- Rocketship wins green light for its first school in D.C. [Rocketship PCS mentioned]
- Rocketship PCS delays D.C. opening for a year [Rocketship PCS and Options PCS mentioned]
- Is Intellectual Courage the Key to Great Teaching? [Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
- D.C. school boundaries plan gets more specific just before new mayor is elected
- DC isn't a state, so why does it have a State Board of Education?
- De Blasio Unveils New Plans for Troubled Schools in New York
Rocketship wins green light for its first school in D.C. [Rocketship PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
November 4, 2014
The D.C. Public Charter School Board gave full approval Monday night to Rocketship, a California-based charter operator, to open its first school in the District in 2016, following a groundswell of last-minute community opposition.
Some of the school’s future neighbors in Anacostia protested the plans in recent weeks, saying that the chosen location — across the street from a halfway house — is unsafe. They said the charter operator did not make sufficient efforts to reach out to community members.
The charter school board had initially planned to vote on the final charter Oct. 14 but delayed to give the operator time to address the concerns.
Rocketship officials responded with letters of support and amended their plans to delay opening day until September 2016 rather than next fall.
“We want to give ourselves enough time. . . . We want to open a great school,” said Preston Smith, the chief executive of Rocketship Education, who flew from California to be there for the vote, along with more than half a dozen Rocketship D.C. staff members.
The board approved the 15-year charter agreement with Rocketship, with four members in support and none opposed. One board member, Sara Mead, recused herself because her employer works with Rocketship. Another board member, Barbara Nophlin, abstained.
“I was not clear about what I thought about the information that was presented and whether it was presented accurately,” Nophlin said after the meeting.
In particular, she cited a letter of support for Rocketship submitted by a property manager at Woodland Terrace, the neighboring public housing development. Darrell Gaston, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in the area, and some other opponents testified that the letter did not represent the predominant views in that community.
Gaston questioned the charter operator’s academic performance on state tests, which has fluctuated as the network has expanded and fallen short of strong early results that attracted national attention.
“In D.C., I want a school that is going to outperform other schools,” he said.
Rocketship submitted to the board recent standardized test results from its California schools, showing that most still outperform the state average and that three of its schools are among the highest performing schools serving low-income students.
The charter school board granted the operator conditional approval in 2013 through an expedited process. In July, after a long search, Rocketship announced that it had found a location at 2335 Raynolds Pl. SE, a three-acre wooded parcel on an Anacostia hilltop facing a public housing development.
Rocketship was excited about size and location for the flagship campus, which was identified by an outside developer, Turner Agassi.
It submitted to the board a signed memorandum of understanding with Hope Village, the halfway house across the street, that said the charter operator was at first unaware that the chosen location was so close to the residences of more than 300 former inmates.
“We recognize that zoning regulations prevent a halfway house to locate nearby a school, but the regulations do not prevent a school from locating near a halfway house. Despite this failed recognition on our part, we declare that we fully embrace Hope Village and fully support its mission to rehabilitate returning citizens.”
Rocketship also submitted a letter of support from D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and a security plan that details a panic button in the front office, exterior cameras, a fully enclosed parking garage with electric rolling gates and fencing around the play area “that will be angled outward to prevent climbing.”
“We did everything they asked of us,” Smith said. “But we still have a lot of work to do.”
Rocketship PCS delays D.C. opening for a year [Rocketship PCS and Options PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
November 4, 2014
Last evening's special meeting of the DC Public Charter School Board that included member Rick Cruz' first session contained only a small portion of the hysteria centered around the proposed location of Rocketship PCS that was present during the October session. The board, after hearing concerns that the school had not properly engaged the Ward 8 community before identifying a parcel of land for its permanent facility in close proximity to a federal prisoner halfway house, had asked that it be provided with three documents before making a final decision on charter approval. The memorandum of understanding between Hope Village, the halfway house, and Rocketship, a student safety plan, and a letter of support for the charter from the community signed by Councilman Barry were obtained and so the board voted with little discussion to give Rocketship the right to begin educating children.
