FOCUS DC News Wire 11/12/13

 

 

About one-third of the D.C. charter schools subject to annual performance rankings are high-performing “Tier 1” schools, according to data the D.C. Public Charter School Board released Friday.

 

More than half of the schools — 54 percent — are in mid-performing Tier 2. And eight schools, or 12 percent of the city’s ranked charters, are low-performing and in Tier 3. Sixty-eight schools were ranked.

 

The proportion of schools in each category has been virtually unchanged during the past three years of the charter board’s rating system, which aims to give parents and policymakers a way to assess and compare education choices across the city.

 

“We’re working to be as transparent as possible about what we mean by school quality and how we assess it,” said Darren Woodruff, vice chairman of the charter board, speaking at a news conference Friday.

 

Tier 1 schools are freed from certain oversight and are eligible for rewards including priority in competitions for surplus city school buildings and a streamlined process for expanding enrollment. Tier 3 schools are subject to greater charter board scrutiny and can become candidates for closure if they don’t improve.

 

Schools are scored on a 100-point scale, grading their performance on measures including students’ growth and achievement on standardized tests; student attendance; and re-enrollment rate, or the proportion of families who like a school enough to return.

 

The highest-scoring charter in the city was KIPP DC’s Key Academy, a middle school in Southeast Washington. It is one of 14 schools that have been ranked Tier 1 for all three years the ranking system has existed.

 

The lowest-scoring charter was Booker T. Washington, a high school in Northwest Washington’s U Street corridor. It was one of only two schools to be ranked Tier 3 twice in a row; the other is Arts and Technology Academy in Northeast.

 

Six other schools that had been rated low-performing improved enough to move into Tier 2. Five schools that had been Tier 2 bumped up into the top tier. One was D.C. Bilingual, a Columbia Heights elementary school that hosted Friday’s press conference.

 

“Tier 1 tells us that what we are doing is working,” said spokeswoman Emilia Pablo. “Bilingual education is positive for students.”

 

Enrollment in Tier 1 schools has been rising as enrollment in lower-performing schools has dropped, according to charter board officials. Officials said the trend is evidence that parents are using the ratings to make decisions about how best to educate their children.

 

There are more than 100 charter schools in the city, schools that enroll 44 percent of the city’s public school students. Many of the charters were not ranked, some because they are alternative schools or opened new campuses that resulted in significant student population changes. Others, including early childhood and adult education schools, are currently judged using different standards but will be assigned a tier rating beginning next year.

 

 

The D.C. Public Charter School board last Friday released the 2013 charter school Performance Management Framework results. There are some interesting findings.

 

First, I have to mention that for the third year in a row Washington Latin Public PCS is a Tier 1 middle and high school. The upper school had the highest overall percentage score of any charter high school and was one of only three charter high schools to be Tier 1 for three years in a row. The high school also was one of three charters demonstrating the greatest median growth rate in math, had the highest re-enrollment rate of any high school, and the highest graduation rate of any charter at 96 percent. I served as chair of the board during the last school year.

 

As the PCSB’s press release states, five schools attained Tier 1 status for the first time. These include Capital City PCS’ high school, DC Bilingual PCS, Friendship Chamberlain PCS, KIPP DC – Promise Academy PCS, and Washington Mathematics Science Technology PCS.

 

Several well-known charters dropped off the Tier 1 list this year. These include Community Academy Butler Bilingual PCS, E.L. Haynes PCS’ lower school, Howard Road Middle School of Mathematics and Science PCS, and Seed PCS’middle school.

 

Capital City PCS' lower school, a Tier 1 charter in 2012, is not being graded since it split into two new schools, a Capital City middle and lower. According to Naomi DeVeaux, the PCSB's deputy director, the only school that had consistent enrollment is Capital City's upper school.

 

Six schools that were ranked as Tier 3 last year are now Tier 2. The identical number of 2012’s Tier 2 charters moved into the bottom category. None of the eight Tier 3 schools have been at that rank for all three of the years that the PMF have been reported.

