- Why some D.C. charters have more white kids [Capital City PCS, Washington Latin PCS, E. L. Haynes PCS, Two Rivers PCS, Washington Yu Ying PCS, and BASIS DC PCS mentioned]
- The Washington Post's Jay Mathews owes charter leaders an apology
- D.C. explores widening the road to earning a high school diploma [Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS mentioned]
- D.C. tech students spend ‘Hour of Code’ at Microsoft [Friendship PCS mentioned]
- D.C. charter school fights to stay open [Potomac Prep PCS mentioned]
- Four Lessons From D.C. Teachers Who Catalyzed City Wide School Redesign [E. L. Haynes PCS, Capital City PCS, DC International PCS, Mundo Verde Bilingual PCS, Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS, Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
Why some D.C. charters have more white kids [Capital City PCS, Washington Latin PCS, E. L. Haynes PCS, Two Rivers PCS, Washington Yu Ying PCS, and BASIS DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Matthews
December 14, 2014
Former history teacher Erich Martel, a proven expert on D.C. school mismanagement, suggested in my Nov. 24 column that some D.C. charter schools had more white students than he thought likely if admission by random lottery was the rule, as it is supposed to be.
I said I would check this out. All seven charters Martel identified as having above-average white percentages have answered my questions, as has My School DC, the city office that oversees the application and lottery process. As far as I can tell, they are all playing by the rules. But that doesn’t answer the question: Why do certain charters and regular public schools have more white and middle-class students than others?
Several middle-class parents, both white and black, gave me their view. They are adjusting to a system very different from what happened before charters arrived in the 1990s. D.C. has an extraordinary 45 percent of its public school students attending those independently-run public schools.
My School DC executive director Sujata Bhat said the only students admitted to charters other than through random lotteries are midyear arrivals and a few other exceptions. The Mathematica Policy Research group has been hired to study the process. Siblings get preference in the lotteries, and their numbers can be large. Karen Dresden, founder and head of the Capital City public charter school, said 50 of the 158 spaces in round one of her lottery this year went to siblings, seven of whom were white.
The charter school leaders all agreed that some charters — and regular schools — have unusual numbers of white students because they are located near areas with many white — and black — middle-class residents and have high standards that those parents seek. One college-educated black parent told me she had pulled her children out of one charter because its middle school did not meet her standards. Middle-class parents of every race are generally better equipped to research, do applications and provide transportation.
In the eyes of many parents, there is only one high-performing non-charter public middle school in the city: Alice Deal in Northwest. “The only way to get into it anymore is by living in Ward 3,” one parent said. She said those families most eager to apply to the charters that Martel listed are from east of Rock Creek Park and in the Georgetown/Glover Park area, near to Deal but outside its boundaries, “and then everyone else farther out from Deal.”
The charter schools Martel listed “aren’t full of white kids,” the parent said. “They’re full of kids who can’t get into Deal.”
Whites were not a majority in any of the schools identified by Martel. Martha Cutts, head of the Washington Latin charter middle and high schools, said: “We do not have ways of admitting more white and affluent students, nor do we make any special efforts to attract such students.” Just 33 percent of her students are white. The representative for the BASIS middle school said because of the lottery “we have no way of knowing” applicants’ race or economic status. Forty percent of BASIS students are white.
Officials at E.L. Haynes Elementary School (14 percent white), Two Rivers elementary and middle school (26 percent white), Yu Ying elementary school (27 percent) and Capital City Lower School (18 percent) said the same thing, Jessica Wodatch, executive director of Two Rivers, said one of her own teachers could not get her child admitted to her school because of the lottery.
The data show that, on average, schools with significant numbers of middle class students have higher achievement levels. But several D.C. charter schools with no or few middle class students do just as well. It might be best to study how they accomplish that, with well-trained and supported principals and teachers, since it is unlikely that there will ever be enough middle class kids to please everyone.
The Washington Post's Jay Mathews owes charter leaders an apology
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
December 15, 2014
Today was the day that Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews was to respond to an allegation he made credible by Eric Martel that seven high performing charter schools in the District have found a way skirt the law and admit a large percentage of white students. Here is the result of his investigation. Drum roll please.
"As far as I can tell, they are all playing by the rules."
In fact, there was never any evidence that they were not. But the publishing of this innuendo made each of the school leaders involved and Scott Pearson, executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board, immediately drop what they were doing and scramble to defend these schools that now educate 45 percent of all public school students in the nation's capital. It was not a good day.