The most interesting part of the conversation concerned Rocketship's notice to the PCSB that it plans to open no later than the 2016 to 2017 school year. Katy Venskus, the organization's Vice President of Growth, Development and Policy, talked about the school's expansion experiences outside of California. She said they opened in Wisconsin without really understanding all the dynamics in a locality that has traditional public schools, charters, and private school vouchers. She indicated that while the school appears to be performing at a high academic level they did not meet their original enrollment target. Ms. Venskus related that the start in Nashville went much smoother, something she attributed to having a strong team on the ground for an extended period of time before beginning to operate. It appears that the charter is learning from their growth and from the rough start it has encountered here in the nation's capital. These factors have caused Rocketship PCS to come to the decision that it would delay opening by 12 months.
There were other fascinating aspects of the meeting. Children's Guild had already been approved to open a Kindergarten through eighth grade school special needs students in the fall of 2015. Now they were back to ask for a charter amendment to be permitted to go through the twelfth grade in order to bid on the Request for Proposal to takeover Options PCS. This is what I wrote at the time of their original application:
"The Children’s Guild has an eighty year history teaching this population of students. This is another applicant that wants to focus on helping those on the lower end of the economic scale with a goal of opening in Ward 7 with 450 pupils, 60 percent of whom would have an Individualized Education Program. The representatives of the school appeared confident, competent, and compassionate all at the same time."
This now makes three groups that want to educate the most challenging student body. Just to write this renews my faith in the greatness of mankind. I had predicted that Phillips would get the go-ahead but since the meeting I have learned that the impression PCSB members received from their visit to the school was much worse than it was portrayed the night of the meeting. Therefore, I believe that Children's Guild will get their charter amendment and win the RFP to run Options.
Finally, there was further discussion of the proposed Hold Harmless Policy regarding next year's Performance Management Framework results considering it will be the first using the PARCC assessment. I had written last week that charters should not be tiered for the 2015 to 2016 school term and testified on that belief last night. Now it turns out that there is a letter addressed to the PCSB signed by 16 charter school leaders making the identical point. The document is signed by not just any heads of schools; these individuals run some of the best charters in town. The board should take their advice.
Is Intellectual Courage the Key to Great Teaching? [Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
Education Week
By Ron Berger
November 3, 2014
In Washington, D.C., there is a school, Two Rivers Public Charter School, with a waiting list of over 2,000 families. In addition to having a school culture that celebrates inquiry, and joy in learning, Two Rivers also has remarkable academic results. Math achievement in 2013 was 24 percent above state average, and in every grade from kindergarten through eighth, math scores are strong and have shown consistent and significant growth.
What's going on here? Does this school have a knack for finding and recruiting math-smart teachers, or are they doing something different with the teachers they have - tapping into something new and powerful?
Not all teachers, particularly elementary teachers, feel sharp and deep in mathematics content and understanding. As someone who spent over 25 years as an elementary teacher and 20 years coaching elementary teachers, the number of teachers who have said to me, "I was never good at math," is alarming.
Two Rivers took this challenge head on. Over the course of four years, they transformed their faculty from one with typical weaknesses in mathematics instruction into a potent force. They asked their teachers to step up with intellectual courage, and the teachers responded with uncommon risk-taking and personal growth.
Year One in the transformation was perhaps the most extraordinary. The entire faculty worked all year long on their mathematical proficiency. They did not work on teaching math; they worked on learning math. Let me repeat that: the work they did was not in direct service of classroom instruction; it was to strengthen their personal mathematical understanding. Teachers stepped up courageously to reveal their mathematical gaps. They worked openly and reflectively all year long and sought help from their peers and leaders.
Teachers began by writing, sharing and analyzing their personal "Math Stories"--their journeys through learning mathematics as students and later as teachers. Over the year, they engaged in seven, three-hour math workshops diving deeply into math content. These sessions were differentiated into three self-selected levels of complexity. Most importantly, they supported each other to maintain the personal courage to make their mathematical confusions and misconceptions public among their peers, to take the risk of struggling with difficult problems--even failing at first--with colleagues.