 

The PCSB mentions how important the PMF has been in identifying high performing schools and in encouraging lower ranked charters to improve. However, the tool has not yet had the intended impact of moving charters from lower categories to higher rankings. As the Washington Post’s Emma Brown points out, a third of charters are Tier 1, 54 percent are Tier 2, and 12 percent are ranked as Tier 3. The reporter explains that these percentages have not significantly changed since the PMF results were first released in 2011.

 

One encouraging outcome of the PMF is that more students are attending Tier 1 schools and fewer are choosing those that are Tier 3. The PCSB states that for this term “there were 2,266 additional students enrolled in high performing, or Tier 1, charter schools, compared to 2011-12, the first year that the PMF was available. By contrast, there was a decrease by 1,120 students who were enrolled in low-performing, or Tier 3, charter schools.”

 

If we are going to be the nation’s leading charter school movement we will have to figure out a way to move significantly more of our students at a much faster rate into Tier 1 charters.

 

 

Students in the District’s public schools made significant gains in math and reading achievement during the past two years, including progress among black, white, Hispanic and low-income students, according to national exam results released this week.

 

But even with the District’s overall improvement on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, there continue to be wide disparities in performance according to race, income, disability status and parents’ educational attainment.

 

Over time, achievement gaps between the city’s most- and least-advantaged children, historically among the largest in the country, have narrowed in some cases but have grown — sometimes significantly — in others.

 

That poses a challenge for officials who have bet that the changes of recent years — such as universal preschool, new academic standards and teacher evaluations, the rise of charter schools and mayoral control of traditional schools — are creating a public education system that can change the trajectory for poor children.

 

“The achievement gap is still clearly a pressing issue for us,” said Abigail Smith, deputy mayor of education. Smith said that although the gaps are too large, they would be even more worrisome if only white or high-income students were improving. “In fact, everyone is on an upward trajectory. We just need to keep accelerating the pace.”

 

NAEP measures the math and reading performance of fourth- and eighth-graders and is administered by the federal government every other year. Scored on a scale of 0 to 500, it is widely regarded as the most consistent measure of K-12 academic progress.

 

But different children take the test each year, making it difficult to draw conclusions about what causes scores to rise or fall, especially amid demographic change. The proportion of white fourth-graders in the District — who score higher than fourth-graders in any state in the nation — has doubled since 2003, from 5 to 10 percent. The proportion of black fourth-graders — whose scores are among the lowest in the nation — fell from 85 to 73 percent.

 

The District’s black-white achievement gap has consistently been the largest in the country when compared with other states and urban school districts, and it was about twice the national average in 2011. In fourth-grade math, the District’s gap was 60 points in 2003. It shrank to 53 points in 2007, but since then — the same year then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) took control of the schools — it widened again, to 55 points.

 

The black-white gap has narrowed more steadily in fourth-grade reading but still stands at 62 points, unchanged from 2011.

 

The gap between Hispanic and white students is smaller, but it is still among the country’s largest.

 

“My takeaway is that we are leaving low-income children behind. We are leaving the neediest kids behind,” said Mary Levy, an education finance lawyer and watchdog of D.C. schools.

 

Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said black and Hispanic students are improving at a faster rate than the national average, crediting the school’s turnaround efforts in recent years.

 

“I don’t know that it’s necessarily gap-closing, but all of my boats are rising,” Henderson said. “When you concentrate on teacher quality, you get results. When you radically increase the level of academic rigor, you get results.”

 

There are some bright spots for the city’s achievement gap. In eighth-grade math, for example, the black-white gap shrank 20 points between 2005 and 2013.

 

But by other measures, the gap is growing, including between children of the least- and most-educated parents. On the 2007 reading exam, nine points separated eighth-graders whose parents dropped out of high school from those whose parents graduated from college. By 2013, that gap had more than doubled, to 23 points.