But then again the false claim by Mr. Martel just continues a patten of disrespect for those running some of the best educational institutions in our city. I'm sure each of these administrators drive each day, twice a day, past the renovated DCPS facilities now plentiful around our town. It is impossible not to notice the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to turn these buildings into educational castles while the charter school leaders get the privilege of begging banks to borrow dollars to renovate shuttered traditional schools. These are classroom spaces that have been allowed to rot to the point that not even their copper pipes remain intact. Then they get to worry about paying back the loan.
This is if those in the Wilson Building will even give them a closed DCPS facility. About 20 are sitting vacant. Perhaps the thought of our public officials is that if they inequitably fund charters to the tune of about $100 million a year compared to the regular school system then the people running these places will just give up.
But then I guess they have never met a charter school leader.
D.C. explores widening the road to earning a high school diploma [Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
December 14, 2014
As D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson embarks on a plan to “rethink high schools” and improve graduation rates in 2015, she is pushing for new regulations that would move District schools away from a century-old measure of academic progress: seat time.
Alternative paths would allow students to get a diploma faster or, in some cases, without having to spend time in a traditional high school.
“Right now we can only give credit for the time you sit in a classroom,” Henderson said. “That is insane.”
Since she took over the leadership of D.C. schools, she has said it’s been her “huge priority” to create more flexible ways to earn high school credit and obtain a diploma, a goal shared by many charter school leaders.
Four years later, and with weeks left before a new mayor takes office, the D.C. State Board of Education is considering a proposal that would grant the chancellor’s wish.
The proposed regulations by the Office of the State Superintendent for Education (OSSE) would remove the standard “Carnegie unit” — 120 hours of instruction, representing an hour a day, five days a week, for 24 weeks — upon which high school credit is based.
Instead, starting next school year, students would have multiple ways to earn credit, including passing a state-approved test or participating in a “course equivalent,” such as an internship, community-service project, portfolio or performance that can be tied to the academic standards. Another proposal would create a “state diploma” that would go to students who pass the GED any time after January 2014.
The revamped regulations come as the city is focusing new attention on improving graduation rates, which are among the lowest in the nation . Four in 10 high school freshmen in the District do not earn a diploma in four years. The result: More than 50,000 adults in the city are high school dropouts with diminished prospects to earn a living wage. At least 7,500 dropouts are between the ages of 16 and 24, officials say.
Schools are searching for ways to reengage them and offer accelerated programs so that coming back does not mean a full-time, multi-year commitment.
Sonja Santelises, vice president for K-12 policy and practice at the Education Trust, said alternative paths offer the potential to motivate students to stay in school through more hands-on experiences. But she cautioned that greater flexibility can also yield greater inequality.
“In the name of giving kids something different, we have often given them something less,” she said, recalling her days working in Baltimore’s schools, where she saw high school students earning credit through rudimentary poster-board presentations. “Then, all we are going to do is exacerbate the gaps that many of us are trying to address.”
Forty states already have policies that permit districts to experiment with the concept known as competency-based learning. Sometimes called outcome- or performance-based learning, the approach ties credit and course advancement directly to students’ understanding of skills regardless of their time in a classroom.
The trend is fueled in part by the rise of blended learning programs, which use computers to make it easier to teach students at their specific ability level and pace. The federal government encouraged competency-based learning reforms in Race to the Top applications.
While some advocates envision transformed schools where grade levels and bell schedules are irrelevant and all students work on their own track, D.C. school officials say they intend to start slowly, with a pilot program. Schools would apply to participate this spring on a course-by-course basis. An OSSE-convened panel of educators and curriculum experts would decide whether their proposals are sufficiently challenging.
Alexandra Pardo, executive director at Thurgood Marshall Academy, a charter, said her school recently won a foundation grant to try more flexible pacing for math classes, where skills build on one another and mastery of concepts is particularly important.
Like in most city high schools, Pardo said, many students are below grade level and need extra time to catch up, while others are ready to move ahead. “They are all sitting in the same Algebra I class,” she said.
City education officials and charter school leaders have been studying the issue for two years, researching how schools across the country approach competency-based learning. Members of the study group took a trip to Maine, one of two states that passed policies linking credit to competency statewide.
The State Board also has been exploring competency-based learning as part of a stalled effort to revamp graduation requirements. A proposal to increase requirements for physical education, art and music also included flexibility to allow students to earn credits outside of class by participating on sports teams or taking part in extracurricular arts and music programs.
