- Rise of D.C. Charter Schools [KIPP DC, SEED and Center City PCS are mentioned]
- NAEP Results Suggest Long March, Not Quick Turnaround
- DCPS Scores Stall on Federal Tests
- D.C. Schools Have Largest Black-White Achievement Gap in Federal Study
- D.C. Schools’ Test-Score Gap By Race Largest in U.S.
- Five Wishful Changes for D.C. Area Schools
Rise of D.C. Charter Schools [KIPP DC, SEED and Center City PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
December 8, 2011
We don’t know whether public charter schools will raise American education to a new level. The independent, tax-supported schools just passed the 2 million student mark, but that’s only 4 percent of schoolchildren. On average, charter students are doing no better than regular public school students.
We do know, however, that charters in the District are a success, if you judge by achievement, growth, parent support and thoughtful supervision. Forty percent of D.C. public school children are in charters. The system has become a national model because of hard work by thousands of educators in 53 charters on 98 campuses and inspired leadership by the D.C. Public Charter School Board.
Take a look at the comprehensive report released by the board Tuesday. It assesses each charter school, not just on test score levels but on score improvement, attendance and the percentage of students who re-enroll. The data are easy to read. The flaws and strengths of each school are clear. “Parents and stakeholders now have this great tool,” board Chairman Brian Jones said.
Most important, the board warns that schools doing poorly are likely to be closed. The board’s Performance Management Framework (PMF) calculates the percentage of points each school has attained toward its target in each category. Schools “that fall below 20 percent of possible PMF points may be candidates for revocation,” the board said.
The board is not waiting for students to suffer another year of bad schooling. “The PCSB will make school closure decisions between December and February 2012 and schools may be closed by the end of the school year,” the announcement said.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools celebrated the national growth of charters this week. Enrollment increased 200,000 this year, the largest single-year increase. There are 5,600 charter schools in all. The George W. Bush and Obama administrations have supported charters as alternatives for dissatisfied parents.
The numbers are deceptive, however, because many charters are not working well. Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes calculated 37 percent have achievement gains below those of regular public schools, and only 17 percent have gains that are significantly better. The solution is to close the bad charters, as the District is doing, which is one reason why its charters have better achievement averages than regular public schools.
At the same time, expand the best charters. Educators know which charter management organizations have that capability. Seven of the eight highest-performing public schools in Denver are part of two charter networks, the Denver School of Science and Technology and West Denver Prep. The Noble Street network has 10 high-performing charters in Chicago. Nonprofit organizations such as the Charter School Growth Fund identify which schools are getting results, and invest in them.
Even a few regular schools superintendents support charters. D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson have been pro-charter. Superintendents in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago also are supporting the independent public schools.
The D.C. board is making a special contribution by pioneering charter assessment. In its new report, the KIPP DC KEY Academy is in the top tier — with 96 percent attendance, 88 percent re-enrollment and 87 percent of its reading growth target achieved. The SEED high school, in the middle tier, has 97 percent attendance and 89 percent re-enrollment, but achieved only 35 percent of its reading target. On the bottom tier is the Center City Congress Heights charter, with 91 percent attendance but only 61 percent re-enrollment and 57 percent of its reading target. Several other factors are reported to fill in the blanks.
If the board closes more poorly performing schools, that may mean less charter school growth. But it will set an example for improving all schools — charter and regular. That was what the originators of the charter movement were hoping for, and that is what seems to be happening in the District.
NAEP Results Suggest Long March, Not Quick Turnaround
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
December 7, 2011
Locate and recognize a detail in support of the main idea in a piece of writing. Recognize the meaning of a word as it is used in the text. Make an inference to recognize the feelings of a speaker in a poem. This is some of what fourth grade readers are expected to do on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP)—not to demonstrate proficiency—but to merely score in the “basic” range.
Fifty-six percent of DCPS fourth graders couldn’t. That’s the proportion that fell into the “below basic” category. It is two scale points higher than in 2009, the last time the test was given. Same for eighth grade math; 58 percent were “below basic” in an exam that expected them to use measuring cups to describe a fraction. Or solve a word problem that involves computing money — even with the help of a calculator. That’s a four-point improvement over 2009 and 13 points better than 2003. But it still leaves the District near the bottom of the 21 urban school systems tested. Only Cleveland, Milwaukee and Detroit had higher “below basic” populations in eighth grade math.
My colleague Lyndsey Layton has the other dispiriting details here, including the vast black-white achievement gap in DCPS that is the largest among the 21 urban systems that are part of the test.