In Year Two, the faculty took on the challenge of planning for effective lessons. They reviewed math textbooks to analyze the ways in which the content was presented and explained. They experimented with new lesson structures. In Year Three, they worked as a faculty to become facile in a problem-based lesson structure. Applying this new knowledge, they introduced in every classroom a weekly problem-based lesson, often spanning two class periods.
During all of this time, they made their learning and growth--as mathematical teachers and thinkers--public. Teachers observed and critiqued each other's lessons, and collaborated to improve their instruction.
What better way is there to have students develop a growth mindset than having teachers model this--in every class, every day? The Two Rivers teachers modeled personal growth in two important ways: growth in mathematical understanding, and growth in academic mindset and courage. Their energy was infectious in the school, and students could not help but getting swept up.
Deeper Learning requires intellectual courage, which is rarely easy. Teacher Jess Ellis described her mathematical journey at Two Rivers: "At first I felt that this was impossible. Crazy even. I wanted my textbook back. Now we are using multiple resources and texts to plan lessons. By the end of the year, though, I felt that I could actually create these experiences for students. And the students' perceptions of math are transformed...they make it work with challenging material; they have new thinking routines."
Two Rivers has some advantages. They are part of the Expeditionary Learning network, which provides a framework and support for Deeper Learning. A school leader, Jeff Heyck-Williams, is a visionary math teacher. But it is important to recognize the advantages that they don't have. They are not a selective school: they have a typical urban population drawn from lottery. They don't have a big budget. They didn't purchase some magically effective math program. The uncommon success of Two Rivers is based primarily on one thing: the commitment, growth mindset and intellectual courage of its teachers.
D.C. school boundaries plan gets more specific just before new mayor is elected
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
November 3, 2014
The District offers free full-day preschool to 3- and 4-year-olds through a lottery each year. Families enroll where space is available, sometimes driving miles from their homes to take advantage of the benefit.
But when the enrollment lottery opens Dec. 15, five elementary schools will for the first time offer guaranteed preschool admission to families within their attendance boundaries.
The schools are part of a pilot to begin implementation of a policy, approved by Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) in August, related to the overhaul of school boundaries.
“The new policy is an opportunity to make the pre-kindergarten process less stressful, by adding predictability and making what used to be a preference into a right,” according to a new boundary implementation plan.
The plan offers a road map for the rollout of the new school boundaries and 42 related student assignment policy recommendations. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson released the plan just days before the election, offering more timelines and specifics just as a new mayor is about to take the helm, a transition that could cast the plan into uncertainty.
Gray authorized new school boundaries to take effect in the 2015-2016 school year. Council member Muriel E. Bowser (Ward 4), the Democratic nominee for mayor, responded that the plan is “not ready” and vowed to restart the boundary discussion. Council member David A. Catania, (I-At Large), another mayoral candidate, said he would pause the process for a year to explore its implications. Independent candidate Carol Schwartz has said she would make some changes to the plan but would not start over.
The plan represents the first comprehensive overhaul of the city’s school boundaries in more than 40 years and was developed through a 10-month, emotionally charged community process. Residents have worried about how the new lines will affect their children’s academic opportunities or the value of their homes in a city where school quality varies dramatically. Others are relieved to see a more coherent plan for assigning schools and dealing with crowding and under-enrollment.
“The implementation is moving forward, but there’s still a question: Can they undo it?” said Faith Hubbard, a member of the citizen advisory committee that worked to develop the plan.
The office of the deputy mayor for education, which developed the plan, says it is “not a final draft” but something that will be updated based on “feedback, progress and new developments.”
Some changes already are in motion.
Boundary maps are being updated for the online enrollment lottery and application system, and when it opens on Dec. 15, parents who are new to the school system will enroll their children based on the new boundaries.
