- Paul Public Charter School sets the record straight [Paul PCS mentioned]
- Thousands attend ‘Edfest,’ the first city-wide public schools fair
- ‘Blended-learning’ programs grow in D.C., with students relying more on computers
- Do some charters have too many white students? [Two Rivers PCS, Washington Latin PCS, BASIS PCS, Washington Yu Ying PCS, Capital City PCS and E.L Haynes PCS mentioned]
Paul Public Charter School sets the record straight [Paul PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
November 24, 2014
I had the opportunity to talk to Takita Mason, director of development for Paul PCS. She was eager to comment regarding last Thursday's article by the Washington Post's Michael Alison Chandler in which the Post reporter stated that the school "is under investigation for alleged testing violations."
According to Ms. Mason, what transpired regarding the administration of the 2014 DC CAS was that "an individual staff member in a key position erased stray marks on student answer booklets, which was a critical finding by OSSE (Office of the State Superintendent of Education)." She stressed that an investigation by OSSE and the charter found no evidence of academic cheating or fraud regarding student answers.
Furthermore, Ms. Mason pointed out that Paul was sent the raw student data directly from OSSE last summer and also obtained individual student reports from McGraw-Hill, the test publishers. The school is currently working with OSSE to resolve the concern over the erasure of marks on the answer booklets.
The director of development concluded our conversation by stating that "we have no reason to believe that our student test answers are none other than their own."
In her article Ms. Chandler quotes Theola DeBose, the director of communication for the DC Public Charter School Board, as remarking that "the board is 'awaiting the results of that investigation before determining what steps, if any,' to take." Instead of handling the matter this way, as I pointed out on Friday, I wish the board had revealed the problem with testing at Paul at the time of the release of the 2014 Performance Management Framework tiering so that when this school was left off the list we would not be wondering what was going on. Through this course of action our sector can get ahead of the issue by explaining that there was a procedural testing violation with the school that is about to be settled.
Thousands attend ‘Edfest,’ the first city-wide public schools fair
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
November 22, 2014
Thousands of parents came to the D.C. Armory on Saturday to get a jump on their school search at the first city-wide public schools fair.
The formerly all-charter event expanded this year to include every traditional school so that parents pushing strollers or shopping for high schools for their teens could peruse tables sorted by grade and alphabetical order, not by school sector.
“We want parents to find schools that are good for their kids, regardless of their governance structure,” said Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith, whose office coordinated the event.
Charter schools, which now serve 44 percent of D.C. public school students, are accustomed to marketing their specialized programs and services. But it’s a newer skill set for traditional schools that historically served neighborhood children and now, after years of enrollment losses, must compete for students to make their budgets and programs viable.
Principals, teachers, and parent volunteers donned their schools’ spirit wear, handed out fliers and showed videos of school events. Some described their schools as “a hidden gem” or “the best-kept secret.” Others distributed candy and “I support D.C. Public Schools” stickers.
“We are really happy that D.C. Public Schools are showing up and standing out,” said Vielka Scott-Marcus, principal of Payne Elementary School.
Kids wearing Payne T-shirts could be seen at the expo, and the school’s cheerleading team did a dance routine that drew a crowd. The school attracted attention last year when a homeless student, Relisha Rudd, was abducted by a janitor at the shelter where she lived with her family. But on Saturday parents and staff were talking about their modernized building and preschool program.
LaShandra Patterson, a mother from Southeast Washington, said that she has two young children enrolled in a charter school she likes but that she was curious to look at some D.C. public schools.
“I like the direction that [Schools Chancellor] Kaya Henderson is moving the schools in,” she said.
Ashley Sharpe, a mother from Northeast Washington, said she plans to limit her preschool search to charter schools.
“I was brought up in D.C. Public Schools with No Child Left Behind,” she said. “I want something different for my child.”
Many said they do not care what kind of school their children attend as long as it is good.
Parents waited in long lines to get in and had lots of questions: Does my child have to be potty trained by the start of preschool? Do you offer before-school care? Foreign-language programs? What are my chances of getting in?
The school choice “Edfest” was moved earlier this year to give families more time to prepare for the enrollment lottery, which opens Dec. 15.