The results align closely with the latest DC CAS results, which also showed stagnant reading scores, marginal improvements in some math results and vast divides between schools in low and high-income communities.
While DC CAS data in recent years have been tainted by evidence of possible cheating—currently under investigation by the D.C. Inspector General—there is no such cloud over NAEP, which is administered every two years by Education Department personnel, without the involvement of local school staff.
That makes NAEP one more piece of evidence that there will be no quick “turnaround” of DCPS. This will be a slow march, filled with what Chancellor Kaya Henderson has called “hard, non-sexy work” of fixing curricula and coaching up teachers to meet the needs of children who come to school every day with enormous deficits.
In a statement Wednesday, she said just about the only thing she could say: we’re working on it.
“The most recent data reinforces our decision to aggressively improve interventions, expand and develop the level of instruction in our classrooms, and, most important, aggressively implement a rigorous new curriculum that is heavily focused on reading and literacy and also aligned to the Common Core State Standards.”
DCPS Scores Stall on Federal Tests
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
December 7, 2011
D.C. Public Schools' progress in math and reading mostly stalled this year, as students failed to make progress on several areas of the 2011 "Nation's Report Card," a trend seen across most urban districts and the nation.
The city's school system was, however, among just six of 21 urban districts profiled by the National Assessment of Educational Progress that significantly increased its eighth-grade math scores.
That growth, with generally flat scores in reading and in elementary math, mirror the results of the District's own standardized tests, which came under a microscope this year over allegations that teachers changed answers to increase their classrooms' scores.
On the reading exam, DCPS fourth-graders scored a 201, down two points from a score of 203 in 2009. Eighth-grade students scored a 237, a drop of three points. Neither was considered a statistically significant change.
In fourth-grade math, DCPS students increased their scores by two points to 222, but that was considered flat as well. However, the five-point jump in eighth-graders' math scores, to 255, was called progress by the National Assessment Governing Board. All of DCPS' scores were below average for large cities and for the nation.
The District's performance on NAEP has been mostly improving over the years, with fourth-graders making steady progress on the reading exam from 2003 to 2009, but eighth-graders' scores staying flat. Math students in both grades have seen steady climbs, even before the reforms of former Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
DCPS officials described the scores as "mixed results." Chancellor Kaya Henderson said the performance "reinforces our decision to aggressively improve interventions, expand and develop the level of instruction in our classrooms and, most important, aggressively implement a rigorous, new curriculum."
Of the 21 urban districts, the District had the highest achievement gaps between its white and black students, as well as its white and Hispanic students. On the fourth-grade reading exam, for example, there was a 64-point spread between white students' 255 and black students' 191.
Black students also helped drive the uptick in eighth-grade math scores, increasing from 244 to 249. Although white students scored a high 322, it took them six years to rise five points.
But the fact that the gaps generally widened was a cause for concern, Henderson said.
Not everyone was convinced that the flat scores reinforced the needs for reforms introduced in the past few years by Rhee and her successor, Henderson.
"There's a need to revisit these broad promises of progress, based upon prescriptive educational practices," said Nathan Saunders, president of the Washington Teachers' Union. "I believe that we will not see significant progress until we get back to creative teaching ... as opposed to individuals who create textbooks, and avant-garde education entrepreneurs."
D.C. Schools Have Largest Black-White Achievement Gap in Federal Study
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
December 7, 2011
D.C. public schools have the largest achievement gap between black and white students among the nation’s major urban school systems, a distinction laid bare in a federal study released Wednesday.
The District also has the widest achievement gap between white and Hispanic students, the study found, compared with results from other large systems and the national average.
The study is based on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, federal reading and math exams taken this year by fourth- and eighth-graders across the country.
The tests are the only continuing and nationally representative assessment of what students know. State-by-state results were released last month, but large cities have agreed to have their results published separately since 2002, with 21 participating this year.
Generally speaking, the results in large cities mirror national trends: Students show some improvement in math, but progress in reading is stagnating.
In reading and math, the gaps in scores between black and white students were widest in D.C. schools compared with those in 20 other urban systems, including New York, Los Angeles and Miami.
The D.C. gap was also greater than the national average and the average for cities with populations of 250,000 or more, according to the study.
On the fourth-grade math test, for example, black students in the District scored an average of 212 points out of a possible 500, and their white classmates averaged 272. That 60-point difference is more than twice the national achievement gap for that test.
The achievement gap has been a stubborn problem and of growing concern among educators, policymakers and civic leaders. With enactment of the No Child Left Behind law in 2002, the federal government made closing the gap a priority and a reason for increased accountability in public education. Many strategies have been deployed by schools across the country to attack the gap, but few have resulted in substantial progress. All the cities analyzed for racial and ethnic performance gaps found differences between whites and blacks and between whites and Hispanics.
