seemed distant, if not impossible. Thurgood Marshall Academy transforms such struggling 9th graders into college-ready juniors and seniors through rigorous, data-driven instruction led by talented teachers, an unwavering belief in each students’ ability to perform to high academic standards, and a suite of wrap-around support services that ensure that students are engaged in school. Our teachers have an average of 6.5 years in the classroom. At Thurgood Marshall Academy they also partake in regular professional development, both in house and in external opportunities, which means they are constantly refining their craft, ensuring their students receive the highest quality instruction. This model works because of our faculty expertise, and the commitment of the entire school community, including teachers, staff, administrators, partners, volunteers, and even the students themselves, in setting and holding high expectations for each of our students.
Thurgood Marshall Academy prepares students for the transition to college preparatory academics before their first day of high school. In Summer Prep, the summer prior to 9th grade, students take intensive courses in reading, writing, and math, in addition to keyboarding, a critical skill for students in an effort to get them get caught up to grade level. Once their 9th grade year begins, all students take 90 minutes of English and math classes per day, twice as much as they would expect in many other high schools, building a strong foundation for college preparatory coursework. Our 9th and 10th graders take part in regular, benchmark testing to reveal where they need additional help. Based on this, we are able to offer targeted support that meets students’ needs. But our support extends beyond the classroom. We remove the barriers to success that low-income students experience in getting to school, making sure our students are in school and learning.
Junior Darrius Cook, whose 10th grade DC CAS scores from 2014 indicate that his growth over the past two years was in the 80th percentile, reflects that "it was the extra stuff that really helped me get it." As an 11th grader, he’s now an honors student who is heavily involved in the school’s music club and band and preparing for his first official SAT test through a semester-long SAT prep class taught at by one of Thurgood Marshall Academy’s English teachers.
The type of immense academic growth that Darrius and his peers experience has a ripple effect: with a solid academic foundation, students progress onto more complex subject matter, with some even taking courses at local colleges during their senior year. Across ten graduating classes, 100% of our graduates have been accepted to college, and two out of three of Thurgood Marshall Academy alumni graduate from college. This is above the national average of 54% college graduation across all demographic subgroups, and well above the Ward 8 average (10%).
We’re proud of our long-term impact on youth from Ward 8, because we know it all starts in the first two years of high school, a “make-or-break” period in a student’s life that can forever alter their future prospects. Our students’ MGP is our first indication that they are back on track – not only to meet local and national proficiency standards – but to realizing their future goals and aspirations.
How to expand who gets gifted services
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
October 21, 2014
There were more than 140 comments on my last Local Living column, where I said gifted education programs were too selective and did not appear to educate bright children any better than challenging courses we offer everyone in this region.
This is a sensitive topic, particularly with parents of gifted children. I expected the worst of those comments, but instead, they were intelligent and unthreatening. Many shared my yearning for more research on the issue. I did some more reading and reacquainted myself with the work of Joseph Renzulli, a University of Connecticut scholar who has much to say about how gifted programs can work for all students.
Like me, Renzulli thinks gifted programs in public schools have admission rules that are too restrictive. Many designate only 5 percent or less of the student population for gifted services. Renzulli’s research has convinced him that 10 to 15 percent of students could benefit from the gifted services we have now. Even a few students below that level who have demonstrated unusual motivation and performance in certain areas should be included, he said. “That’s how we find the Edisons and the Helen Kellers,” he said.
How does he propose finding that untapped reservoir? He says schools should consider not only students who score high on achievement or intelligence tests — the most-used method — but also those who show unusual intelligence, perseverance and creativity at home or school and are nominated by their teachers, parents or themselves.
He calls this the Schoolwide Enrichment Model. He has been working on it since the mid-1970s. The idea is to identify and enhance not only academic giftedness but what Renzulli calls “creative-productive” giftedness. He and his wife, Sally M. Reis, like him an educational psychologist, defined this in a recent report as human activity that places a premium “on the development of original material and products.”
They say giftedness is a combination of “above average ability, high levels of task commitment, and high levels of creativity.” They want to move from deciding who is gifted and who isn’t to developing academic talent and creative behavior in students who have a great potential “as well as the provision of some types of general enrichment for all students.”
Their program, used in about 2,000 schools, including six D.C. public middle schools, focuses on three kinds of enrichment: (1) exposing students to a wide variety of disciplines, occupations, hobbies and people to stimulate new interests, (2) training in creative thinking and problem-solving and learning research and communication skills and (3) creating individual or small-group projects inspired and nurtured by the first two types of enrichment or regular curriculum experiences.
As an example, they cite a Massachusetts fifth-grader who turned her interest in Louisa May Alcott and cooking into “The Louisa May Alcott Cookbook” — the first contract its publisher ever signed with a child author.
Renzulli and Reis have research indicating that their method has benefited nearly all teachers and students at some schools. They say it helps educators identify talents in students who were not designated as gifted. Its projects enhance learning. It accelerates instruction for many so there is more time for enrichment.
But there is a problem. Many schools that welcome their system are often motivated by what they call “mistaken beliefs,” such as the notion that the Renzulli method will let the school do away with teachers trained to teach advanced and creative students and eliminate grouping of some students by ability, achievement or interests.
When budgets are cut, enrichment specialists and gifted teacher slots are often the first to go. Money has always been the issue with helping our brightest kids. Many legislators and taxpayers think that if those students are so smart, they don’t need extra help. In the next and final column in this series, I will suggest ways to deal with that.