 

It is nearly impossible to track the performance of poor children because the method for identifying low-income students in the District has changed since 2011.

 

A child’s poverty status is measured by their eligibility for a free or reduced-price lunch. Until last year, children became eligible for free meals by turning in forms showing household income. Now, if 40 percent of children in a D.C. school are in foster care, homeless or receive welfare benefits, every child in the school is deemed eligible for free meals.

 

The change in the District is a test of a new federal policy meant to ensure that more hungry kids have access to free meals. It means that some children who are not actually poor but who attend high-poverty schools are now included in the low-income category, said Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

 

That change is “masking whatever is actually happening,” said Buckley, who said his office is concerned about and working to address the inability to track the progress of poor children. He cautioned against drawing conclusions about the progress of the District’s poor children based on the 2013 test results.

 

Those results show that the proportion of children eligible for free meals rose significantly and that they made some gains. But the gap between them and their more-affluent peers also swelled.

 

 

DC students' scores grew dramatically on national standardized tests, more than almost every state. This is good news, but it's hard to know whether the gains actually mean we're educating students better, or just that more wealthy families are sending their kids to DC schools.

 

The Washington Post editorial board isn't hesitating to claim credit on behalf of its agenda. "School reform in the District is working. That is the unassailable message" of the news, the board writes. "The NAEP is the gold standard or, to use [US Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan's description, 'irrefutable.'"

 

I hope school reform does work, and in particular, that it actually helps struggling students from disadvantaged backgrounds get a better education. But good as the NAEP may be, there's nothing "unassailable" or "irrefutable" about the Post's conclusion thus far.

 

This is "misnaepery"

 

That's because the NAEP, the National Assessment of Education Progress, just measures 4th, 8th, and 12th graders every two years. The problem is that one year's 4th graders might be very different from the last. Since wealthier students tend to do better on standardized tests, one reason for the rise in DC's test scores could be that more affluent kids are taking the NAEP.

 

Steven Glazerman coined the term "misnaepery" to describe using NAEP data to draw conclusions beyond what the scores really show.

 

It's not that DC's test scores haven't gone up—they have. And it's always better to have higher scores than lower ones. But it's misusing statistics to say that this proves there's been a change in school quality, or that any particular leader deserves the credit.

 

What do we know?

 

We don't have data showing that the public school population in DC, as opposed to the general population, has become wealthier since 2011. But, as Emma Brown reported in the Post, "The demographics of test-takers in the District has shifted during the past two decades, with the proportion of white and Hispanic students growing as the proportion of black students has fallen."

 

It's possible that some of those Hispanic students are learners of English as a second language, the one group that failed to show gains on the NAEP. But presumably many of those white students are relatively affluent.

 

And while it's good news that the scores for all racial groups rose, the gulf between those groups remains wide. As Brown wrote, "Black and Hispanic students made gains, and achievement gaps between them and white students narrowed slightly in some subjects and grade levels. But the gaps widened or remained the same in others."

 

There's no free lunch for these statistics

 

It's also become more difficult to focus on the trends among students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch (FRL), the most common method of identifying poorer kids of any ethnicity. The reason, as Brown explained, is that DC has changed its FRL rules.

 

Instead of requiring families to turn in forms showing household income, DC now provides free lunch to all students at any school where at least 40% of students are in foster care, homeless, or receiving welfare benefits. That could mean that some wealthier students at those schools are now lumped into the FRL category.

 

Brown quotes the head of the agency that administers NAEP as saying that the rule change is "masking whatever is actually happening." The official, Brown says, "cautioned against drawing conclusions about the progress of poor children in the District based on the 2013 test results."

 

Officials are touting that students who performed in the bottom 10% of test-takers have shown the most significant gains since the last round of NAEP tests. Because test scores are largely correlated with income, those are likely to be the kids at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, which could be a ray of hope. But it's still not possible to tell from this data whether the actual poor students are doing better, or if this is more "cohort replacement" where this year's bottom 10% is different, and wealthier, than last year's.