Several State Board members said they support the concept of competency-based learning, but some are frustrated by the timing of the proposed regulations. The State Board advises and votes on graduation requirements, but only OSSE can write and initiate new policies.
The proposed regulations were initially published Nov. 28 for a 30-day public review. But the State Board may vote this week, well before the public comment period is scheduled to end. Jesse B. Rauch, executive director of the State Board, said the board can — and historically has — cast votes during the public-review period.
Board member Mary Lord (At Large) said she should not be expected to vote on a major proposal that was offered with little more background information than a PowerPoint presentation and before the public has a chance to understand it.
During a meeting with OSSE officials this month, some board members had questions about the proposal to give a diploma, rather than a credential, to students who pass the GED. As of early December, 374 D.C. residents had taken the GED this year.
In the District, you must be 18 to take the test, and many test-takers are older. But the shift could have a significant effect on graduation rates at alternative schools that offer GED preparation classes, such as Ballou STAY, which reported a 4 percent four-year graduation rate in 2013.
Currently, 13 states, including Maryland, award diplomas to those who pass the GED. City officials maintain that those who pass the test are demonstrating the same cognitive skills and abilities as a high school graduate, and a diploma could give them a better chance at getting a job or pursuing higher education.
The GED was revised this year to align with Common Core academic standards, and the threshold for passing the test is based on how a sample of high school graduating seniors perform on it.
“I think it’s a valid approach, but I don’t think it’s the same” as actually attending and finishing high school, Laura Slover, an outgoing board member from Ward 3, said during a State Board meeting this month. She recommended that if GED recipients receive a diploma, they should be reported separately.
Some research shows that although GED test-takers can demonstrate comparable cognitive skills, they are less likely to demonstrate life skills such as perseverance that students develop by reporting to school day in and day out.
In a city where 30 percent of high school students cycle between schools, often between charter and traditional public schools, some have questioned whether credits earned through more flexible approaches would be transferable between schools. Some wonder whether OSSE’s role should be stronger in regulating what course mastery should look like, while some charter leaders believe they should have autonomy on such issues.
In the midst of the debate, city officials are scrambling to develop a plan that could be approved in time to implement by next school year.
“We have recognized that this is an idea that could be beneficial, and we want to move it forward as quickly as possible,” said Antoinette Mitchell, the assistant superintendent for postsecondary and career education at OSSE. “If not, there’s always next year.”
D.C. tech students spend ‘Hour of Code’ at Microsoft [Friendship PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
December 12, 2014
D.C. students who signed up for the Hour of Code this week had some highly skilled people to help them as they typed through the online coding tutorial from a conference room at the Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center on K Street.
The software and computer services giant invited students who are already getting exposure to high-tech fields at school to a session with its experts. The students attend new Information Technology academies at McKinley Tech, Cardozo High, and Friendship Collegiate Public Charter School.
D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson congratulated the teens after they finished on Thursday.
“Coding is huge. Whether you go into coding or not, it teaches you how to think,” Henderson told them. “If you do this right, you can come work at places like this and make a lot of money.”
Then, she said, they can come back and teach future D.C. students.
The week-long “Hour of Code” campaign has exposed tens of millions of students around the world to the basics of computer coding. President Obama kicked off the event Monday by typing out a line of code himself while meeting with some middle school students from Newark, N.J.
The District invested $2.8 million in nine new career academies in city high schools that were scheduled to open this year.
Gray said the city’s old vocational programs were training people for jobs that no longer exist. The new academies are supported by professional industry partners and focus on three growing and high income fields: information technology, hospitality and engineering.
Students at the new IT academies said they are learning about graphic design and creating computer applications.
Larnelle Hardy, a 17-year old senior at McKinley Tech, had an internship at Microsoft last summer, where he developed games. This year, as Henderson described it,“Larnelle’s summer internship went big.”
He and a few friends are starting their own gaming company. Microsoft is paying for space for them at 1776, a hub for technology start-ups.
They are working on a game about a school where all the teachers and staff are zombies and the objective is to free the students, Hardy said. They are thinking of calling it “Liberator.”
The company’s name? T-Street Games, for the street that McKinley Tech is on.
D.C. charter school fights to stay open [Potomac Prep PCS mentioned]
Watchdog.com
By Moriah Costa
December 12, 2014
WASHINGTON, D.C. — About 300 students, parents and teachers rallied at Potomac Prep Public Charter School on Wednesday night to voice their opposition to the school being closed.
