NEWS
- McDuffie introduces Title IX legislation again
- No end in sight to Options PCS legal case [Options PCS mentioned]
- Charter Schools Vital to DC's Educational Renaissance [Capital City PCS and AppleTree Early Learning PCS mentioned]
- Nation’s per-pupil K-12 funding fell for second consecutive year in 2012
McDuffie introduces Title IX legislation again
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
January 28, 2015
D.C. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) reintroduced a bill to increase athletic opportunities for girls in the city’s public schools.
The District has some of the lowest participation rates in the country for girls in sports, an issue that has become the subject of two discrimination complaints in recent years.
“As a father of two young daughters, I cannot stand by while thousands of girls are denied the same opportunity as their male counterparts,” McDuffie said in a statement.
He introduced the bill last year, and many parents and girls sports advocates spoke in favor of it during a public hearing. The bill was co-sponsored by every council member last year, but it got stalled after the general election. The bill never came to the full council for a vote, so he reintroduced it earlier this month.
The bill would require the mayor to develop a strategic plan every five years to close the gap between boys’ and girls’ participation in athletics.
Traditional and charter schools would have to submit annual reports to the mayor about their athletic programs, including information about staffing, funding, expenditures and facilities.
The National Women’s Law Center filed a federal Title IX discrimination complaint against the District’s school system, citing significant disparities between the percentage of girls enrolled in the city’s high schools and the percentage who play sports.
A second Title IX complaint against District schools was filed in 2012 by a parent and ultimately settled when the city agreed to collect and publish the numbers of girls participating in sports and to survey students about their athletic interests and create new teams to increase participation.
The legislation will help the school system meet the terms of the agreement, said Jon Mandel, a spokesman for McDuffie.
The bill was co-introduced by Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), chairman of the education committee, and Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3).
No end in sight to Options PCS legal case [Options PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
January 29, 2015
A couple of weeks ago, according to the Washington Post's Emma Brown, D.C. Superior Court Judge Craig Iscoe issued a ruling that declared that each of the five individuals tied up in the Options Public Charter School legal dispute of the stealing of public funds will remain defendants in the case. The five had asked to be dismissed because they said that nothing illegal about their actions had been uncovered. The Judge asserted that there was sufficient evidence for the indictment to continue, and that the government is attempting to recover money from those that profited from the diversion of millions of dollars from the charter school to their pockets.
The D.C. Attorney General is apparently ready to add new allegations to the proceedings.
Also, last week, J.C. Hayward, the long-term Channel 9 television newscaster, announced her retirement. Ms. Hayward, as I'm sure you recall, is one of the defendants in the Options case. She served as Options board chair when lucrative agreements were signed between the charter school and two for-profit companies. She has argued that she had nothing to do with financial irregularities at the school. Last year, the Attorney General claimed that Ms. Hayward had a 10 percent share in one of the companies run by the ex-managers of Options. It was also revealed that she was paid $8,500 every time she attended a board meeting. She has not been on the air since the news about Options broke towards the end of 2013.
The government's allegation is that approximately $3 million was taken from the school by the outside firms.
Charter Schools Vital to DC's Educational Renaissance [Capital City PCS and AppleTree Early Learning PCS mentioned]
The Huffington Post
By Nina Rees and Scott Pearson
January 28, 2015
When First Lady Michelle Obama visited Capital City Public Charter School last month, she met Gerson Quinteros, a graduate of Capital City who now attends the University of the District Columbia. Gerson told Mrs. Obama that when he came to the United States from El Salvador at nine years old, he didn't know English and was often bullied. But when he arrived at Capital City, he was welcomed with open arms, treated the same as every other kid, and given the support and encouragement to blossom as a student.
Gerson is one of the millions of students across America who have benefited from the educational options made available by charter schools, which we celebrate this week as part of National School Choice Week.
Public charter schools have taken firm root in Washington, DC. This year, for the first time since charter schools were introduced to the District 18 years ago, more public schools in the city are run by charters than by DC Public Schools (DCPS). What started as an experiment in educational innovation has now become a mainstay for District families, with 44 percent of public school students exercising the choice to attend a charter school. And a recent report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools found that DC has the healthiest charter school movement in the country, based on measures of growth, quality, and innovation.
All parents hope their children follow in Gerson's footsteps and attend college. Or they may be like the parents of Daniel, a special-needs student at AppleTree, a preschool charter program in DC. (We've changed Daniel's real name to protect his anonymity.) Daniel's parents worked with AppleTree teachers and school leaders to ensure he received individualized support that's allowed him to get comfortable in the classroom, improve his communication skills, and enjoy going to school.
The proliferation of charter schools in the District - there are now 112 - has given more parents the opportunity to find a school that meets their child's needs.
Some people have misconceptions about charters, mistakenly thinking that they're private schools, or that they only take the best students, or that they get more money than other public schools. In reality, DC's charter schools are public, tuition-free, open to all and non-selective. Their students tend to perform higher than the citywide average year-after-year. Students who come from disadvantaged families or have special needs do particularly well at charter schools relative to their peers at other schools.