Extensive grandfathering provisions are included for families who are enrolled in city schools. All 23,100 students who currently attend their zoned school will be able to remain, even if their address is reassigned to a new school.
Students in third grade or higher have the option of continuing through the middle schools and high schools they plan to attend. Younger students will be rezoned into their new middle schools and high schools unless they have a sibling attending their former school at the time they will be there.
Only a few of the related policies would take effect next year.
Students enrolled in a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math program at McKinley Middle School will have the right to feed into a similar STEM program at Woodson High starting next year, part of an effort to create school feeder patterns based on programs and not just geography. And those who live more than a half-mile from their assigned school will receive a preference in the lottery for another school if it is less than a half-mile from their home, an effort to encourage walkable routes to school.
Most of the policies would go into effect later, if at all. For example, the boundary plan calls for reopening four middle schools to address demand for more quality middle schools. The implementation plan does not offer a budget or timeline for the opening of three of those schools, but says a schedule and relevant costs will be proposed next spring.
The pilot program to give families guaranteed access to preschool in neighborhood schools would eventually expand to include all Title I — or high-poverty — elementary schools. It is an effort to encourage families to start and stay with their neighborhood schools. But implementing it more broadly will be challenging and could take years to build up capacity, according to the plan.
The schools included in the first-year pilot are Burroughs Education Campus and Brookland Elementary School in Ward 5; Amidon-Bowen Elementary School and Van Ness Elementary School in Ward 6; and Stanton Elementary in Ward 8.
DC isn't a state, so why does it have a State Board of Education?
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
November 3, 2014
District voters in some wards will be voting tomorrow for members of the DC State Board of Education (SBOE). But this isn't a school board that oversees the DC Public Schools. So what is this board, and is there a point to it? As it happens, many people inside the education world ask and debate those same questions.
At recent forums, candidates for the SBOE have talked about hot issues like school boundaries and feeder patterns, coordination between charter schools and DCPS, and whether there's too much standardized testing.
But unlike a local school board, a state board of education doesn't exercise control over those day-to-day issues. Instead, state boards are responsible for setting broad policy in areas like graduation requirements, curriculum standards, and teacher qualifications. DC's state board has that kind of responsibility, but there's still a problem: it doesn't have enough power to ensure its policy decisions get translated into reality.
DC's state board is responsible for advising the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), the District's state education agency.
The state superintendent is appointed by the mayor, who can hire and fire him at will. The agency the superintendent heads, OSSE, oversees education throughout the District, including both DCPS and charter schools and ranging from preschool through adult education.
Among other things, OSSE is responsible for standardized testing, compliance with federal law in areas like special education, and administering the federal education grants DC receives. The SBOE is supposed to advise the superintendent in the policies he applies.
By statute, the SBOE is also responsible for approving education policies. It's supposed to do things like set academic standards and decide on teacher qualifications. Like other state boards, DC's SBOE doesn't have the authority to enforce or implement the high-level policies it adopts. Traditionally, that's not a state board's role.
Members say the SBOE does serve an important function in holding hearings and bringing education stakeholders together. According to SBOE Vice President Mary Lord, the policies it adopts affect "what every student in every grade in every classroom is expected to know and be able to do."
Limits on the SBOE's effectiveness
But Lord and three other SBOE members I interviewed also say the structure of DC's government has limited the SBOE's effectiveness.
One problem is that the SBOE doesn't have the power to suggest new policy initiatives. Instead, members have to wait for OSSE to bring them up. And once that happens, SBOE members can only approve or disapprove them. They can't modify them. That set-up limits their power to shape policy.
Some SBOE members also say OSSE and the SBOE can't effectively exercise state-level functions because in the District, there's no independent state education authority. All of DC's many education officials—except for the elected state board—report to the mayor.
In the case of the state superintendent, that situation creates a conflict of interest: the superintendent is supposed to act as a watchdog over the mayor's handling of education, but he's accountable to the very person he's ostensibly overseeing.