“Please don’t close my school,” Amelia Richardson, a sixth grader at Potomac Prep, pleaded with D.C. Public Charter School Board members. “It’s way better than my last school.”
On Nov. 17, the D.C. Public Charter School Board voted to begin the process of revoking the school’s charter for failing to meet its benchmarks. The public hearing, which the school requested, was part of that process.
School officials argue that changes within the past year, including ending the contract with its management company and hiring a new principal, have put the school on track to meet those standards.
The school, which focuses on an arts infused program, serves 425 students from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade. It also serves about 19 special needs children.
According to the board’s 10-year review of the charter, the school only met one of its 20 stated goals and academic expectations. The board noted the school had not broken any laws or mismanaged its funds.
Despite this, the school was upgraded from Tier 3 to Tier 2 in the board’s performance assessment for the 2013-2014 academic year.
Sarah Medway, a board staff member in charge of managing the review process, said recent staff visits to classrooms were promising.
“What we observed was promising and different from what we’ve seen in years past,” she said.
Marian White-Hood, the school’s new principal, urged the board to reconsider its decision and give the school more time to meet its goals.
“We have instituted a turnaround plan and it’s a living document that will continue to grow and will be a model for the city,” she said. “I hope that you will allow us to continue implementing the plan and I hope that you will allow us to make a mark on Washington, D.C., as a school (and) a charter board of education who believes in the little schools.”
No charter school in D.C. has ever successfully appealed its charter revocation. Since 1996, 16 schools had their charter revoked.
White-Hood joined the school six months ago and teachers testified at the hearing in support of her open-door policy and rigorous standards.
School staff said there was plenty of low morale and teacher turnover when the school was managed by charter operator Lighthouse Academies, but that ended when its contract with the organization was terminated in June.
In a video supporters played at the hearing, students spoke about how much they loved the school and how much it helped them academically and socially.
“If you shut down the school, you shut down my life,” one student said on the video. “This school has been helping me to change.”
The board will vote on whether or not to keep the school open at a public meeting Monday night.
Four Lessons From D.C. Teachers Who Catalyzed City Wide School Redesign [E. L. Haynes PCS, Capital City PCS, DC International PCS, Mundo Verde Bilingual PCS, Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS, Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
EdSurge
By Carolyn Chuong
December 10, 2014
Across the country, schools are taking a myriad of approaches to personalize learning. Several months ago, I began to learn about how two schools in D.C., E.L. Haynes Public Charter School and Wheatley Education Campus, are reimagining student learning. In the process of visiting these campuses, I saw firsthand how two teachers were leveraging innovative models to meet their unique classroom challenges. From these teachers’ stories, I surfaced four lessons for other districts seeking to catalyze personalized learning from small steps to big impact.
In summer 2013, Shane Donovan, a ninth grade physic teachers at Washington D.C.’s E.L. Haynes Public Charter School, faced a familiar challenge. He was teaching ten students, all of who were at vastly different levels. Many had previously failed the course because they needed more academic support. Others struggled due to poor attendance or behavioral problems.
Donovan needed laser-like support for each student to get them back on track in time. But he wasn’t alone.
Five miles away, Tanesha Dixon, a middle school social studies teacher at Wheatley Education Campus, needed to bring her students up to grade level. About one-third of her students were proficient in math and reading. Dixon needed to grow students not just one, but many grade levels in one short year.
Donovan and Dixon had something else in common: both were CityBridge Education Innovation Fellows. In 2013, CityBridge, a local foundation dedicated to improving student outcomes in D.C., launched a yearlong fellowship for district and charter school teachers interested in personalized learning.
The Fellows began by visiting other schools, including KIPP Empower in Los Angeles and New Design High School in New York City. Inspired by the work of others, they began developing their own instructional model to personalize learning in their classrooms. While their needs and experiences were similar, what they designed was drastically different.
New Classroom Models
Donovan developed a competency-based system for his physics classes. He created 40 standards that the students progressed through at their own pace during the school year. Standard 19, for instance, covers Newton’s first law.
While this approach allowed Donovan to better meet his students’ academic needs, it also served another important purpose. It encouraged all of his students, including those with poor attendance or behavioral problems, to become independent learners. “I realized I could help our kids gain the skills they needed in college,” says Donovan. “They would learn organization and self-management—and take ownership of their learning.”
Dixon tried something different: She created a station rotation model in which students rotated between teacher-led instruction, small group activities, and independent study. Within each station, Dixon used technology, including adaptive software, to provide students with targeted instruction based on their skill level and to better track each students’ progress.
