- Four charter schools selected to lease former D.C. Public School buildings [Bridges PCS, Briya PCS, Monument Academy PCS, and Community College Prep Academy PCS mentioned]
- Gray Administration turns 13th closed DCPS school over to charters [Bridges PCS, Briya PCS, Monument Academy PCS, and Community College Prep Academy PCS mentioned]
- How A D.C. Charter School Once Slated For Closure Changed Its Fate [IDEA PCS mentioned]
- Turning around schools with low achievement rates never seems to work
Four charter schools selected to lease former D.C. Public School buildings [Bridges PCS, Briya PCS, Monument Academy PCS, and Community College Prep Academy PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
December 18, 2014
Four charter school operators have been selected to lease space in two surplus D.C. public school buildings, according to an announcement this week by Mayor Vincent C. Gray and Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith.
The Mamie D. Lee School in Northeast Washington was awarded jointly to Bridges and Briya public charter schools, who will partner to offer a range of programs for infants through adults.
The Gibbs School, also in Northeast, was awarded to the Charter School Incubator Initiative and will house Monument Academy, which will serve children in foster care, and Community College Preparatory Academy, for adults pursuing a high school equivalency degree.
“With these awards, we are providing much needed space to four programs that are meeting critical needs for some of our most vulnerable students,” Gray said in a statement.
In all, 13 former traditional public school buildings have been awarded to charter schools since Gray took office four years ago. The search for suitable space is a perennial problem for the city’s charter schools, many of which operate in cramped or temporary spaces.
Bridges, which will serve up to 400 students, will provide a pre-kindergarten and elementary school program with a focus on serving a high proportion of students with special needs in an inclusive environment.
Briya will offer GED preparation and vocational education for adults, as well as infant and toddler programs for children of students attending Briya’s adult programs. At capacity, Briya will serve 225 adults and 36 infants and toddlers.
The programs will also offer medical, dental and mental health services to enrolled families and community members through a partnership with nonprofit Mary’s Center.
Mamie D. Lee School is still operating as a D.C. public school for special education students, but it is scheduled to close at the end of this school year. Its students will attend the renovated River Terrace School. The Gibbs School closed in 2008 and has been vacant since.
Monument Academy will operate a weekday boarding school, serving up to 160 students in grades 5 through 8 who are or have been in foster care. Community College Preparatory Academy will serve adults who are pursuing a high school equivalency degree.
All four programs plan to open their doors next school year.
The deputy mayor for education’s office put out a request for offers from charter schools in September for the school buildings, along with two more -- M.C. Terrell-McGogney in Southeast and Fletcher-Johnson in Northeast. Proposals were evaluated partly on how the charters would reflect community needs.
Smith said the goal has been to make “strategic matches between providers and the communities surrounding these school buildings.”
Now that the schools have been selected by the mayor’s office, they will negotiate the terms of their lease with the D.C. Department of General Services, which will then go to the D.C. Council for final approval.
Gray Administration turns 13th closed DCPS school over to charters [Bridges PCS, Briya PCS, Monument Academy PCS, and Community College Prep Academy PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
December 19, 2014
The Washington Post's Michael Alison Chandler reveals this morning that two additional shuttered DCPS schools have been turned over to charters. The Mamie D. Lee School located near the Fort Totten Metro Station will be shared between Bridges PCS and Briya PCS. Bridges PCS is a Pre-Kindergarten through second grade school that will eventually expand to the fifth grade. It currently serves 211 students and specializes on serving kids with disabilities. Briya PCS is a unique program that offers adult eduction and teaches young children of parents attending the school. Ms. Chandler explains that the charter will "serve 225 adults and 36 infants and toddlers."
Also provided to two charters is the Gibbs School in Northeast. As part of Building Hope's incubator program the building will house Monument Academy PCS, the school started by former DC Public Charter School Board member Emily Bloomfield for kids associated with the foster child program, and Community College Preparatory Academy, which helps adults obtain their GED.
The Post reporter explains that these two former DCPS schools were part of a RFP which also included M.C. Terrell-McGogney and Fletcher-Johnson. With the two awards listed above the total comes to 13 for the number of surplus buildings turned over to charters during Mayor Gray's time in office.
Now we just need the remaining 20 to be offered to charters.
How A D.C. Charter School Once Slated For Closure Changed Its Fate [IDEA PCS mentioned]
WAMU
By Kavitha Cardoza
December 19, 2014
Justin Rydstrom heads IDEA Public Charter School in Northeast D.C. He says interim exams are today, so students will be taking math tests and SAT practice tests.
Rydstrom walks the hallways, a pencil behind an ear, chatting with students.
On a recent school day, everything is orderly and organized. There are displays featuring models students have made on 3D printers, a gleaming new gym and a reading room with comfy couches. But that’s not the whole story.
At the 15-year mark, all charter schools are assessed. And in 2012, this school was failing on every measure.
“At 15 years, IDEA was slated for closure. It was quite frankly, the worst-performing high school in D.C., charters or traditional public DCPS schools," he says. “Very high suspension rates, very low attendance rates. And most importantly students weren't learning.”
Not even 40 percent of students could read and do math on grade level. IDEA was one of the first charters founded in the city and from being a pillar of the Deanwood community, IDEA slid into desperation. Graffiti lined the walls, there were fights every other day, students frequently brought alcohol in their coffee cups.
Brianna Bennett is in the 11th grade. “One teacher told us we weren't going to be nothing but welfare recipients and baby mothers,” she says, but now things are different. “Now the teachers are like ‘we’re going to get you there.’ There’s so much stuff the school offers now. It’s awesome; I like going to school.”
