FOCUS DC News Wire 12/16/13

 

 

Myiah Smith always had trouble balancing her responsibilities. The high school sophomore put an immense amount of pressure on herself. You could hear it in her voice.

 

“I don’t want to go to [just] any college,” she said. “I want to go to the best school there is.”

 

Thus, her mentor, Ellen Gee, an epidemiologist at the Department of Defense, has never had to push her to get good grades. Instead, she has helped Myiah put grades into perspective.

 

The two were paired by Capital Partners for Education (CPE), a nonprofit that helps low-income teens in the Washington area graduate from high school. When they first met, Myiah was an eighth-grader at the SEED School of Washington, a charter school. Now she’s a 15-year-old sophomore, ever more successful in her studies.

 

CPE provides mentoring, workshops and community service experience to more than 200 students. Ninety-nine percent of the program’s graduates enroll in college.

 

Founded in 1993, the organization received a $30,000 grant in June from The Washington Post Charities, a McCormick Foundation Fund dedicated to increasing educational opportunities for disadvantaged children and teens in the region.

 

“The thing that I love about CPE, and what I really try to focus on, is seeing all of the challenges that our kids have, just coming from low-income neighborhoods and having families that haven’t gone to college,” Executive Director Khari Brown said. “CPE really provides a whole host of wraparound services that can fill in a lot of those gaps and help kids reach their potential.”

 

After coaching high school and college basketball in the Boston area for six years, Brown realized that even the most motivated kids wouldn’t attend college if they weren’t immersed in an academically rigorous high school environment.

 

He joined CPE in 2001 and has since expanded the organization, adding more students and volunteers and forming partnerships with schools and organizations.

 

Students must apply to the program after being accepted to one of the private or public charter high schools that are CPE’s partners. CPE provides up to $4,500 per year for students to attend a private school, or $1,000 per year in college scholarships if students attend a charter school. The organization has begun exploring partnerships with D.C. public high schools.

 

CPE also provides weekend workshops on topics such as tips for college applications, finding a career, résumé writing, interview skills, financial literacy and community service.

 

At the heart of the CPE model is its mentoring program, which attracts more than 200 volunteers each year.

 

Gee, 32, said she had always wanted to be a mentor to a child, but the time commitment and doubts held her back. She chose CPE, she said, because “their mission was very specific” compared with similar programs.

 

“I think I’m pretty cool,” she said, “but I thought, ‘Can I relate to a high school student?’ ”

 

Gee and Smith have developed an extremely close relationship, socializing with other CPE members and hiking about once a month. They e-mail each other almost daily.

 

For others, finding time to spend with a mentor can be tricky.

 

Sarah Ghermay, 24, is a CPE alumna who attended Cornell University and teaches at a charter school in Boston. In high school, she lived with a single parent and had a part-time job, which at first made it difficult for her to hang out with her mentor, she said. But that quickly changed.

 

“My mentor wasn’t someone that just checked my grades, but she took me to things you need exposure to to understand how the world works,” Ghermay said. “You’re not going to be motivated to do well if you don’t know what the outcome will look like. She allowed me to be a kid and kind of moved me from having to take care of others.”

 

Problems students face in high school don’t disappear once they reach college. Often, they are amplified. More than half of first-generation college students drop out within the first year, mainly because of financial stresses.

 

Brown said that although the organization has talked about expanding outside greater Washington, there’s still more work to be done here.

 

“Moving here from out of town, it’s a little discouraging to see that there’s two Washingtons,” Brown said. “We’re breaking down some of those barriers and forming a bridge to the two Washingtons. How else are we going to solve the problems we have in our society if people don’t get involved?”

 

 

Tonight’s monthly meeting of the D.C. Public Charter School Board will feature an informal public hearing considering the 15 year renewal of Arts and Technology Public Charter School. The PCSB staff has recommended that this charter cease operations at the end of the current school year. This is the right decision.

 

Arts and Technology PCS began operation in 1999 under the authority of the PCSB. It currently has 624 students in grades Pre-Kindergarten 3 to 5th grade. The Ward 7 school located in Northeast has a student body in which 95 percent are characterized as low income.

