- Residents feel mayoral control has muffled the public's voice in education
- D.C. schools to expand STEM courses with $2 million Lockheed Martin grant
- Hispanic students are making steady math progress
- Two new studies show charter schools can work — if you give them time
Residents feel mayoral control has muffled the public's voice in education
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
November 7, 2014
Mayoral control of DC's schools may have speeded reform, but many residents feel they have less input into education decisions than they used to, according to a new report. The report also found that people are worried charter school growth is threatening the stability of DC Public Schools.
Community members interviewed for the report complained that it was often hard to know who to approach for help in DC's confusing education landscape. They also said communication from education officials is often a one-way process that doesn't allow the public meaningful influence.
"These are things that make it difficult for stakeholders to access the system," said Heather Harding, a lead author of the report, which focused on community and family engagement in education. "I think it would be a shame to squander goodwill on the part of citizens who really want to be involved in education around the city."
In addition, many of those interviewed said they wanted to see greater coordination between the charter sector and DCPS, with charters filling in educational gaps in the overall system rather than competing with traditional public schools.
The report is the product of a research consortium called EdCORE, headed by the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University. Harding is EdCORE's executive director.
The 2007 statute that abolished DC's local school board and introduced the era of mayoral control—the Public Education Reform Amendment Act, or PERAA—also required regular independent reports on how well the new system was working. The report on community engagement is the fifth in a series of reports in response to that mandate, all of which can be viewed on the website of the DC Auditor.
Harding and her team interviewed 14 officials representing all of DC's education agencies as well as staff of the DC Council. They also interviewed 14 stakeholders drawn from community parent groups and other education-focused organizations.
Some say mayoral control reduced public engagement
PERAA abolished the local school board and gave the mayor direct power to appoint the chancellor and control DC Public Schools. The rationale was that the board's political nature made it hard to introduce school reforms. But many of those quoted in the report say that without it, it's hard for parents and others to be engaged in decisions affecting education.
While the officials interviewed said they do want to engage the community, the report says few could point to specifics about how they would do that. And some were ambivalent about how much engagement they want.
One official said that stakeholders "should have a spot at the 'proverbial table.'" But the official then added, "Do I mean that while someone is creating a curriculum or a new school that's opening that a parent should be right at the table while you are writing? No, of course not."
Concerns about charter growth and integration
One thing the report made clear is that those interviewed were wary of the growth of the charter sector. The stakeholders interviewed saw mayoral control as applying only to DC Public Schools and were frustrated that charter schools weren't integrated into an overall system.
One stakeholder, echoing DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson, complained that the rapid growth of the charter sector is "cannibalizing" DCPS.
Scott Pearson, executive director of the Public Charter School Board, challenged the report's even-handedness. "We found it surprisingly biased for what we had expected would be a careful and ideologically neutral process," he said.
Harding responded that the samples used in the report, while small, were representative. She said researchers interviewed and considered the views of PCSB officials along with those of officials at DCPS, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education, the State Board of Education, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, and the newly revived Office of the School Ombudsman.
Of the 14 stakeholders interviewed, two identified as charter advocates and two represented DCPS parent groups, Harding said. The remainder were affiliated with ward-level education councils or District-wide groups.
Harding did acknowledge that DCPS stakeholders were probably more heavily represented among those interviewed than those from the charter community, estimating that the split was about 70% to 30%. In the District as a whole, about 45% of public school students attend charters.
One reason for the over-representation of DCPS stakeholders may be that charter school parents are more likely to be active at the school level than in ward or District-level organizations because charter schools operate with more independence than DCPS.
But Harding said that even if members of the parent groups contacted by her team were more focused on DCPS, they also represented the concerns of charter parents. "They would focus on DCPS as an entity," she said, "because it was the thing you could grab on to. But if you asked about charters, they would tell you similar things."
Bright spots include parent home visits and the boundary review process
The report did point to a few bright spots in a generally bleak picture. The model of parent engagement promoted by the Flamboyan Foundation, which includes teacher visits to students' homes, "has been warmly received throughout the city," the report said.
Interviewees also praised the school boundary overhaul process led by Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith. They saw it as an unusual instance of genuine two-way communication between a government agency and the public.
Some also saw the revivals of the DC Council's Committee on Education and the Office of the Ombudsman for Public Education as possible pathways for public input. Others, however, warned that neither of these outlets would be enough.
The report refrained from making any recommendations, but it did conclude that the next mayor "would be well advised to articulate a vision that improves transparency on important decisions" and "assures collaboration."
The National Research Council will issue a more comprehensive report on the effects of mayoral control in DC in April of next year, Harding said. The NRC will draw on the EdCORE reports in formulating its own evaluation.