A remarkable rebound
Nicole McCray has been at the school for nine years. She teaches and develops English curricula. Her father was also one of the founders of this school. She says that despite all its problems, even at its lowest point, this small school still had a family feel. And supporters came out during a hearing to urge the charter school board to support it.
“It was standing room only in our huge auditorium. Everyone said how much they loved IDEA. It was beautiful to see everyone come out to say ‘give us the resources we need so we can prove we deserve a second chance," McCray says.
IDEA got that second chance, but it’s been a rocky time. An outside consulting group was contracted to oversee changes. IDEA’s top management staff was replaced, along with 70 percent of the teachers.
“It was heartbreaking. But that’s one of the main reasons I wanted to stay. I wanted to be part of the change," she says.
Shamari Jennings heads the math department at IDEA and is a new teacher here. He says students were sometimes six grade levels behind where they needed to be academically and if a child slept through class, no one would say anything. That’s changed, Jennings says, with an intense focus on professional development.
“It all starts with classroom instruction. Developing lessons that hone students’ conceptual skills and develop those skills is a huge priority," he says.
There’s also tutoring for students on Saturdays, and they have to be accepted into a college to graduate.
Justin Rydstrom, the head of IDEA, says there were other nonacademic changes. The graffiti has been painted over and there are after-school clubs including Kung Fu, meditation, chess and international cooking. School management shuttered the middle school and closed off classrooms not being used so it felt the right size.
“There are a lot of stories from the kids about the third floor and what’s up there but it’s really mothball classrooms," Rydstrom says.
A dizzying turnaround for IDEA
Enrollment has picked up this year, daily attendance is now 90 percent and the school has made great progress in its reading and math test scores. But the change has not come without push-back. English teacher Nicole McCray says the school’s work isn't over.
“At times it can be a little daunting, but I know if we put in the work, we can get results. And I know that now from experience," McCray says.
At a recent afternoon with teachers, students and parents cheering, Mayor Vincent Gray was one of several city leaders who celebrated IDEA’s accomplishments. He calls it “remarkable” and “phenomenal” that the school met goals set by the charter school board a year earlier than expected.
“Either the school is great or we didn't have very challenging benchmarks!" Gray said.
For families, the change was dizzying. Niya Carroll, an 11th grader, says two years ago her grandmother was researching other schools for her to transfer to and now IDEA is ranked in the top 10 among all non-application D.C. high schools in reading and math. Carroll says her grandmother couldn't believe it.
“She said 'IDEA?' She was like ‘really?’ I was like ‘Yes, IDEA! Almost closed-down IDEA. We made a big turnaround.’”
Turning around schools with low achievement rates never seems to work
The Washington Post
By Jay Matthews
December 17, 2014
One of the goals U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan set when he launched the $3.5 billion School Improvement Grant (SIG) program in 2009 was to turn 1,000 schools around annually for five years. “We could really move the needle, lift the bottom and change the lives of tens of millions of underserved children,” he said.
I like Duncan and much of what he and the Obama administration have done for schools, but that goal is a harmful fantasy.
The overlooked truths about fixing schools are vividly revealed in an Education Writers Association research brief, “What Studies Say About School Turnarounds,” by Andrew Brownstein, a freelance journalist who reports on federal education policy. (Turnaround schools are those whose low achievement rates have been significantly improved by a change in operations.)
Brownstein said “successful turnarounds are extremely rare.” Veterans of education reform efforts “might be forgiven for thinking of turnarounds as the unicorns of federal education policy,” he said.
We don’t know how many turnarounds have occurred since SIG began, but it is far, far less than a thousand a year, and what first look like turnarounds may prove to be disappointments. With the meager studies available, Brownstein said all he could do was see whether the most popular turnaround methods — such as replacing the principal — have proved effective in the past. The research indicates that new leadership practices, not new leaders, are the crucial factor, he said, and assessing their effectiveness is difficult.
Some of the turnarounds cited in the studies Brownstein examined were only a couple of years old. Such unicorns often disappear into the mist. Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution had concluded that “examples of large-scale, system-wide turnarounds are nonexistent.” So why would otherwise intelligent education leaders such as Duncan put so much faith in them?
I think the problem is representative democracy. Your schools can’t get money for new programs unless elected officeholders agree. Politicians demand optimistic goals, or they can’t sell the program to voters and to enough legislators to gain a majority. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who helped forge the bipartisan majority that passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, said they had to set a goal of 100 percent proficiency in reading and math — an impossible target. If they settled for a more reasonable number, such as 70 percent, opponents would say they were leaving 30 percent of kids behind.
By predicting 1,000 turnarounds a year, Duncan secured funds he knew would help teachers and students, even if they never reached his unlikely goal. Media fact checkers such as my colleague Glenn Kessler don’t usually critique hopeful guesses because miracles, like the collapse of the Soviet Union or my birdie on a par-5 last week, sometimes happen. I have criticized D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s plan to raise achievement in the 40 lowest-performing schools by 40 percentile points in six years, but she needs that loony goal to get some of that federal money for her schools. Everyone has been forced to play that game for many decades.
There are better ways to improve schools than turnarounds. Many charter and experimental public schools have shown it makes more sense to create new schools with no old bad practices to expunge. Students and teachers can start fresh. A 2006 NewSchools Venture Fund study cited by reform expert Andy Smarick found only four of 36 organizations with strong records in improving school achievement had expressed interest in restructuring existing schools.
KIPP, a charter school network, has produced scores of schools that outperform others with similarly disadvantaged students trying the turnaround approach. Some educators have criticized KIPP for never turning around an existing school, which to me is like criticizing quarterback Peyton Manning for almost never using a huddle in his successful speeded-up offense. If new ways work better, why insist on the old?