FOCUS DC News Wire 11/8/13

 

 

SCHOOL REFORM in the District is working. That is the unassailable message of test scores released Thursday by federal education officials. Students at every level improved in reading and math, and the improvement exceeded the national average. Tremendous gains in the past two years show that there has been no lessening in the intensity of school reform under Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson.

 

“A pretty remarkable story” was the apt summary by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who joined D.C. officials in celebrating the results of the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). This respected report card showed gains for District students of double digits in math and of nearly 10 points in reading since 2007, when the reforms began. Striking gains were achieved since 2011: five points in fourth-grade reading; seven points in fourth-grade math; six points in eighth-grade reading; and five points in eighth-grade math.

 

The NAEP results include both the traditional school system and public charter schools. While a significant achievement gap persists between minority students and white students, all subgroups of students, save English-language learners, improved. And while D.C. students still trail the national average, the steady, fast improvement puts them on pace to catch up.

 

In other words: The reforms started during the administration of former mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, and sustained and refined under Mr. Gray and Ms. Henderson, are working. They are based on high standards, rigorous evaluation of teachers, an investment in pre-kindergarten and school choice.

 

The NAEP is the gold standard or, to use Mr. Duncan’s description, “irrefutable.” The naysayers against reform have been many and often vitriolic. They have included critics who didn’t like Ms. Rhee’s style; supposed experts who doubted that poor, black children could learn and insisted that poverty must be eradicated first; union leaders more concerned with sinecures than with results; and politicians advancing their own agendas. They all should take note of these results. In some cases, they owe apologies for their slanderous suggestions that school officials were cheating. But we would settle for a bit more open-mindedness going forward.

 

Our country holds dear the idea that all children, no matter the circumstances of their birth, will have an opportunity to better themselves. For decades, the casual acceptance of rotten schools in the poorest precincts of this city robbed too many children of that chance. Now, day by day, year by year, the hard work of school improvement is helping to turn the theory of American opportunity into reality. The work is far from done, but these results show that the reformers are on the right track.

 

 

"Our country holds dear the idea that all children, no matter the circumstances of their birth, will have an opportunity to better themselves," exclaim the editors of the Washington Post in a column today celebrating the increase in NAEP scores recorded this year by D.C. students. They write:

 

“'A pretty remarkable story” was the apt summary by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who joined D.C. officials in celebrating the results of the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). This respected report card showed gains for District students of double digits in math and of nearly 10 points in reading since 2007, when the reforms began. Striking gains were achieved since 2011: five points in fourth-grade reading; seven points in fourth-grade math; six points in eighth-grade reading; and five points in eighth-grade math."

 

The Post attributes this success to "high standards, rigorous evaluation of teachers, an investment in pre-kindergarten and school choice." But here is where they have things a little backward. For it was school choice that led directly to the other changes in public education experienced here in the nation's capital.

 

It was the explosive growth of charters that eventually made city politicians wake up to the fact that there were a growing number of empty chairs in their traditional school classrooms. As soon as parents were given the chance to place their kids in educational institutions other than DCPS they rushed to get them there as quickly as they could. The demand has not slowed one bit to this day. High performing charter schools have waiting lists that fill the hats from which names are pulled on lottery day.

 

Charters point to these lists as a badge of honor. But they also represent a failure by our public policy officials to provide a quality seat for each child that needs one. 40,000 is the number that the Illinois Facility Fund report estimated are needed to reach this goal. So now that we know what we are doing is working we must accelerate change.

 

We have to make as many facilities available to charters as possible. As I written earlier, money and other assistance need to be provided to high performing schools so that they can replicate and expand. Poor performing charters must be closed at a quicker rate. In addition, the Mayor has to find the resources to proceed with recommendations that equally fund charters and DCPS. Finally, the Opportunity Scholarship Program should be expanded to allow more children living in poverty to attend private school.

 

The NAEP results are good, but the Washington Post editors also point out that our kids are not yet at the academic average for all students in the United States. This fact alone should be enough to get someone, or a group of people, to act.

 

 

The District’s fourth- and eighth-graders made significant gains on national math and reading tests this year, posting increases that were among the city’s largest in the history of the exam.

 

Students at the city’s public charter and traditional schools also showed more improvement than nearly every state on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, an exam the federal government has administered every two years since the early 1990s. Results of the tests, known as the Nation’s Report Card, were released Thursday morning.

