- Are D.C.'s Public Schools Failing Black and Hispanic Children? [César Chávez PCS is mentioned]
- D.C.’s ‘No Child’ Waiver Application Draft Available For Comment
- 32 More Acres of the District Up For Grabs!
The Washington Post
By Irasema Salcido
January 19, 2012
The District of Columbia has long had some of the worst educational outcomes in the country, including the lowest high school graduation rate. Now the nation’s capital owns the dubious distinction of having by far the largest achievement gap between African American and white students - as well as Hispanic and white students - among major urban school systems, according to a federal study released last month.
Even those of us who have staked our careers on closing the perilously wide gap by launching charter schools and championing reforms to shake up the status quo must admit that, so far, we have produced only marginal gains for the District’s underserved children.
Piecemeal approaches to D.C.’s educational woes will continue to fall short of our goals. That’s because, as a recent Post story observed by paraphrasing Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools: “The District’s racial gap is really an income divide.” Indeed. It is about time we addressed the myriad issues caused by poverty in our city, obstacles that prevent children from reaching or even approaching their full potential -- academically and in all aspects of their lives.
If the problem seems too big, consider this: There is a growing movement across the country and right here in the District committed to solving it. And it’s rapidly gaining momentum. It is the Promise Neighborhood movement based on the breakthrough work of New York City’s HarlemChildren’s Zone.
In Ward 7’s Parkside-Kenilworth community, a unique coalition of local residents, charter and traditional public school leaders, nonprofits and funders have been working tirelessly to plan and now implement D.C.’s very own Promise Neighborhood. In this community, where the residents are overwhelmingly poor and African American, there exists the opportunity to make a difference where it matters most. The community is engaged, local resources have begun to be mobilized, government agencies are signing up.
In this economy, the D.C. Promise Neighborhood Initiative is working to build a cradle-to-career pipeline of intensive support to keep children and their families on the road to success that has for too long bypassed them. This includes evidence-based approaches such as home visitation for teen mothers and state-of-the-art mobile medical units staffed by Children’s National Medical Center to provide health care to this isolated neighborhood.
The Educare School is already under construction, bringing a proven early learning program to 175 children from birth to five. In October 2010, we were one of 21 recipients of a planning grant from the U.S. Department of Education to make our mission a reality: to dramatically increase the number of children from Parkside-Kenilworth who complete college and become thriving, productive adults capable of succeeding in the global economy.
Parkside-Kenilworth may not seem a likely candidate to become the next promised land of urban educational achievement. More than half of all families here struggle below the federal poverty line. Ninety percent of families with children are headed by single mothers; teen birth rates are among the highest in the city, and consequently the country; and violent crime per capita in Kenilworth is almost double the District average. The toxic stress of living in these conditions takes a very real toll on children’s ability to succeed in school.
Children in Parkside-Kenilworth have some of the worst academic outcomes in the nation. Less than a third of children attending local elementary schools are proficient in reading by the third grade. Infants and toddlers lag behind in critical development milestones compared to their peers citywide, putting them at a disadvantage before they even reach kindergarten.
Despite the skepticism of some who believe we will never succeed against these odds, we see a much bigger risk that we cannot ignore -- more generations of dependent adults and single, teenaged mothers. The DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative, a collective effort in which so many are already invested, is simply Too Big To Fail.
When you come to tour the Promise Neighborhood (tours are held on the fourth Thursday of every month), you will also see our community’s assets. We have a strong sense of civic duty, committed school and resident leaders, great teachers, ample land for growth, and development already underway. It is because of these assets and the strength of our plan and partnerships that we have been recognized as one of the most promising Promise Neighborhood Initiatives in the country by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
But to succeed, we need to bring on more local partners and funders. If we don’t believe in ourselves, who will? As the nation’s capital, the stakes are even higher for the District. All eyes are on us.
Irasema Salcido is the president of the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative (www.dcpni.org) and the founder and CEO of the César Chávez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy, which has a middle and high school campus in Parkside-Kenilworth.
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
January 19, 2012
The District’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education has posted a draft of its application for relief from the federal No Child Left Behind law, which you can read here.
If the waiver is approved by the U.S. Department of Education after formal submission late next month, the District will be out from under NCLB’s requirement of 100 percent reading and math proficiency by 2014.
Like many states, D.C. isn’t even close. Out of 187 eligible public and public charter schools, just 25 made “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) in 2011, more than half qualifying through the “safe harbor” provision that requires a 10 percent decrease in students below proficiency.
Also like many states, D.C. wants to replace the one-size-fits-all AYP measurement with a more meaningful set of metrics, emphasizing growth over annual test results. District officials say schools will be no less accountable for performance under the proposed new system. The OSSE application makes plain that no matter how they are measured, D.C. schools have a long way to go.
“Some other states have used the waiver process as a way to recognize that the majority of schools within the state are successful and only failing to close AYP achievement gaps within their state rather than overall proficiency,” OSSE said . “DC has a different situation – most schools are still failing to make AYP because of the low overall proficiency levels of all students in many schools.”
Describing student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), OSSE said: “While D.C. has looked better in recent years in comparison to other urban districts, it is still well below the national urban average at both 4th and 8th grade and in bother reading and math.”
The proposal also means that OSSE plans to join DCPS and the D.C. Public Charter School Board in giving parents and policymakers a broader and deeper statistical portrait of how schools measure up.
The proposed new data scheme would show not only growth in reading and math scores, but growth among students in the bottom quarter of their schools. It would also include rates of ninth grade completion, high school graduation (using a new and more rigorous formula) and college completion.
OSSE would place all public and public charter schools into one of five categories, each with its own set of benefits and penalties or interventions: “Reward,” “Good Standing,” “Continuous Improvement,” “Focus” and “Priority.” Reward schools represent that top 5 percent based on proficiency or top 10 percent according to growth. Priority schools, at the bottom of the pyramid, would be those with lowest rates of proficiency or growth, as well as graduation rates under 60 percent for two consecutive years. OSSE can’t close any public schools on its own, but could recommend closure to DCPS or the charter board under this plan if a school remains in priority status for three years. The application online doesn’t rank the schools, but OSSE officials say they will provide that listing within the next few weeks.
The agency will present the application for public comment in a series of community meetings between now and late February.
The Washington City Paper
By Lydia DePillis
January 17, 2012
News keeps trickling out about the school buildings that D.C. wants to get rid of. We heard about J.F. Cook and Langston in the Truxton Circle area, Stevens in Foggy Bottom, the Franklin School downtown, and Webb Elementary in Trinidad.
Now comes Young Elementary on 26th Street NE off Benning Road—a gigantic property, with a 70,400-square foot building sitting on 26.83 acres, according to the Department of General Services. Then there's the Rudolph Elementary at 2nd and Hamilton Street NW in Petworth, an 84,400-square-foot building on 5.29 acres. Finally, the District is getting rid of the Old Miner School, a vacant building next to the newer Miner Elementary at 15th and F Street NE.
Both Young and Rudolph have been offered to charter schools already, which means they're eligible for other uses. And the Young School property, in particular, is a crapload of land—more than half the size of what the District has planned to develop at the Hill East site just a little bit south. It also has nice views over the river, and will eventually sit at the end of a streetcar line to Union Station and beyond.
Hello, developers?
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