The SBOE is elected rather than appointed by the mayor, so theoretically it could act as a check on the mayor's overarching authority. But that hasn't happened because in many respects the SBOE has to rely on the superintendent to be effective.
How we got a state board
To understand how we ended up with a state board that lacks the kind of authority exercised by other state boards, it helps to know how and why the SBOE came to be.
Like other school districts, DC used to have an elected local school board that oversaw DCPS. But many felt its political nature and control over details impeded educational progress.
In 2007, the DC Council passed legislation handing control of the school system to the mayor and abolishing the local board. The Council also created OSSE, partly because the District needed a state education agency to apply for and administer federal education grants.
Though there was no federal requirement that the Council establish a state board, Councilmembers did so because they wanted to give the public some direct voice in education. The now-defunct local school board carried special emotional weight in DC because for a long time, it was the only elected body in the District.
The SBOE consists of elected representatives from all eight wards and one at-large member. It holds public meetings twice a month, and each member receives an annual stipend of $15,000. Members serve four-year terms, and elections are staggered, with candidates running this year in Wards 1, 3, 5, and 6.
The relationship between the board and OSSE
The first problem is the relationship between the SBOE and OSSE, both structurally and, at times, personally. Board members have complained that OSSE bristles at any suggestion that the SBOE's role is more than advisory. And when the SBOE and OSSE don't see eye-to-eye on priorities, OSSE has the upper hand.
When it passed the legislation setting up the SBOE in 2007, the DC Council said it wanted the SBOE's role to be more than advisory, which is why it gave it the power to approve policies. But in practice, the SBOE's reliance on OSSE has made policy-making difficult when the two agencies disagree.
One example of how this friction affects students is the issue of graduation requirements, which the SBOE is responsible for approving. The SBOE has been working on revising those requirements for years, holding hearings and gathering input from stakeholders. It submitted a draft proposal to OSSE earlier this year but now has to wait until that agency takes action. Some SBOE members say OSSE is dragging its feet.
According to Jack Jacobson, the Ward 2 SBOE member, a previous superintendent asked for the board's help in revising the requirements. But the two subsequent superintendents haven't been as interested. DC's current superintendent, Jacobson says, "has had concerns with the draft proposal, so he hasn't been as willing to work with the board on a final product."
A spokesperson for OSSE responded in an email that the process of revising graduation requirements is one that "should not be rushed."
The state superintendent's subordinate role
The more fundamental problem, SBOE members and others say, is that DC's superintendent is accountable only to the mayor's office. In some states, the superintendent reports to the governor. In others, the state board hires and fires the superintendent.
Board members also point out that DC's governmental structure ranks the superintendent lower than the DCPS chancellor. The chancellor reports directly to the mayor, while the superintendent reports to the deputy mayor for education. That makes it difficult for the superintendent to challenge the DCPS chancellor on issues such as whether schools are making enough progress.
Lord and Jacobson advocate making the superintendent accountable to the SBOE instead of the mayor to give the position real independence. The DC Council considered that option in 2007, but decided it was "unacceptable" to have the SBOE and the superintendent essentially overseeing the mayor.
Perhaps the SBOE doesn't need the power to hire and fire the superintendent, says Monica Warren-Jones, an outgoing member from Ward 6, but it should at least have input into those decisions. She points to the fact that OSSE has been criticized for its administration of federal education grants and says more checks and balances are needed.
Some may worry that giving more power to the SBOE would bring us back to the bad old days when a local school board was micromanaging decisions that should have been left to school officials.
But a state board doesn't get into matters that should be left to school officials, like which textbooks schools should use or what kind of contract a teachers union should have. And it doesn't control school budgets, so it can't decide how many teachers to hire or fire.
Instead, it can promote fundamental change, as the SBOE has tried to do in its now-stalled draft graduation requirements. The most innovative aspect of that proposal would allow DC schools to give students credit for mastery of subject matter rather than time spent sitting in a classroom.
DC's complicated education scene would benefit from an overarching, elected body with real authority over policy-level issues that apply to both the charter and DCPS sectors. While that's what the DC Council had in mind when it set up the SBOE in 2007, we have yet to achieve it.