 

Even with the gains, the city’s scores — which have long trailed the rest of the nation’s — remain at the bottom of state rankings, with achievement gaps between white students and their black and Hispanic classmates being among the country’s largest.

 

The improvement comes amid a period of rapid change that has turned Washington into a closely watched experiment in urban education. Charter schools have expanded, now enrolling 44 percent of the city’s public school students; preschool has become available to every child; demographics have shifted; the city has adopted new academic standards; and the traditional school system has gotten rid of teacher tenure, instituting evaluations that tie job security and pay to student test scores.

 

That range of variables makes it difficult to pin down the root of the better test results, but District leaders said they demonstrate that the city’s school improvement efforts are working.

 

“We’ve made a number of revolutionary changes in our system,” Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) said Thursday at a news conference in Southeast Washington. “We are seeing now the results of the investments that have been made in our children.”

 

The performance of D.C. students on annual citywide standardized tests has been controversial, as allegations of cheating have lingered for several years. A set of local D.C. tests that showed large, across-the-board gains this year triggered questions after revelations about how local officials measured student achievement.

 

D.C. education leaders embraced Thursday’s positive results on the national exam — generally regarded as cheat-proof — as evidence that the gains demonstrated on local tests this year are real and have now been independently verified.

 

“This unequivocally shows that we don’t have to cheat. . . . Our children are achieving more than they have previously, and we’re catching up with the nation,” D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said. “It confirms that the reforms that we put in place are working. When you raise the bar for teachers and you raise the bar for kids, they rise to the occasion.”

 

The District’s performance has been improving for more than a decade, according to NAEP results, with steady growth in math and more fitful gains in reading.

 

Between 2011 and 2013, eighth-graders broke more than a decade of stagnation in reading and posted bigger score gains than in any other two-year period, climbing six points to 248 on a 500-point scale. The national average was 266.

 

Only 17 percent of D.C. eighth-graders scored well enough in reading to be considered proficient, which the U.S. Education Department defines as “solid academic performance” on skills appropriate for that grade level. Thirty-six percent of eighth-graders nationwide were deemed proficient in reading.

 

In math, eighth-graders posted a five-point gain, and the proportion of proficient students climbed from 17 percent to 19 percent. By contrast, 65 percent of eighth-graders scored proficient on the city’s annual math exam, the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System, demonstrating a wide gulf between expectations on the two tests.

 

Fourth-grade math proficiency jumped from 22 percent to 28 percent. In reading, proficiency increased from 19 percent to 23 percent.

 

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.

 

“The gains are real, they’re sustained and they’re touching all groups of District students,” said Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. “But as much as we celebrate the progress we made, there’s still a lot more ways to go.”

 

The U.S. Department of Education administered the exam to a representative sample of students in the city’s traditional and charter schools, and the results reflect the combined performance of those students. Charter school students, on average, have performed better than traditional school students on annual city tests.

 

Federal officials plan to issue a report this year that will show how D.C. traditional schools fared compared with other large school systems. The District’s results on the national test were released alongside those of each state, a less-meaningful comparison because Washington is entirely urban.

 

The District was one of just three jurisdictions in which student performance grew at both grade levels and in both subjects. The other two were Tennessee and schools run by the Defense Department. The District’s improvements from 2011 to 2013 were the largest in three categories and the second-largest in a fourth category.

 

Average scores in Maryland and Virginia were higher than the District’s and national averages, but neither state showed statistically significant gains or losses between 2011 and 2013.

 

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who appeared alongside city leaders at Thursday’s news conference, praised them for proving wrong the “Chicken Little pundits” who said that Gray would not continue the changes begun under former Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D). “D.C. is literally — literally — helping lead the country where we need to go.” Duncan applauded city policies favored by the Obama administration — including universal preschool and the adoption of merit pay and Common Core State Standards

 

D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), the Education Committee chairman who has sparred with Gray over school policy, said he was “delighted to see the improvement and celebrate these accomplishments.” But given the District’s low proficiency rates, he said, “we have a long way to go.”

 

The demographics of test-takers in the District has shifted over the past two decades, with the proportion of white and Hispanic students growing while the proportion of black students has fallen. White students now account for 10 percent of fourth-graders, up from 8 percent just two years ago, while the proportion of black fourth-graders fell from 77 to 73 percent during the same period.

