- Hebrew, Arabic Among 11 Proposed New Charter Schools
- Suspended From School in Early Grades [Imagine Hope PCS is mentioned]
- How to Win Over Students to Healthy Food [Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS is mentioned]
- In Trying to Help D.C. Charters Kern and Marcus Hurt Movement [William E. Doar, Jr., Thurgood Marshall Academy, and IDEA PCS are mentioned]
- Charter School Teachers Fear IRS Rules Change
- Fighting Over School Fad With Meager Results
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
February 11, 2012
District students soon could be learning their lessons in Hebrew or Arabic, under two proposals to open new public charter schools.
The D.C. Public Charter School Board received 11 applications to open new campuses in the District. That's eight fewer than the 19 of last year, but the range of applications may be more diverse.
The 11 proposals include three adult-education charters, including one virtual school; a K-12 campus that would be partially online; college prep, Montessori, and early-childhood programs; and two schools that separately proposed Hebrew and Arabic language-immersion programs.
"These two language schools, I don't think we've ever had that before -- that's the biggest thing," said Jackie Boddie, the board's school performance officer, also noting a strong need for adult-education programs in the city "Carlos Rosario [International Public Charter School] has a wait list as long as 10 miles, and other adult-ed programs also have wait lists."
The board approved four of last year's 19 proposals, which are set to open in the fall. This year, the charter board oversees 53 public charter schools on 98 campuses; they enroll more than 32,000 children, representing 42 percent of public-school students in the District.
Charter school staff will spend the next five weeks reviewing the applications and interviewing each prospective founder, before holding public hearings March 19 and 20. The board is set to approve the successful applications on April 23. Summaries of each application are available on the board's website.
The Washington, D.C., Clean Energy Adult Public Charter School proposes to serve 175 adults in Ward 5 or 6, while FLOW Public Charter School is looking to serve 450 adults exclusively online. The idea is to not only increase adult literacy, but to prepare them for careers in "green" energy, such as installing solar-thermal energy units.
The D.C. Hebrew Language Public Charter School is looking to open shop in Ward 1, 4 or 5, to 535 students in prekindergarten-8.
The Student Parent Achievement Center of Excellency, or SPACE, hopes to ultimately provide an Arabic immersion program to 840 students in kindergarten-12 on a Ward 3 campus.
"A school with such an international focus will be well situated in Washington, D.C. -- the nation's capital, a city with a significant population of immigrants and international institutions," the application reads.
Suspended From School in Early Grades [Imagine Hope PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Donna St. George
February 12, 2012
Thousands of elementary students were suspended from public schools last year in Washington and its suburbs, some of them so young that they were learning about out-of-school discipline before they could spell or multiply.
Those sent home for their behavior included kindergartners in nearly every area school system — 94 in Prince George’s County, 74 in Fairfax County, 61 in Anne Arundel County, 50 in the D.C. school system, 38 in Prince William County and 22 in Montgomery County.
They included children who idled at home for a day or two and some who accompanied their parents to work.
They included the pre-kindergarten son of Rajuawn Thompkins, who said the boy was removed from his D.C. charter school for kicking off his shoes and crying in frustration. Thompkins had thought the boy was too young to be suspended.
He was 4.
“I would explain it to him, and he still didn’t understand,” she said. “He’d ask me, ‘Mommy, why can’t I go to school?’ ”
His pointed question underlies a debate about the merits of out-of-school suspension.
Some researchers and critics question whether children in the early grades should ever be suspended. The goal should be teaching appropriate behavior, they say, not sending students home.
Still, many educators see suspension as necessary — a strong message about conduct that crosses the line. Many parents, too, suggest that students who cause a disruption in class, no matter what age, need to be removed. Especially when a child or teacher has been physically hurt, many principals view suspension as an important tool.
A Washington Post analysis of data for 13 of the region’s school systems found that last school year more than 6,112 elementary students, from pre-kindergarten through grade 5, were suspended or expelled for hitting, disrupting, disrespecting, fighting and other offenses.
The total includes 433 kindergartners, 677 first-graders, 813 second-graders and 1,086 third-graders. More than 50 pre-kindergartners were suspended.
In all, those cases represent a small segment of suspensions in the region, and affect from 1 percent to 3 percent of elementary children in most school systems. But some experts say that age sets them apart.
For children younger than 7 or 8, “all they understand a couple of days into this is they are having snow days — and nobody else is,” said Walter S. Gilliam, author of a national study on pre-kindergarten expulsions and director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at the Yale Child Study Center.
