FOCUS DC News Wire 12/12/13

 

 

The District’s Anacostia High School saw an enormous fluctuation in its student population in the 2012-13 school year, losing more than one in five students after the first month of school while gaining nearly twice as many during the school year. The enrollment swings left the school with a net student increase of 16 percent.

 

The numbers offer an indication of the outsize challenge facing neighborhood high schools in the city’s poorest areas, where principals and teachers are tasked with lifting the achievement of a student population that is always shifting.

 

“We have to constantly get those students reacclimated to our school culture and our instructional and academic expectations,” Anacostia Principal Ian Roberts said. “And that’s one of the biggest challenges.”

 

The figures were released Wednesday as part of an effort that aims to give parents and policymakers a new way to make side-by-side comparisons of every city school, including charters and traditional schools.

 

The “equity reports” — a joint effort among the traditional school system, the charter sector and other D.C. education officials — compile reams of data about individual schools that have previously been available only in scattered form, including information about demographics, attendance, discipline and performance on standardized tests.

 

And for the first time, the reports publicize each school’s mobility rate — the proportion of students who enter and withdraw throughout the year — raising perennial questions about whether schools are funded fairly.

 

Across the city, schools lost 11 percent of their students during the school year and gained 9 percent for a net enrollment loss of 2 percent. But the citywide figure masks huge variation.

 

Many neighborhood schools like Anacostia, which are legally bound to take all comers, see double-digit turnover and an overall increase in the number of students they serve. But other schools — including neighborhood schools in affluent areas, application-only high schools and high-performing charter schools — tend to be far more stable.

 

Many lose students but add very few or no new students throughout the year, often because they aren’t required to accept new students.

 

Thurgood Marshall Academy, for example — a highly ranked charter high school a mile from Anacostia High — lost 7 percent of its students mid-year and gained none. Another highly regarded charter, Two Rivers, gained no students and lost 1 percent.

 

Eighty percent of schools in the traditional system see a net gain in enrollment; 90 percent of charter schools see a net loss.

 

Pete Weber, chief of data and strategy for the traditional school system, said officials are working to understand why students leave and where they go, and he added that publishing the numbers is an important first step toward making a difference.

 

“The fact that DCPS and charter schools are working together is a big deal,” Weber said. “I don’t know of other jurisdictions where the two sectors have worked together as effectively.”

 

The data come after years of complaints about “churn” from advocates for traditional schools, who have accused charters of pushing out very difficult children.

 

Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said that although there are many valid reasons for a student withdrawing mid-year, he would like to see less mobility among charters. He said that the effort to make data public is meant to nudge schools to change without resorting to new regulations.

 

The city also must fix school funding, Pearson said. Currently, the traditional school system is funded based on its projected enrollment, and the projections tend to be high, to the perennial frustration of charter school advocates.

 

Charter schools receive money based on the number of students in seats on Oct. 5. The schools aren’t penalized for losing a student mid-year, but they also don’t get additional dollars if they take a new student mid-year.

 

“That’s probably creating the wrong set of incentives,” Pearson said, adding that he’d like to see both kinds of schools “paid based on who is actually at the school over time.”

 

The report is available online as a PDF. The D.C. Public Charter School Board also has posted the underlying raw data on its Web site.

 

 

Education officials in the District of Columbia today released a report meant to help parents make side-by-side comparisons of the city's regular public schools and charter schools on academic and nonacademic factors such as rates of suspension and absenteeism.

 

The new school-by-school "equity" reports provide information on retention, discipline, academic growth, and achievement of students across the city. It's the first time that city education officials have jointly published school data in this way. The District of Columbia schools and the city's charter school board annually produce reports on the schools that they respectively govern, while the Office of the State Superintendent of Education also publishes a yearly report card.

 

The effort, which also included D.C.'s deputy mayor for education, was funded in part by the NewSchools Venture Fund. It represents an unusual collaboration between regular public schools and charters in a single city, where competition for students and funding can be stiff. Even though the District of Columbia public schools have lost tens of thousands of students to charter schools in recent years, the city, at least publicly, is one of the more harmonious when it comes to relationships and collaboration between the regular public schools and the charter sector.

 

Citywide, public and charter schools together enrolled just over 80,000 students in 2012-13. Eight percent of those students—racked up 25 days or more of unexcused absences—while 43 percent were absent without an excuse between one and  five times. Twelve percent of students citywide were suspended out-of-school for one day or more in the same academic year, while the expulsion rate across both sectors was .22 percent.

 

While individual school results—those that parents will be most keen to see—are published in the report, comparisons between the regular public schools and the charter sector as a whole were not provided. 

 

The District of Columbia's public schools began reporting school-by-school data on metrics such as suspensions in 2011, and last year, the city's charter school board  publicly released individual charters' disciplinary statistics, including expulsions and suspensions, in an effort to foster transparency.

 

An Education Week analysis of federal civil rights data earlier this year found that nationally, charter schools suspended students at slightly lower rates than regular public schools, and expelled at roughly the same rates. In the District of Columbia, expulsion rates have been considerably higher in charters than in the city's regular public schools, the story said. A Washington Post analysis of school data found the same.