D.C. schools to expand STEM courses with $2 million Lockheed Martin grant
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
November 8, 2014
The D.C. public school system is poised to dramatically expand its science, technology, engineering and math offerings, thanks to a multimillion-dollar grant from Lockheed Martin.
The Bethesda-based global security and aerospace company announced Friday that it has committed $6 million to Project Lead the Way, a nonprofit STEM curriculum provider, to train teachers and build programs in urban school districts, starting with D.C. Public Schools.
The District expects to receive about $2 million in training and course materials over time, enough for every school in the District to implement the program.
“We want to show kids there are more career opportunities than doctor, lawyer or teacher,” Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said Friday afternoon at McKinley Middle School in Northeast. “Whatever they are interested in could translate into something they could do as a career.”
Project Lead the Way is built around project-based activities that help students relate math and science to real life.
It is already offered in six D.C. high schools, including in two career academies for engineering.
This year, the investment supported new programs at seven middle schools.
Henderson said the District will expand the program to additional schools, including elementary schools. She said schools can opt into the program and it could become part of the regular school day or an extracurricular activity.
On Friday, some seventh-grade robotics students at McKinley were building simple gear trains and exploring the concepts of torque and speed.
This kind of exposure to hands-on projects gives students more motivation to work hard and pursue higher-level math and science classes, educators say.
A mentoring program is also being developed that will connect high school students with Lockheed Martin engineers, who can serve as role models and help students persevere through the challenging course work.
Educators and business leaders are increasingly concerned about the growing gap between skills students have by graduation and skills employers require in a high-tech economy.
There are many efforts underway that focus on encouraging women and minority students to become scientists and engineers, because very few pursue these careers.
“We absolutely need the best and brightest technical talent to help us keep our competitive edge,” said Stephanie C. Hill, vice president and general manager for Lockheed Martin’s information systems and global solutions civil business.
Hispanic students are making steady math progress
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
November 10, 2014
Hispanic students have made significant gains on federal math tests during the past decade, and Hispanic public school students in major cities including Boston, Charlotte, Houston and the District have made some of the most consistent progress, according to a report released Monday.
Child Trends Hispanic Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center, analyzed 10 years of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, that U.S. students have taken every two years since the early 1990s. Also known as the Nation’s Report Card, NAEP is the country’s most consistent measure of K-12 progress.
Between 2003 and 2013, when the most recent NAEP tests were given, the average math scores for Hispanic students in U.S. public schools rose nine points in fourth grade and 13 points in eighth grade. NAEP is graded on a scale of 1 to 500; the gains realized by Hispanic students are roughly equivalent to one grade level.
Hispanics attending public schools in major cities posted similar gains, with 10-point and 13-point increases in grades four and eight, respectively.
That’s surprising, said Natalia Pane, author of the report and senior vice president of research operations at Child Trends. “It’s really interesting what’s going on in the large cities,” Pane said. “Our large cities were able to keep pace when they’ve got such higher proportions of students coming from low-income families.”
Child Trends is focused on the country’s 17.5 million Hispanic children and teens because they are the fastest-growing demographic in U.S. public schools.
“With Hispanic students accounting for nearly one in four of U.S. children and rapidly growing, their math achievement in school today foreshadows our national scores tomorrow,” Pane said. “This is important because we know that students who are successful in mathematics are more likely to graduate from high school, enter college, and have better-paying jobs in the future.”
The study did not examine the achievement gap between Hispanic and white students, which has been narrowing but still remains significant. Pane’s research also did not address factors behind the steady climb of Hispanic test scores, but she offered a few theories.
Compared with a decade ago, many urban school districts in recent years are “focused on using data more, increasing instructional time, reducing suspensions, developing programs to target English language acquisition,” she said.
The recent transition by many school districts to the Common Core, national K-12 standards for math and reading, and professional training for teachers might also be having an effect, she said. “They’ve got maybe more rigorous standards and better teacher training,” Pane said.
Some districts have made a concerted effort to reach out to Hispanic families and get parents involved in schools, she said.
School districts where Hispanic students made the most progress in fourth- and eighth-grade math include Charlotte, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough County (Fla.), Austin, Dallas, Houston and Boston. Cities where Hispanic students have made significant gains include Atlanta, Chicago, Albuquerque, New York, Baltimore, Milwaukee, the District of Columbia and Jefferson County, Ky., according to the study.
Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, which represents major urban public school systems, said he thinks the math scores of Hispanic students in major cities is propelling the jump in state and national scores.
“The cities enroll such a large proportion of the nation’s Hispanic kids; I think that’s driving the state numbers,” he said.