 

Unfortunately for this school its Performance Management Framework scores have been heading in the wrong direction. Arts and Technology has been graded as a Tier 3 school for each of the last 3 years. Its 31.9 percent 2013 rating completes a downward linear line begun in 2011 with its 41.4 percent result and followed with a 34.0 percent tally last year. Being in Tier 3 for three consecutive years makes the school a candidate for charter revocation under the PMF guidelines.

 

The PCSB conducted a Qualitative Site Review of the school just last April. It evaluated the “mission/goals of the school’s charter, classroom environments, instructional delivery, meeting the needs of all learners, professional development, and school climate.” For all areas that could be assessed the school received positive comments almost without exception. Therefore, perhaps the body needs to seek better alignment between the QSR and PMF scores.

 

What a great opportunity this is for a high performing school to take the place of ATA PCS and continue educating these children without interruption.

 

A school which should not be shuttered is Options PCS. Remember that the charter board threatened to pull the plug once the negative press came out regarding its highly irregular financial practices. Closing this campus would be extremely detrimental to the student body which is comprised primarily of children with disabilities.

 

Anyone at all interested in the subject of non-profit management should have the December 13 report by court-appointed Receiver Josh Kern on their must read list. The document stands as a cookbook for effective administration as he and his team are turning around the charter in the areas of financial controls, special education compliance, budgeting, hiring, cost reduction, family and community relations, and legal needs. The recommendations and actions contained in the nine page brief are actually an extension of those included in the October 21st findings to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. This one contains multiple interesting new tidbits including the fact that Mr. Kern has reduced “redundant and ineffective staff” saving $825,000, constructed a $14 million operating budget containing a $4 million reserve fund, is in the process of hiring a new COO/CFO, while simultaneously only losing 6 staff members since all of the trouble began.

 

The PCSB should allow Options to remain open while at the same time presenting Mr. Kern with an award for showing the rest of us how it is done.

 

 

Caleb Rossiter recently quit his job as a ninth-grade algebra teacher at the Friendship Tech Prep public charter school in Southeast Washington because, he says, his supervisors pressured him to artificially inflate failing grades and ignored his safety concerns by sending two disruptive students back into his class.

 

Such administrative mindlessness is common in American public schools. It has been a source of teacher frustration for decades. Many who watch D.C. schools closely might be surprised to hear this happened at Tech Prep, run by the well-regarded Friendship Schools charter network. Patricia A. Brantley, the network’s chief operating officer, says the school did nothing wrong.

 

She said the school and Rossiter “have a fundamental difference in belief about the way that students should be served. We do not separate students [whom] teachers don’t want to educate or throw them out.”

 

But Rossiter, a 62-year-old college professor and policy analyst, didn’t want his failing students removed from his class. He wanted them to do the work they needed to learn. Bad grades are a useful way to communicate that. Squelching his effort to sound an alarm seems in tune with the tendency of American high schools to let disengaged students slip through to graduation. Schools nudge slackers along with passing grades for limp performance or use shortcuts such as credit recovery courses, which deliver passing grades for just a few weeks of online work.

 

Rossiter told me he thought he was going to be fired “for refusing to raise to D’s the 30 percent of my students who earned F’s in the first quarter.” He said an administrator told him “this can’t be.” Rossiter said he was told “it would damage the school if grades were reported to the Charter School Board, showing that the students were ‘not on track to graduate’ — which of course they are not.”

 

Tech Prep principal Doranna Tindle said Rossiter failed to factor in the accommodations to which students with disabilities were entitled, which might have affected the number of students who earned passing grades. At one point he suggested that the special education teacher who worked with him could teach algebra to the special education students, while he dealt with the rest of the class, which rules don’t permit. Rossiter said he didn’t know that, thinking the arrangement would work because the other teacher was so good. He detailed his close adherence to the accommodation rules and said both the disabled and non-disabled groups included students who were failing.

 

He was bothered by what happened when he ejected two students for turning over their desks. He asked that they be sent back only after he and administrators met with them and their parents. The students came back, but he never got the meeting. Tindle said she brought in one of the parents but made “a judgment call” not to include Rossiter because she wanted to discuss several other issues.

