FOCUS DC News Wire 11/18/13

 

 

It’s no surprise that news of big increases in D.C. public school scores on the much-respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests has been greeted with as much suspicion as applause. Those who care about D.C. schoolchildren have been disappointed too many times by gains that were not sustained.

 

But maybe it’s time for skeptics like me to lighten up a bit. The improvement in fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading from 2011 to 2013 was significant. It was measured by federally run exams that are regarded as cheat-proof.

 

Many D.C. teachers, parents and onlookers, including me, think that some school administrators must have tampered with answer sheets on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (DC CAS) test in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The results on the DC CAS soared in 2008, then plummeted at many schools. The testing company found far more wrong answers being erased and replaced with right answers than research indicates is possible without subterfuge. Similar erasure patterns in Atlanta led to a Georgia state investigation that uncovered cheating, with teachers changing answers after kids went home. D.C. school district leaders sadly refused to accept the city’s erasure data as evidence of cheating and never did a serious investigation.

 

D.C. test security officials did make efforts, beginning in 2011, to keep answer sheets out of the hands of school administrators. At several schools, this was followed by a sharp drop in average scores, further proof of previous tampering and a message to miscreants that it might be time to try honest ways of improving their schools’ statistics. I think that is in part what the recent NAEP gains show: D.C. schools putting more emphasis on teaching than erasing.

 

I still want the cheaters rooted out, but I don’t think the school system is going to do it. It appears, while we wait for D.C. officials to release the latest erasure data, that tampering has been suppressed, at least for now.

 

It is harder to squelch widespread skepticism about improvement in the D.C. schools, particularly when officials welcome the new test score gains as a “breakthrough,” ignoring the fact that the new proficiency rates of 28 percent in math and 23 percent in reading for fourth-graders, and 19 percent in math and 17 percent in reading for eighth-graders, are still bad. We ought to be modest about score improvements. They tend to be up and down, year to year, even in schools of proven quality. We still don’t know how much of the latest gains in D.C. schools were made in traditional public schools and how much were made in the charters, which have almost half of the city’s public school students.

 

Why not view the D.C. schools as one system, traditional and charter, full of conscientious educators helping kids improve? We can quarrel over whether D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and her predecessor, Michelle Rhee, have been good for the city, but they get points from me for being the first to try to bring traditional and charter D.C. schools together. We need to keep Henderson. Switching leaders would set us way back, spending more years on somebody else’s pet schemes.

 

In the spirit of the coming holidays, let’s forget for a while our old feuds and celebrate the teachers who have led more D.C. children to proficiency in reading, writing and math. School system leaders may be clumsy at it, but they are sincerely trying to raise the quality of instruction and create more time for learning. That works if done right. Let’s not let our skepticism get in the way of doing what we can to make sure our schools get all the help they need and create traditions of rigor and persistence that will save us from future disappointments.

 

 

KIPP DC has been granted the permits for Phase 2 of its renovation of the Webb school in Trinidad and is on track to open a middle school there in summer 2014.

 

The popular charter school system already operates more than 10 schools around the District. As of last year, the system had a waiting list of 3,000 students.

 

The Webb campus, as it is now known, was a former D.C. elementary school that closed in 2008 and was used as a warehouse until it was severely damaged by fire last year. Later last year, the city awarded the space at 1375 Mount Olivet Road NE to KIPP, which is leasing the building. 

 

The building—part of which is already completed and houses a pre-K and elementary school—is in the process of "a full gut," says Kate Finley, KIPP DC's director of new schools. "New floors, new bathrooms and fixtures, and new paint." KIPP did retain the original skeleton of the building, but because of the fire damage, has had to rebuild a lot. KIPP is also re-doing an athletic field that will be open to the public, similar to the field/dog park that KIPP built at its Shaw campus.

 

When complete, the Webb campus will serve 1,000 students from pre-K to eighth grade over 100,000 square feet. 

 

"We're really excited to be able to offer the neighborhood a high-quality public charter school in this area," says Finley. "We've heard from several families in this area that they're so glad that we have a school in this building. Many of them are walking to it and they're able to have their kids in here."

 

 

The state of the District’s long-struggling middle schools took center stage at a packed D.C. Council hearing Friday as school leaders discussed the city’s plans to overhaul school boundaries and feeder patterns for the first time in more than three decades.

 

It was the first citywide opportunity for the public to weigh in on the boundary-change effort, a politically charged and long-delayed process that could reshape city neighborhoods and limit access to some of the city’s most sought-after schools.

 

Many parents testified that the city won’t be able to keep its growing number of young families — and won’t fix the lopsidedness of city schools, which tend to be overcrowded in a few affluent neighborhoods and under-enrolled most everywhere else — unless it solves the middle-school problem.

 

Weak middle schools across much of the city create a stampede for a few desirable options in affluent Northwest, parents said, and end up pushing many families into charter schools, private schools or the suburbs as they seek a predictable K-12 path. It is middle schools that are causing attrition at many elementary schools and low enrollment at many high schools, they said.

 

“Our children deserve a great middle school, where the amazing work and progress of their elementary schools can be continued,” said Carla Ferris, a parent at Powell Elementary in Petworth, who described the heartbreak of watching students go in many different directions after fifth grade.