 

Education researcher Steven Glazerman said that it’s not possible to tease out what caused the higher scores because different students take the test each time it is given.

 

The “NAEP is not very well designed to answer the ‘why’ question,” said Glazerman, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research who coined the term “misnaepery” to describe the misuse of NAEP scores to defend — or undermine — certain policies. “We’re all just speculating,” he said.

 

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, the last time the NAEP was given.

 

A child’s poverty status is measured by his or her 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 receiving 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 probably now included in the low-income category, said Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP.

 

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 at both grade levels and that they made some gains over 2011. But the gap between them and their more affluent peers, who were not eligible for free meals, grew significantly.

 

 

How often does Tennessee get cited nationally for producing great academic gains for its children? Almost never, about the same number of times Washington, D.C., gets touted for its superior academic results.

 

And yet both Tennessee and D.C. stood out Thursday for making the fastest education gains as the results from the "nation's report card," the respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), were released today.

 

Imagine that.

 

It's hard to say which location has the most checkered education history. Only a few years ago Tennessee got "outed" for setting embarrassingly low education standards. Tennessee students were acing their state tests but failing the far-tougher NAEP. Until a few years ago Washington D.C. was regarded as one of the worst urban school districts in the country.

 

The education leaders in both places are regularly pilloried for the reforms they undertook. In Tennessee, a third of the district school superintendents along with the teachers unions in Memphis and Nashville just signed no-confidence letters condemning State Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman. Their message to the governor: Rein him in!

 

The Washington reforms are famously controversial, designed by former chancellor Michelle Rhee (Huffman's ex-wife), who was forced from office in part because of the political turmoil created by those school changes. Current Chancellor Kaya Henderson was able to preserve and improve those reforms partly because she is considerably less inflammatory than Rhee.

 

How can this progress in Tennessee and D.C. be explained? In truth, it's not a mystery. I've seen similar progress while visiting other successful schools. There are three reasons behind the improvements.

 

It all starts with setting higher education standards. Tennessee did that in 2009. D.C. did that even earlier when it adopted the highly admired Massachusetts education standards. And both Tennessee and D.C. moved quickly to adopt the more rigorous common core standards.

 

Then, you mix in a strong dose of real-world employee evaluation, something common in the private sector but until recently mostly unknown in schools. In Tennessee, for example, a teacher could go ten years between evaluations. That changed dramatically in 2011 when Tennessee became one of the nation's earliest adopters of professional teacher evaluations. It's not just that the evaluations are tied to how much students learn; it's that they involve actual feedback to teachers based on what great instruction looks like.

 

In Washington, D.C., teachers routinely won rave reviews despite abysmal outcomes by their students — a contradiction routinely explained away by poverty (despite higher-poverty school districts with better outcomes). That changed dramatically with its groundbreaking 2009 IMPACT teacher evaluation. At the time, national union leaders dubbed it outrageous. Last month, a national study dubbed it effective. Overall, the better teachers stayed and tried harder, encouraged by the prospect of being rewarded. The "minimally effective" teachers tended to look for other lines of work.

 

These test score results include charter school students, a compelling part of the story. In Washington, charter students make up nearly half of all the students and are turning in academic improvements at rates that outstrip the traditional district. I'm not surprised.

 

My recent reporting trips to cities using high performing charter groups signals the most promising school improvement strategies I've ever come across. In Washington, for example, traditional schools are adopting many charter-proven successful strategies. That's not stealing; that's what is supposed to happen. And you can see far more of it in Memphis, Houston, Denver, San Jose and other cities.

 

Good things can happen in the nation's schools, but those success stories are fragile as pushback forces such as the skittish Tennessee school superintendents demand a return to the more comfortable ways of the past, ways that left at least half their students, the neediest, with educations of insufficient wattage to even qualify them for community college study.

 

That's why the education lessons learned from the losers of yesterday, Tennessee and Washington, are so compelling. You will face pushback. You will get accused of pushing too hard. You may get accused of cheating. But education leaders who hold firm with the right reforms will see results.

 

 

American fourth and eighth graders showed incremental gains in reading and math this year, but achievement gaps between whites and blacks, whites and Hispanics, and low-income and more affluent students stubbornly persist, data released by the Education Department on Thursday showed.