Gilliam said suspension is at odds with teaching the social and behavioral skills many young students lack. “We would never send a child home because that child was struggling at reading,” he said. “We would never send a child home if that child was struggling with math. Why would we send a child home for struggling with social-emotional skills?”
On those removed from school, the effect is complex. They lose instruction time and slip behind in classes. But there may be other fallout, too: lower regard from peers or teachers, a shift in identity, an alienation from school. “I would be worried it would set in motion a negative trajectory that would gather momentum across the next years of schooling,” said Anne Gregory, a Rutgers University assistant professor and education researcher.
School officials said they try to avoid suspensions of the very young and use positive-behavior initiatives to prevent discipline problems. They said that relatively few students are suspended and that those cases often involve safety issues or repeated misbehavior.
“To me a suspension is for something so unprovoked, or something so out of the norm, that I, as the adult, had no other option,” said Judy Brubaker, principal at Spark M. Matsunaga Elementary School in Germantown.
Brubaker and other principals said they carefully consider each case and often look to other options — involving parents and counselors, creating behavior plans — before suspension.
It is “absolutely not our default,” said Kimberly Willison, principal of Clearview Elementary School in Herndon, who recalled several cases, each with escalated circumstances. “It’s not something we ever do lightly,” she said.
In Alexandria, Lawrence Jointer, director of hearings, investigations and student alternative services, said discipline problems appear to have intensified during his career of four decades. “We see aggressive behavior from kindergarten on up,” he said, and it is tough to affect that behavior when parents are disengaged.
“I understand it gets to a point where principals and teachers feel they’ve tried everything they can,” he said. Sometimes, suspension is a way to “drive the point home: ‘This is serious behavior we’re dealing with at school, and we need your support.’ ”
Nationally, suspension practices are being debated and rethought. The Maryland State Board of Education is considering proposals to end suspensions for nonviolent offenses. Last summer, federal officials launched a broader discipline reform effort as new research highlighted harmful effects.
Many experts say no research indicates that suspensions improve a child’s behavior or make schools safer. But studies have shown that suspended students are more prone to low achievement, dropping out of school and landing in the juvenile justice system.
In elementary school, behavior problems can be rooted in academic gaps — being unable to read, for example, when classmates are poring over books, said Sara Rimm-Kaufman, associate professor of education at University of Virginia. “It’s an emotional response to not knowing what everyone else knows,” she said.
Suspensions have markedly increased nationwide since the 1970s, and some experts suggest that suspensions of younger children reflect, in part, a zero-tolerance culture that has taken hold in schools during the past 20 years.
Among cases that attracted national attention was the 2010 suspension of a Michigan 6-year-old who formed his hand into the shape of a gun. A year earlier, a Delaware 6-year-old was ousted for having a Cub Scout camping tool that included a knife.
Last spring, an 8-year-old boy in Fairfax pocketed a pill for his attention deficit disorder as he rushed to leave for school. After he went to take the medication during a restroom break, he was suspended for possession of a controlled substance, his mother said.
Fairfax, which was under fire at the time for its discipline policies, has since eased its approach to prescription medication, allowing principals more discretion in punishment. The 8-year-old was out of class for 10 school days, his mother said. “It was extreme,” she said.
Fairfax School Board member Elizabeth Schultz (Springfield) said the key to suspension is “proportionality.” Some families have complained about elementary-age students suspended for disrupting class and going to the bathroom repeatedly, she said. “To me, it has to be really significant,” she said, such as imminent danger.
Psychologists and researchers say suspensions can send the wrong message.
“At that age, most of them go home, and if they are allowed to watch TV or play video games, it can be more fun than school and reinforce the behavior that is negative,” said school psychologist Melissa Reeves, who teaches at Winthrop University in South Carolina.
Some schools, Reeves said, rely on suspension because they lack funding for other options. “The challenge,” she said, “is having the resources for alternatives,” programs that teach anger management, social skills, problem-solving and conflict resolution.
In Prince George’s, A. Duane Arbogast , chief academic officer for county schools, said suspension is one of many tools to improve student conduct. Sometimes, it is also needed to set a tone in a school or to be responsive to victims. “It should be used tactically and strategically,” he said.
Arbogast said the 94 kindergartners suspended in Prince George’s last year represent a small share of those enrolled. “About 1 percent,” he said. “. . .Ten percent would be crazy. One percent does not surprise me.”
In Arlington County, Assistant Superintendent Meg Tuccillo said that elementary-age suspensions are rare — 13 last year across 22 schools — but that one might occur when, for example, “a youngster has significantly hurt another youngster.” She added: “Sometimes, either we need time to develop a plan or we need a breathing period.”