 

 

Yesterday, for the first time, the D.C. Public Charter School Board, D.C. Public Schools, the Office of the Deputy Mayor of Education, and Office of the State Superintendent of Education combined forces to release the D.C. School Equity Report. The document lists detailed data regarding each public school in the District of Columbia, including such statistics as the percentage of special education students served, student body demographics by race, expulsion rates, and DC CAS scores for this year and last. It was produced through support from NewSchools Venture Fund. I'm sure researchers are going to have a field day with all of this information.

 

The most interesting part, which was also picked up by the Washington Post's Emma Brown, revolves around the student turnover statistics. For each school the Equity Report graphs the number of students exiting and enrolling by month from October to May. Flipping through pages you find a consistent pattern.

 

For most traditional schools the chart looks like a fork with enrollment stable at the beginning of the school year and then you see two branches with five to ten percent of children leaving and another similar percentage arriving. In many cases the quantity of kids falling into each category is much larger. Can you imagine the academic and cultural challenges these changes bring?

 

For charter schools the trend is clearly different. For this system the top part of the split is usually missing and the trail turns gradually south. Charters tend to lose students as the term progresses although again there is large variation in this statistic.

 

I'm sure that this phenomenon is caused by what I will call the Charter Effect. Even though charters have now been around for more than 15 years the high expectations that are set by these schools are often extremely difficult sometimes for parents and children to accept. When a student was getting straight A's in the neighborhood schools and then is struggling in the charter the reality of the situation is startling.

 

Ms. Brown includes this response from the executive director of the PCSB about the migration of students in charters. "Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said that although there are many valid reasons for a student withdrawing mid-year, he would like to see less mobility among charters. He said that the effort to make data public is meant to nudge schools to change without resorting to new regulations."

 

Charters would love to provide services to decrease the likelihood that students will leave. However, these institutions still receive significantly less money per child compared to traditional schools. This is where I have a problem with the title of the report. Only when there is true equity between the two education systems in revenue and facilities we can start making apples to apples comparisons.

 

 

AT ONE point during Monday’s rowdy forum on D.C. education, a mayoral candidate wondered why the city even needed a schools chancellor. It was a silly assertion, made by a long-shot candidate. But the fact that it drew cheers spoke volumes about the mind-set of the crowd and the group that organized the event. Neither is a credible gauge of the success of public education reform in the District.

 

Boos and catcalls seemed to be the order of the night, The Post’s Emma Brown and Aaron C. Davis reported. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), making his first appearance at a campaign debate since announcing his plans for reelection, came in for a particularly hard time at the event, which was sponsored by the Washington Teachers’ Union, as did D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2). Good for them for standing up for the sensible policies that have brought much-needed change to the city’s public schools. Shame on those who pandered to the noise.

 

By any measure — enrollment, test scores, graduation rates — progress has been made both by both the city’s traditional school system and public charter schools. Much work still must be done, but it was unimaginable in 2007, when then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty engineered the mayoral takeover of what was one of the nation’s worst school systems, that D.C. schools could show the most overall gain in the country on the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress. “A remarkable story,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan of the D.C. record.

 

At the heart of the turnaround are reforms grounded in accountability, high standards and school choice. D.C. teachers are now rigorously evaluated; those who are most effective are rightly rewarded with more money while those with consistently poor records of not helping students achieve are dismissed. The teachers union has resisted some of the policies that have led to real results for students; indeed, it backed Mr. Gray in 2010 in the hope that he would reverse the controversial reforms started by Mr. Fenty and former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. Instead, Mr. Gray wisely chose Kaya Henderson, Ms. Rhee’s deputy, and has given her critical support.

 

Fewer than 1,000 teachers — 839 out of a workforce of about 4,000 — participated in the union’s election in July, and Elizabeth Davis was named president with just 459 votes. In the complex debate on school reform, she’s entitled to be heard. So are the many teachers who want to be rewarded for the quality of their work, and the thousands of children and parents who are grateful for the improvements in D.C. schools.

 

 

DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson has said she'd like to extend the school day, but the teachers' union contract limits it to 7½ hours. To get around that, schools can partner with community organizations that provide the additional learning time.

 

Washington Teachers Union President Liz Davis has said she's skeptical about extending the school day because she hasn't seen any research showing it boosts student achievement. In fact, there's no shortage of research saying that extended learning time, when done well, does that very thing. Last year, 7 out of the 8 DCPS schools that implemented some form of extended day saw major gains on DC's standardized tests, prompting Henderson to say she wants to bring the concept to more schools.

 

Nationally, community organizations, which in the past have provided afterschool programs, are repositioning themselves to give students a more seamless extended day experience. One that is doing that locally, and seeing good results, is a middle-school program called Higher Achievement.

 

In the past, afterschool (or "out-of-school") programs were well-meaning but often ineffective in moving the needle for students academically. Often they worked independently of one another and of the school system.