 

The results of the tests — administered every two years as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes called the nation’s report card — continued an upward trend in both areas over the past two decades. But still, far less than half of the nation’s students are performing at a level deemed proficient in either math or reading.

 

“There are some positive results here, which we were heartened to see,” said Jack Buckley, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the exams. “But places where we had hoped to see improvement, we didn’t.”

 

Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, said in a telephone briefing that schools were having to expend too much energy to bring underprivileged students up to the level of more affluent peers. He urged more focus on the years before formal schooling begins, citing President Obama’s proposal to help states finance preschool for all low- and moderate-income 4-year-olds. “Why do we want to stay in the catch-up business?” Mr. Duncan asked.

 

The average fourth-grade math score this year was 242 on a scale of 500, up from 241 in 2011, the last time the federal assessment results were released. The average eighth-grade math score was 285, up from 284 two years ago.

 

In reading, the average fourth-grade score edged up slightly to 222 from 221 two years ago, while the average eighth-grade score rose to 268 from 265. About 400,000 fourth graders and 350,000 eighth graders took the exams; the results represent both public and private schools.

 

With reading gains trailing math gains over the long term, some educators said they hoped that new standards being introduced for students in kindergarten through high school, known as the Common Core, would help.

 

Susan Pimentel, one of the lead writers of the Common Core standards for English language and literacy, said the new guidelines asked students to read more demanding material, including more nonfiction, and to cite evidence from their reading when answering complex questions. She said such instruction could help both to improve reading skills generally and to close the gap between boys and girls, since boys seem to prefer nonfiction.

 

A handful of states and jurisdictions showed more notable increases in average scores at certain grade levels on either reading or math. The District of Columbia, Hawaii, Tennessee and Defense Department schools had gains in both subjects and grade levels over the past two years.

 

Kaya Henderson, the public schools chancellor in Washington, described the increases in the district as “breakthrough gains.” Average scores for public and charter school students in fourth-grade reading increased by five points from 2011, and eighth-grade reading moved up six points, half the total gain in average scores since 1998. Average fourth-grade math scores among public school students rose by seven points, and eighth-grade scores by five points.

 

New York, by contrast, had smaller gains, and scores in eighth-grade reading were flat compared with 2011.

 

Although they came from a low base, Washington’s black students, who represent about three-quarters of public school enrollment, raised their average scores in both subjects and grades to their highest levels on record, Ms. Henderson said. She attributed the improvement to changes in curriculum and the teaching population, and to a rigorous evaluation program for educators.

 

“When you raise expectations for students and teachers, they rise to the challenge and produce,” she said.

 

The district’s new policies, initiated by the former chancellor, Michelle A. Rhee, have come under criticism from teachers’ unions and others who say they put too much emphasis on test scores.

 

In Tennessee, where public school students’ average scores rose on a scale similar to those in the District of Columbia, Kevin Huffman, the state education commissioner, also pointed to higher standards and changes in how teachers are evaluated — policies the Obama administration has encouraged.

 

Experts concerned that American students are falling behind their international peers said that despite these improvements, the United States still had a long way to go. Paul E. Peterson, director of Harvard University’s program on education policy and governance, said he worried that recent policy changes were not putting enough pressure on states and school districts.

 

In absolute terms, the states with the highest average scores included Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Jersey. In some cases, it appeared that demographics affected the results. These high-performing states have lower proportions of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches than the national average, and much lower rates than some of the lowest-performing states.

 

“Absolutely, without question, demographics are a factor,” said Mr. Buckley of the National Center for Education Statistics. But, he added, some states with similar demographics did not perform as well, and some states with high populations of typically underserved students showed gains. “Demography is not destiny,” he said.

 

In Massachusetts, where average fourth-grade reading scores actually declined between 2011 and 2013, Mr. Buckley said the drop was driven by falling scores among low-income students.

 

Mitchell D. Chester, the state’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said officials there recognized that they needed to focus more on students from poor families. Three years ago, the state legislature passed a law giving Massachusetts the authority to take over poorly performing districts, where concentrations of low-income students are often high.

 

“We’ve been much more deliberate and aggressive in the last several years in taking on those schools that are lagging the most and have high proportions of low-income students,” Mr. Chester said.