But in every case, their variations were narrower than in the District — in some cases, five times smaller. In the fourth-grade math example, for instance, Cleveland’s black and white students were separated by 21 points.
The District’s racial gap is really an income divide, said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents the largest urban school systems.
“You’ve got relatively more well-to-do whites in Upper Northwest quadrants, particularly Ward 3, which score higher than white students nationally, and you’re comparing it with poor, African American students largely in wards 7 and 8,” Casserly said. “There are extreme income disparities.”
Although Cleveland appears to have a narrow racial gap, the small difference between black and white students’ test scores is linked to the fact that both groups are relatively low-income, Casserly said. “You’ve got poor Appalachian whites in Cleveland and poor African American students,” he said.
In addition to income, black and white adults in Washington are separated by educational background, said Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, an advocacy group focused on narrowing the achievement gap. “D.C. is in many ways a tale of two cities,” she said. “The mostly white parts are among the best-educated in our populace — overeducated people with multiple degrees — people who come here to work on the Hill or for Brookings or wherever.”
To narrow the achievement gap, the city should spend more heavily on schools in poor neighborhoods, she said.
“We need to make sure the kids who have the least, who don’t have parents who can take them to France or Yosemite on summer break, who can’t afford a computer . . . get the most resources and schools in Cleveland Park, frankly, get less,” she said.
D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said the study was not a surprise because the scores tracked with the District’s data. The city is planning a “robust” set of interventions, including a new curriculum and better teacher training, she said.
“We believe we have put the pieces in place to radically change these results and close the gap,” she said.
The District’s racial achievement gap is long-standing.
But it’s difficult to say whether that gap has changed over time relative to that in the other cities because for much of the past decade, there haven’t been enough white students in the District taking the test to reliably draw conclusions, according to the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the test.
There are 46,191 students in the District’s public schools, with about 79 percent African American, 12 percent Hispanic, 7 percent white and 2 percent self-declared “other.”
The new study did not include test scores of students who attend D.C. public charter schools, which educate about 40 percent of the city’s public schoolchildren. An analysis of the test scores of D.C. public charter students this year showed that black students attending charters scored higher in math and reading tests in the fourth and eighth grades than did their counterparts in traditional District schools. The number of white students attending public charters in the District was too small to draw comparisons.
Overall, the District placed at or near the bottom of the 21 cities in the study in scores for math and reading in the fourth and eighth grades; Washington tied with Detroit for last place in eighth-grade reading.
The school systems that consistently scored at the top of the heap were Charlotte, which was either No. 1 or 2 in every category; Hillsborough County, Fla.; and Austin.
Staff writer Bill Turque contributed to this report.
D.C. Schools’ Test-Score Gap By Race Largest in U.S.
The Washington Times
By Ben Wolfgang
December 7, 2011
While students in other large urban school districts have made significant progress on standardized reading and math tests in recent years, achievement gaps between black and white students remain stubbornly high, with the most lopsided disparities of all coming in the nation’s capital.
According to a new report released Wednesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, the District has the biggest black-white and Hispanic-white gaps in the country by every measure the study made.
For example, there is a 73-point gulf between the District’s white and black eighth-graders on mathematics exams — more than double both the national average gap (31 points) and the 34-point disparity in large city school districts, defined as those with populations greater than 250,000.
The study measured fourth- and eighth-graders’ scores on the math and reading sections of standardized tests.
But it isn’t all bad news for D.C. schools. Despite the racial gaps, the city’s overall scores are up, according to the survey. Reading scores among fourth-graders are up 10 points compared with 2002. Fourth-graders math scores jumped 17 points over the same time, the report shows. The exception is eighth-grade reading, where scores declined by two points since 2003.
“The most recent data reinforces our decision to aggressively implement a rigorous, new curriculum that is heavily focused on reading and literacy,” D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said in a statement, adding that officials hope the District’s revamped curriculum will boost eighth-grade reading schools in the coming years.
She acknowledged, however, that the racial achievement gaps remain a serious concern that must be addressed. The gulfs are especially striking when compared with other large, metropolitan districts.
The District’s 73-point black-white gap in eight-grade math dwarfs that of the second-worst systems — the 47-point gaps in Atlanta and Austin, Texas. On eighth-grade reading tests, the District’s 58-point gap between white and Hispanic students is by far the highest in the nation. Boston comes in second, with a 36-point gap. The national average is 21 points, according to the NCES, an arm of the federal Education Department.