 

We still have the wrong data

 

Maybe DC schools have improved, and we all certainly hope so. But to be sure that's the case, we need "longitudinal" data, which compares the same students from year to year instead of starting over with a new cohort. And unfortunately, that's not what the NAEP scores give us.

 

With all the testing that's happening, testing which often distracts from actual instruction, you'd think that we should be able to actually draw meaningful policy conclusions. It's a shame that there's so much data but not the data we need.

 

We do know that the number of higher-income families and students living in DC has increased. That can be good if we have the right policies to ensure that the rising tide lifts all boats instead of just a few. But we can't simply skip that necessary step.

 

Scores can go up if schools get better. Scores can also go up if wealthy families push out poor ones from the city or displace poor families from high-performing schools. We need to make sure any new education policies are responsible for rising test scores rather than the change in our population before celebrating too loudly.

 

 

Crowdfunding, meet the classroom.

 

District-based upstart Edbacker aims to bring the burgeoning practice of crowdfunding to K-12 education by allowing teachers and school administrators to raise money for equipment, field trips and school projects via the Web.

 

Founder Gary Hensley said the idea came to him after his daughter’s school held a fundraiser to build a new track. Though the students sold $35,000 worth of gift wrap, candy and other products, only about $13,000 actually made its way into the school coffers, Hensley said.

 

“This is just so ridiculous that this much effort went into it and most of the money was given to the [fundraising] company and not to the school,” he said.

 

Three D.C. charter schools are slated to launch crowdfunding campaigns on the Web site Monday after meeting with the company’s founders earlier this year to learn about the site:

 

Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools wants to fund a trip to New Orleans to learn about the city’s ongoing efforts to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. It is seeking $35,000.

 

Howard University Middle School intends to collect $5,000 for a printing station for its students.

 

Washington YuYing Public Charter School, a Chinese language immersion charter, aims to raise $5,500 for a fifth-grade trip to China.

 

This the second entrepreneurial venture for Hensley, a former high school administrator. He sold his prior company, Intagrade, which identified students likely to drop out of school, to Pearson Education in 2009.

 

Edbacker isn’t alone. Founded in 2003, DonorsChoose.org has raised more than $200 million to date for more than 160,000 teachers, according to its Web site.

 

Hensley said Edbacker differs in that rather than sending donors a simple thank you, schools are encouraged to create some kind of reward for those who give money. One teacher, for example, gave away personalized artwork created on her iPad.

 

The average donation to an Edbacker project is $90, Hensley said. In the seven months since the company got started, 28 schools have posted campaigns on the site.

 

“Schools have reached a point where they have to examine new ways to raise money as a school if they want to provide a quality education,” Hensley said.

 

“Having been in the system, you can never be sure how much funding you’re going to get. When you don’t have those programs or you don’t have that budget, then you have to find creative solutions for that,” he added.

 

 

Three individuals close to the goings on at DC Prep have confirmed to me that Rick Cruz has left his position as CEO of the charter school. Apparently the decision to leave was mutually agreed upon between him and the school's board of directors because the fit was just not right. DC Prep's founder Emily Lawson has assumed the CEO position while the school determines how to fill the job. Remember that Mr. Cruz replaced Ms. Lawson over a one year transitional period.

 

DC Prep's Edgewood Middle School was just named a Performance Management Framework Tier 1 charter for the third year in a row. Its DC CAS scores are greater than any charter in the nation's capital recording a student reading proficiency rate of 79 percent and a math proficiency rate of 92 percent. In September, DC Prep Edgewood Elementary was named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education for its high level of academic achievement.

 

I interviewed Mr. Cruz last January and opened the article with this observation: "I came to learn more about the man who has the extremely challenging assignment of following in the foot steps of Emily Lawson, the founder of DC Prep, who over ten years has put this network of charter schools on the national radar for successfully raising through the roof the academic achievement of inner city students from traditionally underserved communities."

 

Maybe her shoes were just too difficult to fill.