De Blasio Unveils New Plans for Troubled Schools in New York
The New York Times
By Elizabeth A. Harris
November 3, 2014
In the packed auditorium of an East Harlem high school, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new approach to fixing New York City’s most troubled public schools on Monday, offering them more money and staffing, extending the length of their day, and arranging for social services to be delivered to students and families on site.
He described the new strategies, in a speech to a standing-room crowd of advocates and educators, as a sharp departure from his predecessor’s approach, which centered on closing large, failing schools and replacing them with smaller ones.
“The previous administration had a policy that a school like this was left to fend for itself, and that’s why we’re here today, because we reject the notion of giving up on any of our schools,” Mr. de Blasio said at the Coalition School for Social Change.
“We’re not giving up on them — in fact giving them what they need to succeed.”
The new program will designate 94 of the city’s most troubled schools, including the Coalition School, as Renewal Schools based on a list of criteria including low four-year graduation rates for high schools and poor test scores for middle and elementary schools. Students at those schools will receive an extra hour of instructional time each day, teachers will have extra professional training, and the schools will be encouraged to offer summer school. The schools will also be given additional resources, with $150 million spread over two years, about $39 million for this school year and $111 million in the next.
But the centerpiece of the proposal involves turning these institutions into so-called Community Schools, which try to address the challenges students face outside the classroom, with offerings like mental health services for those who need them or food for students who do not get enough to eat at home.
While these programs are often popular with advocates, and already in use around the country for many decades, including in New York City, their performance has often been viewed as uneven. An analysis by The New York Times found that some of the community schools in Cincinnati, which is viewed as a leader in the approach, still showed dismal academic performances even after years of work and millions of dollars of investments.
A New York deputy mayor, Richard R. Buery Jr., said, however, that there were examples of successful Community Schools around the country, and that they were an important part of a larger package of reforms.
“There is no magic bullet,” Mr. Buery said. “No one is saying Community Schools by itself are going to fundamentally change the work, but what I would say — and is critical — is that Community Schools are a necessary part of that work, as well as a deeper strategy to improve teaching in the building.”
Schools in the Renewal program will work along a three-year timeline, which will require improved attendance in the next school year and enhanced academic performance the year after that. Staffing changes, however, can be made along the way, and Mr. de Blasio said that if schools did not show meaningful improvement, they might still be shut down.
Joel R. Klein, who was schools chancellor for most of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s time in office, rejected the idea that the Bloomberg administration gave schools little help to improve. He also pointed to a series of studies that showed some substantial gains at New York City’s small schools, which operate on the premise that they can give more attention to struggling students than the large schools they replace. Last month, for example, a study by the nonprofit research group MDRC said that disadvantaged students who enrolled in small schools were more likely to go to college than their peers.
“We went in and we supported schools, we had resources and we had plans,” Mr. Klein said. But in many instances, he continued, “regardless of supports, you have to shut them down, and we know now that that strategy worked.”
But the process of closing schools was messy. Students were allowed to graduate but no new ones would be admitted, and as teachers fled for more stable positions, the remaining students often found themselves in a shell of a school, with fewer and fewer course offerings.
During the Bloomberg years, the practice of shutting down schools and opening new ones in the same building was often the key to freeing space for charter schools, and for changing large portions of the staff without violating union contract provisions.
But the teachers from the original school who were left over were still entitled to their salaries because they had not done anything wrong, and as the number of such teachers eventually grew to more than 1,000, they became an embarrassment for both the city and the teachers’ union.
Clara Hemphill, the founding editor of Insideschools.org, a website based at the New School, called Mayor de Blasio’s announcement promising, though she cautioned that the details of implementation would be crucial. “I don’t think public shaming and giving them bad grades, or telling them they’re terrible, makes them work harder,” she said of educators. “In most schools I’ve seen, it’s not that they’re lazy, it’s that they don’t know how to do better.”