 

Tech Prep is a sixth-through-11th-grade school that plans to add 12th grade next year. It focuses on developing skills in science, technology, engineering and math, its Web site says.

 

The most glaring difference between Rossiter’s experience and what happens at D.C. schools with the highest proficiency rates for disadvantaged students is the lack of team spirit. Teachers at successful D.C. schools often confer with each other and with administrators about each student. They bring in parents when grades slump. Tindle said Tech Prep also promotes teamwork, but I think the failure to include Rossiter in the parent meeting was a sad lapse.

 

Tindle is a good principal stuck with a national discomfort about giving F’s. She didn’t fire Rossiter, and she looked for solutions. One might be to let good teachers follow their best instincts.

 

 

The District’s fast-growing charter schools have the third-highest market share in the nation, enrolling a larger proportion of students than in every city except New Orleans and Detroit, according to a report released Tuesday.

 

Nationwide, charter school enrollment has grown 80 percent during the past five years, according to the annual market share report, produced by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Growth has been particularly strong in urban areas.

 

The report is based on data from the 2012-13 school year, when D.C. charter schools enrolled 43 percent of the city’s public school students, sparking questions about the future of the traditional public school system, which closed 13 schools for low enrollment.

 

The year before, the District tied with Detroit for the second-highest charter-school market share at 41 percent.

 

Detroit’s charter population has since grown to 51 percent.

 

In New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina forced a rebuilding of public education, 79 percent of students are in charters.

 

Thirty-two cities had a market share of at least 20 percent; meaning that at least one in five students attends a charter.

 

 

DC's education agencies have joined forces to produce a set of reports that make it easier to compare DCPS and charter schools. The new data include figures on special education students, suspensions, expulsions, and mobility during the last school year.

 

The DC School Equity Reports, funded by the NewSchools Venture Fund, could help answer questions that until now have been the subject of speculation. Those questions include whether DCPS has higher rates of special ed students than many charter schools and whether some highly effective charter schools are pushing out troublesome students.

 

But broad comparisons between sectors are difficult even now, because the data is in the form of individual school-by-school profiles. Still, the reports make it possible for the first time to compare a DCPS school and a charter school on a range of common measures.

 

At 767 pages long, the full compendium of reports is unwieldy. Probably the best place to compare individual schools is at LearnDC.org, a site operated by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education that provides information about both DCPS and charter schools. Each school profile there should contain a link to its equity report.

 

Links to DCPS schools' equity reports appear on each school's profile page on the DCPS website. The Public Charter School Board (PCSB) doesn't link to individual charter school reports on its individual school profile pages, but the whole report is available on its website, and a PCSB spokesperson said that the board is working on allowing users to click on a school's name in the table of contents and get directly to the school's report. The PCSB has also made the underlying raw data available on its website, for those who would like to create graphs and charts.

 

Media commentary so far has focused on the high rates of student mobility documented in the equity reports, particularly what appears to be a flow of students from charters to DCPS. Some have charged that high-performing charter schools either expel or otherwise push out difficult students, who then become DCPS's problem.

 

According to the Washington Post, 80% of DCPS schools see a net gain in enrollment over the course of the school year, and 90% of charters have a net loss. The Post focused on Anacostia High School, which saw huge swings in entries and exits and ended the school year with 16% more students.

 

In its report, WAMU quoted Anacostia's principal as saying that most of those transferring in mid-year came from charters. Scott Pearson, executive director of the PCSB, told both outlets that he hopes airing the data will lead to fewer transfers out of charters, but that the current funding formula provides perverse incentives.

 

If a student leaves a charter school after October 5, the school doesn't lose any money. But if a new student enters, the charter doesn't get any additional funds. Some charters prohibit students from transferring into the school mid-year, but DCPS doesn't have that option.

 

Some have also criticized charters for high suspension rates. But comparisons show that even the charters with the highest rates may be surpassed by some DCPS schools.

 

DC Prep Edgewood Middle (Edgewood) had the highest rate of suspensions for a charter, with 48% of students getting at least one one-day suspension. But Kramer, a DCPS middle school in Ward 8, gave 51% of its students a suspension of one day or more, and 9% were suspended for 11 days or more. "City-wide" averages for suspensions at schools with comparable grades are 26% and 1% for those two categories.