This is the second year that parents will apply through a common application and enrollment lottery. And it is the first year that wait lists will be centrally managed, so parents do not have to call schools to check the status of their applications. By centralizing these functions, officials hope to make the process less taxing on families. But most people agree it is still an overwhelming task to sift through all the options. Some parents carried clipboards with checklists or spreadsheets.
Sarah and Michael Hulsey, of Columbia Heights, said they met with a consultant before the event who helped them narrow down their list.
They had sorted it into three categories, ranging from the hardest schools to get into to the equivalent of “safety schools” for their toddler.
Some schools and community groups help families who do not speak English or do not have time to exhaustively research schools, and at least two schools shuttled families to the event Saturday.
Irene Williams, who lives in Southeast, said the one-stop event helped her a lot. She recently moved and has been asking every school-aged child and parent she can find about their schools.
“Here I can get it all done at one time,” she said.
‘Blended-learning’ programs grow in D.C., with students relying more on computers
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Collier
November 23, 2014
When Ketcham Elementary School was selected to roll out a schoolwide computer-based learning initiative, Principal Maisha Riddlesprigger was skeptical about “putting kids in front of computers.”
Less than two years later, the effort has brought her school a kind of celebrity status. Superintendents and state lawmakers from across the country have begun stopping by this well-wired school in a poor pocket of Southeast Washington — where nearly a third of the students are homeless — to see how they are learning.
While test scores barely budged District-wide this past spring, Ketcham saw an 11-point increase in its math proficiency rate — to 49 percent — and a 4.5-point increase in reading — to 35 percent. Officials attribute the gains to the move to “blended learning.”
D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson has been an advocate of such programs, which combine face-to-face instruction with online personalized learning as a way to improve students’ digital skills and tap into the kind of gadgets that interest them outside of school.
The children at Ketcham, along with Randle Highlands Elementary School, could be among the first in the District to go through their entire school careers learning online part-time. Both schools feed into Kramer Middle School and Anacostia High School, which also have blended-learning programs.
John Rice, manager of blended learning for D.C. schools, said the District’s goal is to offer a similar feeder pattern in every part of the city. Four other schools planned to adopt blended learning school-wide this year: Garfield Elementary School, Browne Education Campus, Johnson Middle School and Patterson Elementary. Dozens more schools have classrooms that are using the approach.
Rice said that computers do not replace teachers, but the devices free teachers up so they can spend more time doing what they are best at: facilitating conversations, helping students who are stuck, or designing hands-on projects. The computers can help students practice their vowel sounds and math equations until they get it.
In schools such as Ketcham, where many students are below grade-level, computer programs identify and fill in gaps for each student and report back in real time on how he or she is progressing, educators said. Teachers can use those reports to focus their instruction for each student.
During a third-grade math lesson at Ketcham last week, one group of students sat on the carpet talking with their teacher about when they might use the concept of perimeter in real life and together calculated the perimeter of a triangle.
Across the room, another group solved math problems on a computer with the assistance of a penguin named JiJi.
Some worked on multiplication tables; others were solving problems related to perimeter and area. JiJi paced back and forth on-screen while they solved problems and guided them to the next screen when they reached the next level. Occasionally, JiJi would freeze while a sign flashed: Check Network Connection.
Despite any technical problems, the penguin is a popular motivator. D.C. officials reported bigger test-score gains in schools that were using the program.
Many reformers and philanthropists see potential in new technologies to shake up the traditional classroom and lift achievement quickly.
“There is a sense, after a while, that people keep trying to do the same things over and over again without getting different results,” said Margaret Angell, former director of secondary school transformation for D.C. Public Schools.
Now, she oversees a fellowship program through CityBridge Foundation that introduces D.C. teachers to innovative ways schools across the country are using technology. The fellows design their classrooms around goals of giving students individually tailored lessons and more choice in what they will learn.
“All of a sudden, it’s like unraveling a sweater and you want to unravel the whole way you do business,” she said.
Across the country, and in the District, the way computers are being used in classrooms varies widely. Some teachers record lessons their students can watch from home, so they can save time for more individual coaching during class. District high schools are offering flexible computer-based classes so over-age students can make up credits online.
At Hart Middle School in Southeast, 200 students learn math at their own pace in one big room guided by a computer algorithm that generates a new “playlist” of tasks each day.