 

Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson acknowledged that most of the District’s traditional middle schools and its K-8 education campuses have failed to attract families. She suggested that perhaps the city should figure out how to funnel children to charter schools in the middle grades, arguing that “they know how to do middle school really well.”

 

Education Chairman David A. Catania (I-At Large) bristled at that suggestion and called on Henderson to produce a middle school improvement and funding plan.

 

“If whoever you have in your administration can’t figure out middle schools, get someone else,” Catania said. “I’m not about to outsource middle schools to charters.”

 

Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith is leading the boundary effort, which will determine which schools students have a right to attend based on their city addresses. The changes could affect real estate markets and could shift the racial and class makeups of the city’s schools.

 

Smith is co-chairing an advisory committee that aims to make draft boundary-change recommendations by May. She faced criticism Friday from parents who said that her office was not transparent in how it chose the 21 members of that committee.

 

Parents from Ward 7, east of the Anacostia River in neighborhoods that for years have sent many children west each morning in search of better schools, said they felt underrepresented on the committee. That could help deepen divisions in an already divided city, one parent warned.

 

“If you don’t look at who you have on the committee representing the wards, then you’re going to go down the path where we’ll start looking at two different cities,” said parent Candace Rhett. “There will be a black city and a white city.”

 

Smith said she and her team would consider the feedback, but she emphasized that there are many other ways for people to ensure their voices are heard, including focus groups, working groups and community meetings scheduled for coming months. Ultimately, decisions will be made by the mayor, who does not need council approval to change school boundaries.

 

In a sign of the political importance of the school-boundary debate, the hearing drew several council members who are running for mayor, including Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6).

 

Politicians and parents said they want the boundary-change process to produce two things: diverse schools and strong neighborhood schools that families have a right to attend without having to gamble in lotteries. It will be a challenge to achieve both in a city with segregated housing patterns.

 

“If we just have neighborhood schools, what are we going to do, just have white schools? Just have African American schools?” asked Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3). “We don’t want that.”

 

 

D.C. fifth- and eighth-graders know more about communication and emotional health than they know about the human body and nutrition, according to the results of the city’s second-ever standardized test on health and physical education.

 

High school seniors, meanwhile, correctly answered nearly three out of four questions about sexuality and reproduction but were less well-versed in disease prevention and nutrition.

 

Citywide, students correctly answered nearly two-thirds of the questions on the 2013 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment for Health and Physical Education, according to results that the Office of the State Superintendent of Education submitted to the D.C. Council.

 

The results showed no significant change in performance compared with 2012. But the OSSE published only citywide averages, not school-by-school data — a disappointment to health-education advocates who say that without results from individual schools, it is hard to know where to direct improvement efforts.

 

The OSSE “is withholding information from parents and the public and groups like us who are very eager to help make things better,” said Adam Tenner, executive director of Metro TeenAids, a community health organization.

 

Tenner said it is clear that there is room for progress. He said, for example, that a pregnant teen who sought help from Metro TeenAids last year did not know how she got pregnant or what she could have done to avoid pregnancy.

 

“The big concern is, without knowing more about the system, we don’t actually know if we’re creating a next generation of more health-literate citizens,” Tenner said.

 

OSSE officials said they provided each school with its own results but do not plan to publicize those numbers until they get approval from all participants.

 

The OSSE submitted the results as part of a report on compliance with the 2010 Healthy Schools Act, which showed that traditional and charter schools must double the amount of time they spend on physical and health education to meet new requirements that kick in next fall.

 

D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), who sponsored the law, said she expects schools to seek permission to delay that new requirement.

 

“But they’ve known that this is coming,” said Cheh, adding that she would like the OSSE to require each school to submit a plan for ramping up time devoted to physical education and health.

 

Advocates applauded last year when the District became the first jurisdiction in the country to administer a standardized health and sex-education exam, calling it key to beginning to address the District’s high rates of obesity, sexually transmitted disease and teen pregnancy.

 

OSSE officials developed the exam, which has more than 40 questions. and administered it in the spring to more than 11,000 students in traditional and public charter schools. Although all schools are supposed to administer the exam, eight schools opted not to, said OSSE officials, who pointed out that they have no meaningful enforcement mechanism.

 

Fifth-graders answered 64 percent of the questions correctly, ranging from a low of 45 percent on questions related to the human body to 78 percent on communication and emotional health.

 

Eighth-graders also answered 64 percent of all questions correctly but got only 50 percent of the nutrition questions — and 59 percent about human development and sexuality — correct. High school seniors answered 63 percent of questions correctly.

 

These results cannot be directly compared with math and reading results, which are reported in terms of the percentage of students who are proficient — a different measure than the percentage of questions answered correctly.

 

The test results come on the heels of DC Appleseed’s annual report card on the city’s progress toward tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic. That report card criticized “the glaring deficiency of HIV/AIDS education within public charter schools,” faulting the OSSE and the D.C. Public Charter School Board for failing to provide incentives to schools to improve health education.

 

The highest percentage of new HIV cases in the city is among 20- to 29-year-olds, according to DC Appleseed. The largest increase in new chlamydia and gonorrhea cases is among 15- to 19-year-olds.