But she didn’t stop there. She also adopted a 1:1 tablet-to-student ratio in her class to foster greater digital literacy. Many of her students had little access to devices and high-speed Internet at home. School was the only place they could get these skills. “I asked myself what ‘21st century learners’ meant,” says Dixon. “For my students, it means that we are connected and are able to figure out ways to problem solve.”
NGLC Takes Notice
During the 2013-14 school year, Dixon and Donovan started to see progress in student engagement, achievement, and passing rates on interim assessments. Encouraged by what they saw, Donovan and Dixon shared their work with colleagues and school leaders.
But while individual CityBridge Fellows were seeing gains in their classrooms, taking personalized learning to a broader scale would require overcoming significant challenges. “Principals were saying that to get their whole building on board, they themselves needed funding, design thinking, and expertise,” explains John Rice, Manager of Blended Learning for D.C. Public Schools.
At the same time, opportunity was on the horizon. The Next Generation Learning Challenge (NGLC) grant, which supports personalized learning and tech innovation nationally, was working to create a series of regional-level competitions. Washington D.C. was on the list. “NGLC wanted to leverage the strengths of its existing national challenge and combine that with a local organization that had boots on the ground, strong ties to educator networks, and deep knowledge of the local system,” says Margaret Angell, Director of CityBridge’s Education Innovation Portfolio.
NGLC asked CityBridge to launch a regional competition called “Breakthrough Schools: D.C”. They used this competition to distribute up to $6 million to support the redesign or launch of schools with personalized learning models in the District.
During the initial round of the Breakthrough competition, Donovan and Dixon supported their own schools to submit a Breakthrough grant application. In the spring of 2014, CityBridge announced its first cohort of grantees. Out of 23 applicants, 6 schools including Wheatley and E.L. Haynes, received initial $100,000 planning grants.
New Models For Everyone
Since being selected, Wheatley has used the grant funding to purchase additional hardware so that other classrooms, along with Dixon’s, can become 1:1. Middle school teachers at Wheatley are using these new devices to begin piloting their own blended learning initiatives. “NGLC is giving schools creative license to think and reimagine teaching,” says Dixon.
At E.L. Haynes, math and science classes in 9th and 12th grade are moving toward a competency-based model. The school is also using Breakthrough funds to enable teachers to visit and learn from other schools with competency-based models elsewhere in the country.
Breakthrough Schools: D.C. continues to grow. On December 6, CityBridge announced a second round of Breakthrough grantees:
Capital City Public Charter School
Cleveland Elementary
DC International School
Mundo Verde Bilingual Public Charter School
Sustainable Futures (pending charter approval)
Thurgood Marshall Academy
Two Rivers Public Charter School
By 2017, CityBridge expects to support up to 20 district and charter schools in D.C. in their shift toward personalized learning.
Insights to Catalyze Personalized Learning
What can other districts learn from the way that personalized learning has unfolded at these two schools?
A bottom-up change process, starting at the classroom and school level, has the potential to lead to whole district redesign. “One of the challenges in our school system is that so many people are locked into the current way of ‘doing’ school. They don’t conceptualize doing something completely different,” says John Rice. “But if there is a critical mass of schools doing something innovative, that’s when we start to see system change.”
Seed funding can act as a catalyst to carrying out great visions. Schools must design models that will ultimately be sustainable, but seed funding can play a critical role in supporting schools to develop and implement new approaches during the launch stage.
Personalized learning should not be a cookie-cutter process; what works in one classroom or school may not work elsewhere. Donovan and Dixon’s experiences illustrate that personalized learning can look different. Although a 1:1 tablet-to-student ratio is central to Dixon’s model, sophisticated devices and software are not a major focus in Donovan’s classroom. Teachers should lead the design of models that meet their students’ and schools’ unique needs. Districts, national foundations, and community partners can play a role by supporting teachers and ensuring that schools have autonomy to develop their own models.
Efforts to implement personalized learning must balance innovation with scaling effective tools and models. Although a cookie-cutter approach to innovation would be flawed, teachers and school leaders also shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. CityBridge runs design workshops that provide teachers and schools space to learn from each other and from 2Revolutions, a design firm specializing in personalized learning.
In the coming months, other school districts can follow the progress and evolution of E.L. Haynes, Wheatley, and the rest of the Breakthrough grantees. The critical lessons that emerge here in the District will inform other school redesign efforts and, ultimately, district-level change around the country.