For some, the racial divides overshadow the significant progress made by city school districts, which typically serve greater numbers of minority students, students with disabilities and children from low-income families, and which also sometimes struggle to attract the same high-quality teachers found in more affluent schools.
“Too often, we celebrate movement [on test scores] and forget that the movement has to be for all” students, said Andres Alonso, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, at a press conference Wednesday morning, at which the report was unveiled.
“We have so much room to make up,” he said. “We want to know what’s working and what isn’t working. We are not interested in perpetuating these inequities.”
Mr. Alonso’s Baltimore schools have some of the smallest achievement differences, its 21-point gap between white and black fourth-grade reading scores being tied with Cleveland for the lowest among the 21 cities measured in the survey.
“We have focused on math tremendously,” Mr. Alonso said. “But reading takes a little more time, we think. [Improvement in] reading takes a change in the culture. It’s about vocabulary building; it’s about critical thinking. We’re going to have to show that we’re ready for the kind of transformation that we’re going to need in this city, and that frankly the entire country is going to need.”
While conceding there is much work to be done, Mr. Alonso highlighted progress in some of the nation’s largest school systems. Since 2002, for example, Atlanta schools have seen an 10-point uptick in the number of eighth-grade students labeled “proficient” in reading, based on NCES’ 500-point scale.
Over the same time period, there has been a 21-point decline in students considered “below basic,” the lowest categorization, which indicates a less-than-average grasp of the subject matter.
Los Angeles schools saw similar improvements, with a 12-point drop in the “below basic” category, accompanied by a six-point jump in the number of proficient students.
In the past nine years, the District has seen a four-point climb in the number of eighth-graders considered proficient in reading, while there has been no statistically significant change in the percentage of students designated as “below basic” in comprehension.
Five Wishful Changes for D.C. Area Schools
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
December 7, 2011
Washington area schools, on average, are much better than those elsewhere in the nation when measured by student achievement, level of challenge, quality of teachers and sophistication of equipment. In this holiday season, let’s appreciate those blessings.
But how can we make them better? We need resolutions for improvement in 2012. What are the most important changes our schools should be making? Here are my suggestions:
1. Require that all high school students write a research paper before they graduate. Many private schools do this. Public school students frequently praise the research paper portion of the International Baccalaureate program. It invigorates them and makes the transition to college easier. If given enough time and encouragement, students are capable of writing these papers, but we have to give teachers enough time to help them. Schools might try what Wakefield High School in Arlington County has done: Require a senior project that can be a research paper, an internship, a performance or some other, less academic enterprise.
2. Discard elementary school homework in favor of free reading. Research shows that through fifth grade, it doesn’t matter whether your children have homework. They will still, on average, score the same on standardized tests. Many parents, and young children , still want homework because it is part of our culture. So why not change the assignments to something that all educators agree is useful: more reading? The child can choose the books or magazines. It would mean a half-hour of reading a night in kindergarten through second-grade, with parents helping, and an hour in grades three to five.
3. Do a thorough investigation of test tampering in D.C. schools. This won’t happen, I am afraid. The people in charge of finding out why wrong-to-right erasures surged on the annual D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests in the past few years are showing little interest in getting to the root of what appears to me to be widespread cheating by principals. My request to see the erasure data for the spring exams has not been honored, three months after I was told the numbers were available. The city officials in charge of the investigation have apparently not even interviewed the students affected. No one will be able to trust those results, and the credibility of future tests is also in jeopardy.
4. Open public charter schools in Northern Virginia. The District has plenty of these independently operated, taxpayer-financed schools. Some are among the city’s best schools. The Maryland suburbs also have a few. Only the Virginia suburbs have resisted the opportunity to see what creative teachers can do when freed of school district regulations. Veteran educators have an application to start a charter in Fairfax County. A national charter network wants to start one in Loudoun County. Two of the highest-performing and wealthiest school districts in the country should not fear charters. But these proposals will get much resistance, because many public school officials don’t like competition.
5. Make Maryland a model for adopting the world’s most successful approaches to schooling. Virginia and Maryland are near the top of many measures of school performance. But Maryland, particularly under retiring State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick, has been the more consistent innovator. No state is better equipped, politically and culturally, to embrace systems that have helped Singapore, Japan and Finland lead the world in teaching children. The changes would include significantly raising standards for admission to public schools, teacher training programs and deepening those programs, ideas with widespread support in the Maryland.
Do you have wishes for our schools? Please post them on my blog or e-mail me.