 

Another common criticism of charter schools is that they don't have as high a population of special education students as DCPS. As with suspensions, it's hard to draw sector-wide conclusions without more sophisticated statistical analysis. But it's clear that some charters have less than the overall DCPS proportion of special ed students, 17%. (That figure includes an unspecified number of students attending private schools at public expense.)

 

Edgewood, for example had 15% special ed, while two DCPS middle schools, Eliot-Hine and Hart, had 31% and 25% respectively. On the other hand, Deal MS in Ward 3 has only 10% special ed students.

 

And the equity reports show that special ed students at Edgewood performed significantly better on DC standardized math tests than those at Deal, as measured by both proficiency and growth. At Deal, special ed students had a 48% proficiency rate and were in the 41st percentile for average two-year growth. At Edgewood, those figures were 70% proficient and 65th percentile for growth.

 

One commendable feature of the equity reports is that they put proficiency rates and growth measures side by side, whereas DCPS school profiles place more emphasis on proficiency rates. Not only are proficiency rates subject to manipulation, they also tend to reflect the strengths students bring to a school rather than the knowledge they acquire as a result of the school's efforts.

 

The bottom line is that despite the new data, comparisons will still be complicated, and the picture will not always be clear. But at least parents who are trying to decide on the best school for their child now have a method for comparing specific schools across the charter and DCPS sectors, bringing us closer to something resembling a unified school system. 

 

 

A D.C. Council hearing meant to solicit teachers’ views on improving city schools drew dozens of witnesses Saturday and offered a glimpse of the wide range of educators’ perspectives, particularly on the District’s controversial and politically charged teacher evaluations.

 

At one end of the spectrum was Washington Teachers’ Union President Elizabeth Davis, who called the evaluations — known as IMPACT — “a miserable failure” that has led to the most disempowered and frustrated teaching force she’s seen in 41 years.

 

At the other end were teachers who said that the evaluations clarified what was expected of them and pushed them to improve. “IMPACT is not a perfect system, but it has made me a better teacher and ensured I show up 100 percent every day,” said Jonte Lee, a teacher at Wilson High.

 

And in the middle were teachers who said that the evaluations have value but fail to account for the vast differences among the city’s students and penalize teachers who choose to work in the most challenging schools.

 

“We must be careful that

IMPACT is not forcing good teachers out of our lowest-performing schools,” said Michelle Lee, a math teacher at Cardozo Education Campus, who spoke of having nightmares about losing her job. “The stress and paranoia I feel on a daily basis . . . is frankly too much,” she said.

 

The hearing was called by D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the Education Committee and a possible mayoral candidate. He announced this month that he is exploring whether to jump into the 2014 race.

 

Catania, the only council member present for most of the five-hour hearing, heard testimony from teachers in traditional and charter schools on issues including special education, professional development, the budget and assessments. But most of the time was devoted to testimony about IMPACT, a cornerstone of the effort to improve the city’s long-struggling school system.

 

Introduced by then-Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee in 2009, IMPACT was among the first evaluations in the nation to link teacher job security and pay to student test scores. The policy also requires multiple classroom observations each year, producing a score that sorts teachers into categories from highly effective to ineffective. Low-scoring teachers are fired.

 

The D.C. Council has no direct role in shaping teacher evaluations; that is up to Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson. Catania said he held the hearing to give teachers a chance to speak about what is working and what needs to be changed.

 

The forum also gave Catania a chance to signal where he stands on issues that matter to teachers. Members of the teachers’ union endorsed Gray four years ago but have been disappointed — judging by members’ boos and jeers during a raucous mayoral debate last week — with his support for

IMPACT and other Rhee-era reforms.

 

Catania called IMPACT “the foundation for a very solid evaluation system,” but he said it needs reviewing to avoid unintended consequences, including high teacher turnover. He said he has no problem using evaluations to determine who should be fired, as long as the evaluations are fair, and he cautioned against relying too heavily on standardized test scores.