Casserly said he doubted the increase in math scores has to do with the Common Core, since the most recent scores were based on NAEP tests administered in 2013, and most states only began rolling out the new standards in earnest the same year. But he said major urban districts have gotten better at educating Hispanic students.
“Instead of so readily tracking them into watered-down instruction or keeping them in bilingual programs for so long, our districts are giving Hispanic kids better access to a more rigorous instructional program,” Casserly said. “And they’re just getting better at using their data to figure out why some groups are not doing as well and tailoring their instructional programming around what the data are telling them.”
Between 2003 and 2013, Hispanic students in fourth grade attending traditional public schools in the District jumped 21 points, the equivalent of two grades. Eighth-graders jumped 16 points.
Hispanic students in the District were among the lowest-scoring in 2003 compared with other large, urban districts, but by 2013 they pulled into the mid-range, Pane said.
Cities where students made the fewest gains during that decade include Los Angeles, Cleveland, Fresno, Calif., and Detroit.
The states where Hispanic students made the biggest gains in fourth-grade math include Indiana, Hawaii, North Carolina and Florida. In eighth grade, that group includes New Jersey, Texas and Maryland. States where Hispanics made the fewest gains include Utah, California, Connecticut, Oregon, Idaho, Rhode Island and Nebraska.
“It matters a lot where you live,” Pane said.
The vast majority of the nation’s Hispanic children in 2013 — more than 90 percent — were born in the United States. Most of those children had family connections to Mexico, and the rest were connected to Puerto Rico, followed by El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and other countries in Central America and South America.
Two new studies show charter schools can work — if you give them time
The Washington Post
By Max Ehrenfreund
November 7, 2014
The argument for charter schools has always been based on the theory that competition is good. When teachers and principals have a chance to try new ideas, the most successful approaches will attract more students. The problem is that those ideas have been slow in coming. Much of the research suggests that students in charter schools don't do quite as well as their peers in district schools.
Now, data from two new studies suggest the premise behind charter schools is sound -- it is takes a lot longer to work than anybody expected. Eventually, ineffective schools in the charter sector close, while the best ones remain open, which suggests that students in these schools will do better over time as schools discover improved ways of teaching.
That said, the two papers put charter schools' failures so far clearly on display. One, a study of charter schools in Arizona, found that students who attended a charter typically learned less in math, reading and science than students who attended a traditional public school.
Still, less-effective schools were more likely to close in Arizona's charter system. Since there is a wide variation in the quality of the schools -- that is, some were better than traditional public schools, and some were much worse -- it's easy to see how with time, being a charter school student could become a more attractive proposition.
The authors, the Brookings Institution's Matt Chingos and Harvard University's Martin West suggest that state officials should review charters more frequently and close the ones that aren't working.
"Part of what makes the charter idea compelling is that it provides opportunities for schools to innovate, while not tolerating persistent failure," Chingos and West conclude. "For this ideal to be realized, policies that drive continuous improvement of the sector over time need to be in place."
The other study, a working paper that focused on charter schools in Texas, looked specifically look at how the pattern of closures affected student achievement over time. The authors found that charters were on average worse than traditional schools -- but improved gradually over a ten-year period.
By 2011, according to the paper, the charters were doing no worse than those in the traditional sector. They weren't doing much better, either, but Steven Rivkin, an economist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and one of the authors of the paper, said he was optimistic that charters would keep improving.
"I see no reasons to believe that this trend won't continue into the future," he said. "I think that's a very good sign for this kind of reform, at least how it's been implemented in the state of Texas."
Rivkin said it wasn't surprising that initially, charter schools are so disappointing. Administrators and teachers in traditional public schools do have much more experience than their counterparts in charters, who are often new to education, he said.
Rivkin also addressed some of the other criticisms that are frequently directed against charter schools. His research found no evidence that charter schools were damaging public schools in their neighborhoods by siphoning away the best students and staff, or that charters improved by pushing out students who behave badly.
On the contrary, traditional public schools that lost students to charters also improved over the period of the study, and the turnover rate in charter schools declined dramatically. Fewer students left the charters with time, not more.
Rivkin and his colleagues did not examine the question of funding at charter schools. They receive government funding on a per-student basis, but many also seek donations and grants from other sources, making it difficult to estimate how much each school spends.
He did suggest that if the new Congress wants to help students, lawmakers should consider offering bonuses to teachers who work in schools in impoverished neighborhoods. Finding qualified and competent people willing to teach in stressful environments for a typical teacher's salary is difficult, and it's one reason among many why poor kids often don't get as good of an education as their wealthier peers.