Some schools are seeing fast results. The approach at Hart has shown some learning gains but also a lot of teacher turnover. Whether it will stay there is an “open question,” Rice said.
Noel Enyedy, associate professor of education and information studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the range of approaches to blended learning makes it hard to evaluate.
There are some promising recent studies, he said, but “when you start digging in, the results are pretty mixed.”
The most common approach has students rotate through stations, alternating time with computers and with their teachers and other students in small groups, similar to what is happening at Ketcham.
Milton Bryant, a fifth-grade teacher at Ketcham, has a CityBridge fellowship this year. He said he completely rethought his teaching approach after visiting classrooms in California and Detroit.
Once a week, he meets with students to look at their performance and set goals for the next week, and he lets them choose how to focus their morning math block. They are taking ownership of what they are learning, he said, and they are learning more. This year, he had five students score “advanced” on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (CAS) test, up from two the previous year.
Riddlesprigger, Ketcham’s principal, said she hopes the school can continue to improve as teachers become more comfortable with the computers.
“We are seeing pockets of innovation and success,” she said. “Now, more teachers are saying, ‘I want to get my kids to that level.’ ”
Do some charters have too many white students? [Washington Latin PCS, BASIS PCS, Washington Yu Ying PCS, Capital City PCS, Two Rivers PCS, and E.L Haynes PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
November 23, 2014
Erich Martel, a great Advanced Placement history teacher at Wilson High School, was involuntarily transferred to another school and then forced to retire because, I think, he refused to stop investigating alleged D.C. school mismanagement, including his revelation that high schools were graduating students who didn’t meet all of the requirements.
Retirement only gave him more time to delve into suspicious practices. His latest critique involves some of the city’s most successful public charter schools. He wonders how they have such high percentages of white students when just 4.4 percent of students who took the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests last April shared that ethnicity.
The charters with the highest percentages of whites taking the tests, according to Martel’s research, were Washington Latin Lower School (41.7 percent), BASIS Middle School (33.9 percent), Washington Latin High School (23.9 percent), Washington Yu Ying elementary school (22.2 percent), Capital City Lower School (22 percent), Two Rivers elementary and middle schools (19.9 percent) and E.L. Haynes Elementary School (17.1 percent).
“Are we to believe that these percentages are the result of pure chance?” Martel said. He told me those school directors should produce evidence that “their student demographic data are the results of random lotteries” and not caused by sneaking more affluent white kids onto their rolls when the D.C. school admissions officials aren’t looking.
“I have enough experience documenting alteration of records [and] creation of euphemistic proxies of achievement . . . to question the integrity of the charter lotteries and the process of replacing students who have been transferred from charters,” he said.
D.C. charter school board spokeswoman Tomeika Bowden suggested I ask the schools and the My School D.C. office about their admissions procedures, which I will do in a future column. For now I want to address Martel’s view that having some D.C. schools with unusual numbers of middle-class students of any ethnicity is bad for the school system.
He told me he thinks some urban charters with high achievement rates “claim to be meeting the needs of children in poverty, but they are really just skimming off those who have the socialization for success in school and throwing the rest back to” the rest of the D.C. public schools.
This contradicts those who think having significant numbers of middle-class children is a plus for urban schools and should be encouraged. The nation’s leading advocate of giving urban schools a good mix of poor and affluent students is Century Foundation scholar Richard D. Kahlenberg. He has written several books on research showing such balanced enrollment raises achievement for all students. Racial integration is also good, he said, because that reduces racism and teaches students “what they have in common as Americans.”
I have spent much time in charters with almost no middle-class children but impressive achievement rates. The reasons of their success, in my view, are mostly better teaching and more time for instruction. But many educators, including Martel, think their test scores are higher because they attract more children raised with middle-class values, even if their parents don’t have much money.
Martel said he shares Kahlenberg’s integration goal, but notes that in districts with majority poor populations, most impoverished students will still be sitting next to each other. I think whether or not charter school parents are better than regular school parents, their children should not be denied a chance to attend a better-functioning school if their local school is not giving them the education they deserve.
Martel has a point that some of the schools with high white and middle-class percentages have ambitious academic policies — such as heavy use of AP — that alienate parents who think their children can’t handle the strain. Whether something should be done about that will be the topic for a future column on what Martel has discovered.