 

Catania, perhaps the council’s fiercest critic of Gray, wondered aloud why many of the teachers who spoke favorably about the evaluations submitted testimony on the same letterhead and in the same font and format.

 

Several of those teachers said they were insulted by the suggestion that they had been told what to say. School system officials encouraged them to speak and provided a template, they said, because they had never testified before. But, they said, no one handed them talking points.

 

“All the good things I said about the district were genuine,” said Patricia West, a 28-year veteran of the school system.

 

 

D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who had been rumored to be on the shortlist of candidates under consideration for New York’s top schools job, told employees Friday that although she has spoken with Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, she has no intention of leaving Washington.

 

“I love this city. I love our students. I love working with all of you, and I am not about to leave when our students have so much riding on the work we do every day,” Henderson wrote in a letter to central office employees Friday, first reported on the Web site of WAMU (88.5 FM).

 

“I love New York City — it is where my career in education began 20 years ago – but nothing can compare to the opportunities and responsibilities that we have here in Washington, D.C.”

 

Henderson is one of two local schools chiefs who have been mentioned as possible candidates. The other is the Montgomery County school system’s Joshua P. Starr, who has gained national prominence with his skepticism of the same standardized testing that Henderson relies on to judge teachers, principals and schools.

 

De Blasio has said that such emphasis on tests and preparation is “poisoning our system.” He also has expressed a general distaste for the kind of education policies Henderson embraces. That he would be interested in her as a possible chancellor surprised many education observers.

 

In her letter, Henderson said de Blasio’s interest is testament to the fact that the District’s brand of school reform is working. “We really are a district where every measure of success is going in the right direction. The fact that NYC is looking to us for leadership is just one more indication that we have the right approach.”

 

With a mayoral race underway in the District, Henderson’s future here is not entirely up to her. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) has showed unwavering support for her leadership and approach, but other candidates have been far more critical.

 

Here is the full text of Henderson’s letter:

 

Dear Central Office,

 

You have probably read in the papers by now that my name has shown up on the short list of possible new Chancellors for New York City Schools and that I have spoken with Mayor-elect DeBlasio about his education plans going forward. The New York Times, The Daily News, and EdWeek have all reported that my name has been in the mix and our local media has joined the speculation as well.

 

First, I want to be very clear with all of you that this is wonderful recognition for the work we have done. I have spoken with Mr. DeBlasio. I was flattered by his call and I absolutely love that DCPS is being recognized as a leader in high-quality urban education. The Chancellorship of NYC schools is, in many ways, the pinnacle of school district jobs. With over one million students, 80,000 teachers, and almost 2000 schools, NYC schools is not just the biggest district, but of a completely different scale than DCPS.

 

It is a tremendous testament to the work that each of you has done over the past three years that NYC wants to replicate our successes. Of course, we have great gains in student achievement that we can point to as demonstrated in the DC CAS and the NAEP. We also have more students taking and passing AP classes and higher SAT scores than at any time in the past five years. At the same time, we have increased our student enrollment, have more students who like their school than ever before, and have reduced our number of truant students. We have the best teaching workforce of any urban district. We really are a district where every measure of success is going in the right direction.

 

The fact that NYC is looking to us for leadership is just one more indication that we have the right approach.

 

The second thing that you should know about the Chancellorship of NYC is that I will not take the job. I love New York City — it is where my career in education began 20 years ago – but nothing can compare to the opportunities and responsibilities that we have here in Washington, D.C. We have helped take our students so far in the past few years and I can’t possibly leave before I see how much farther they can go. Our ambitious Capital Commitment goals for 2017 are now well within reach and I am excited to continue to work with you as we achieve them. I love this city. I love our students. I love working with all of you, and I am not about to leave when our students have so much riding on the work we do every day.

 

So please, take a moment to see the fact that we are part of the conversation about the next NYC chancellor for what it is. It is a compliment to us for the hard work we all do. It is a testament to the fact that we have chosen the right course and we have stuck to it. It is an endorsement of our strategy.

 

And that is what it will remain. I love D.C. and I’m not about to leave. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I have the best job in the world.

 

Sincerely,

 

Chancellor Henderson