The DC Public Charter School Board (PCSB) oversees the District's charter schools, with the mission of ensuring quality and choice for all students. Ensuring quality means that before a charter school is allowed to open, the nonprofit proposing to run it must say - in writing - how it will improve DC's educational landscape. If it fails to meet its goals, it is held accountable. That's why 12 charters had to close in the last two years alone.
In return for meeting high standards, charters also have flexibility. Freed from bureaucratic rules and procedures, charters are able to quickly adjust their curriculum, introduce new programs, or hire teachers who are masters in their field. By design, public charter schools are more nimble and innovative than traditional public schools, giving parents more choices to find the best match for their child.
To help parents and the community make those choices, PCSB ranks all charter schools as Tier 1, 2 or 3, with Tier 1 being the best. Proudly, 21% of public charter schools today are Tier 1, and more and more parents are enrolling their children in these high-performing schools each year.
It's also worth noting that, unlike neighborhood-based DC public schools, charters are citywide schools. About half of charter students attend a school outside their ward. That's why many charter schools are more racially and economically diverse than traditional DC public schools.
PCSB and DCPS compete to be the best, but also collaborate to provide better information to parents through the joint DC Education Festival at the Convention Center and to streamline the admissions process through "My School DC," the common lottery. Charter and DCPS school leaders often work together to improve their practices and to learn from each other.
This year, PCSB is focusing on several initiatives to take charter school quality to the next level. This includes preparing to meet the demands of the new Common Core assessments; improving services for students whose first language is not English; reducing out-of-school suspensions and expulsions, particularly in early childhood programs; and ensuring greater transparency in operations.
Charter schools have been a vital part of DC's educational renaissance, with total public school enrollment growing for the first time in 50 years. Not everything is perfect and there is still plenty of room for improvement, but DC parents and students are better off with two robust school systems challenging each other to keep getting better.
Nina Rees is the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and Scott Pearson is the executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board.
Nation’s per-pupil K-12 funding fell for second consecutive year in 2012
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
January 29, 2015
After more than a decade of increases in per-pupil funding for K-12 public schools, the nation’s per-pupil spending dropped in 2012 for the second year in a row, according to data released Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Schools across the country spent an average of $10,667 per student in fiscal year 2012, a decline of 2.8 percent compared to the year before, adjusting for inflation. Thirty-seven states saw per-pupil expenditures decline at least 1 percent, and some states saw much larger slides.
Per-pupil spending climbed steadily by at least 1 percent per year between 1996 and 2008, when the nation began to feel the effects of the recession. Spending flattened out between 2008 and 2010, and then in 2011 fell for the first time in 15 years.
In the world of school finance, the two-year funding drop is “big news,” said Stephen Cornman, project director of the national school finance survey or the National Center for Education Statistics.
The downturn has come as federal stimulus funds dried up, shrinking the federal government’s aid to schools by more than 20 percent between 2011 and 2012. At the same time, many local governments saw their property tax base evaporate in the housing collapse and states wrestled with balancing recession-battered budgets. Many Republican-dominated legislatures chose to cut spending instead of raising taxes.
In Wisconsin, for example, per-pupil spending dropped nearly 9 percent between 2011 and 2012 as Gov. Scott Walker (R) cut hundreds of millions of dollars in state aid to public schools. Schools in Texas and Florida also saw per-pupil spending drop more than 8 percent.
The new federal data mirror an analysis of state education budgets by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That analysis, published last year, found that 35 states were spending less per student in 2014 than they were before the recession in 2008.
Cuts to education budgets have meant bigger class sizes and fewer programs in many schools; advocates argue that tight budgets have hobbled efforts to adjust to the new Common Core State Standards, expand access to pre-kindergarten and serve an increasingly needy student population.
As Congress sets about rewriting the federal No Child Left Behind law, the Obama administration and education advocates are pushing lawmakers to increase federal funding for schools.
These are the jurisdictions that saw the biggest proportional decreases in overall per-pupil spending between 2011 and 2012, adjusted for inflation:
● Wisconsin: From $12,297 to $11,233 per student, -8.7 percent
● Florida: From $9,295 to $8,520 per student, -8.3 percent
● Texas: From $8,939 to $8,213 per student, -8.1 percent
● Arizona: From $8,010 to $7,382 per student, -7.8 percent
● District of Columbia: From $21,402 to $19,847, -7.3 percent
Seven states saw per-pupil spending increase between 2011 and 2012, and just four of those saw an increase of more than 1 percent, adjusted for inflation. They were:
● Vermont: From $$15,138 to $16,651, +10 percent
● Delaware: From $12,833 to $13,580, +5.8 percent
● New Jersey: From $17,348 to $17,982, +3.7 percent
● Alaska: From $17,151 to $17,475, +1.9 percent
The new data also show that per-pupil funding continues to vary widely across the country. The following spent the most per-pupil overall in 2012:
● District of Columbia: $19,847
● New York: $19,396
● New Jersey: $17,982
● Alaska: $17,475
● Connecticut: $16,855
These states spent the least per-pupil overall in 2012:
● Utah: $6,441
● Idaho: $6,626
● Arizona: $7,382
● Oklahoma: $7,763
● Mississippi: $8,097
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