 

Now, according to a recent study, cities and school districts are beginning to bring more coordination to these efforts. And in some cases, nonprofits are partnering with schools to align the academic side of their offerings to the curriculum. They're also trying to foster the idea that programs taking place after 3:30 are a part of the regular school day.

 

Higher Achievement founded in DC

 

Higher Achievement (HA) is a variation on that model. Founded in DC by a Gonzaga College High School teacher in 1975, the organization has long conducted intensive afterschool and summer programs for disadvantaged but motivated students. Students get help with homework, engage in additional academic work, and also participate in a variety of recreational and character-building activities.

 

The program, using a combination of part-time paid staff and volunteer mentors working with small groups, has achieved impressive results. One study found that students in HA gain the equivalent of 48 days of learning in math and an extra 30 days of learning in reading per year. The program also says that students' average GPA goes up from 2.5 to 3.5 by 8th grade.

 

Now active in three cities in addition to DC, and working with a total of about 1,000 middle school students a year, the organization says that 96% of its alumni graduate from high school and 93% attend college. While data on the college completion rate is less clear, DC Executive Director Katherine Roboff says it's about 75%.

 

A recent study done by the highly regarded research group MRDC found that the DC-area program produced significant gains in both reading and math scores, although for reasons that are unclear only the math gains persisted after 4 years. HA also increased the chances that kids would apply to, and be accepted at, high-quality high schools.

 

Changing the model

 

Despite that success, HA, like some other afterschool programs, is planning to change its model. In the past it's drawn kids from a number of different schools to one school that serves as a "magnet" site for the program. Now it's aiming to take a "single-school" approach. That means that each site will draw all its students from the school where it's located.

 

Roboff says that while the magnet approach has worked well, the program can have a greater impact by partnering with particular schools. The idea is not to serve every student in a school, because, Roboff says, HA is not for everyone. It requires a significant time commitment: students stay from 3:20 until 8 pm 3 days a week (they get dinner). They also attend a 5-day-a-week, all-day program for 6 weeks every summer. And they commit to staying in the program for 3 or 4 years.

 

HA is piloting its new single-school model this year at Kelly Miller Middle School in Ward 7 and hopes to expand the model to several more DCPS middle schools over the next few years. Kelly Miller is one of the DCPS schools that has its own extended learning time program and saw significant test-score gains last year, apparently as a result.

 

But Kelly Miller's program, which students who aren't in HA attend, appears significantly less intensive. It requires students to stay an additional hour two days a week and attend a Saturday Academy. There's no summer component. (I was unable to obtain information from DCPS on the exact number of additional hours the Kelly Miller program provides.)

 

HA has used Kelly Miller as one of its magnet sites for 7 years, but is moving towards drawing 100% of the students from the school as existing students graduate from the program. Right now about a third of the 85 students HA serves at the site attend Kelly Miller. In the past, only about 15 came from the school.

 

Ultimately HA hopes to directly serve about a third of the students at each single-school site. But it also plans to provide some services to a wider group. At Kelly Miller, for example, it plans to offer high school placement help to all 8th graders. And it hopes the core group that is in the HA program will exert enough influence to affect the entire school culture.

 

While it's too soon to know if that will happen, the program is already seeing greater coordination with the Kelly Miller faculty. Two teachers work as paid staff in the afterschool program. One of them also worked last summer at HA's summer program and was able to help tweak its curriculum to better align with Kelly Miller's. Other teachers from the school occasionally volunteer to sub.

 

Roboff says the program has tried to recruit teachers from its kids' schools to work at its magnet sites but hasn't had as much success as it has with the single-school model.

 

Advantages of partnership model

 

If you want to create a "seamless" extended day experience, you might think it would make sense to simply extend the school day using all of the school's teachers, not just the ones who volunteer for the job. But, even aside from union contract considerations, there can be advantages to partnering with an outside organization. For one thing, at the end of a school day, teachers are likely to be tired. Bringing in fresh troops, including volunteers, can be an asset.

 

And kids seem to enjoy the change of format and, in most cases, personnel. Students in HA do spend time on academic subjects, but they also have opportunities to take dance, go outside and play basketball, and experiment with things like art and photography—activities that, with schools' recent laser-like focus on reading and math, have often gone by the wayside during the regular school day. Even academics can be fun: the evening I visited Kelly Miller, the kids were preparing for a geography competition, and spirits were running high.

 

Can HA, or something like it, be the means to meeting Henderson's goal of bringing the extended day concept to more schools? Certainly it would require some money: the cost per HA site is about $175,000 a year, with about three quarters of that amount coming from private funds. In the future, HA plans to ask each single-site school to contribute about $25,000. The organization has been receiving $25,000 annually per single-site school in Baltimore, but in the future it hopes to raise the amount to about $60,000, to cover roughly a third of the cost.

 

But considering that the school-run DCPS extended day programs cost, on average, $300,000, that actually looks like a bargain. And with no discernible progress on the teachers' union contract, the partnership model might be the best way to go.