Advocates and parents say behavior problems are sometimes signs of undiagnosed disabilities. A second-grader with autistic-like behaviors, prone to meltdowns, was suspended for more than 10 days of kindergarten in Prince George’s, his mother said, and several days of first grade. Now in second grade, the child has qualified for special education services, but he already has lost nine days to suspension and informal send-homes, his mother said.
“It was like he was being suspended for his disability,” she said.
In general, the school system is cautious about such designations, said Arbogast, the academic chief. “You don’t want to necessarily put a label on a kid at age 5,” he said.
How many of the young fully grasp their punishment is hard to know.
“Some can understand the conversation, but others are looking at me, kind of smiling, like, ‘What is all this about?’ ” said Jointer, of Alexandria, who presides over serious suspension cases and every so often sees a kindergartner or first grader.
Teachers describe classroom difficulties with some children lacking basic social skills, said Tim Mennuti, president of the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County.
In the District, Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children’s Law Center, said recent suspension cases include a kindergartner who pulled a fire alarm, a second-grader with multiple suspensions for fighting, and a third-grader accused of sexually harassing an aide.
“It is never the right answer to suspend an elementary-age child,” she said.
In young children, particularly, she said, misbehavior is a sign of something deeper — family problems, learning disabilities, academic gaps. “It is a sign they are experiencing something in their lives, and they should be helped,” she said.
For parents, suspensions have ripple effects.
Thompkins, whose pre-kindergartner was suspended from Imagine Hope Community Charter School, missed work when her son was suspended and when he was less formally sent home early. “He was suspended so often I lost my job,” she said.
Several calls to the charter school for comment were not returned.
D.C. Public Charter School Board member Darren Woodruff said that charter schools have their own disciplinary practices but that suspensions in the early grades may be an issue to examine. “We support best practices and research-based practices,” he said.
A majority of Washington area school systems suspended at least one pre-kindergartner last year, the data show.
Last year, The Post profiled a pre-kindergarten case in Arlington in which a 3-year-old in a public Montessori program was removed for having too many potty accidents. Arlington officials said that the child was not suspended but that the family was asked to work on toilet skills at home for a period.
In Prince William, Todd Erickson, associate superintendent for central elementary schools, said he finds the suspension totals “rather small,” which “shows us we’re doing a good job with the other students.” He cited anti-bullying and positive-behavior efforts.
Brian Butler, a veteran Fairfax principal, said the goal of elementary-level discipline is “a teachable moment for the child.”
Age is a factor, he said. “If I had a kindergartner who hit somebody,” he said, “I would call the parents.”
Staff writer David Fallis contributed to this report.
How to Win Over Students to Healthy Food [Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
February 12, 2012
Jay Mathews [“The school lunch conundrum,” Metro, Feb. 6] questioned the efficacy of healthy nutrition in schools when students are free to make poor choices and retain their acquired taste for them.
I agree that it is a challenge — I believe that we are all hard-wired for sweets and fats — but I know progress is possible.
At my school in Northeast D.C., our experience has been the opposite of what was reported in Los Angeles. Two years ago, we began serving locally sourced, nutritious meals cooked on site from scratch, often with ingredients grown in our organic garden, which our students plant and harvest.
Faculty and staff eat the same foods as our students, eat with them and teach them how their food is prepared. Also important is that our healthy meals taste good, thanks to our on-site, French-trained chef.
The students, 85 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches, still crave unhealthy options — but they are eating healthier fare such as dark, leafy vegetables; whole, fresh fruits; grains; and dairy products.
Our fresh approach also costs less than the processed alternative. Our optimism has begun to pay off.
Linda R. Moore, Washington
The writer is executive director of the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School.
In Trying to Help D.C. Charters Kern and Marcus Hurt Movement [William E. Doar, Jr., Thurgood Marshall Academy, and IDEA PCS are mentioned]
Examiner
By Mark Lerner
February 13, 2012
I’ve known for quite some time that Josh Kern and Stephen Marcus have been trying to assist The William E. Doar, Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts (WEDJ) improve their poor academic and financial performance. Josh Kern, of course, is the founder and now retired decade-long Executive Director of Thurgood Marshall Academy, one of the highest DC CAS scoring charter high schools located in Anacostia. Last term 71 percent of their students qualified for free or reduced lunch.
Stephen Marcus is a friend who helped negotiate the permanent facility building lease for WEDJ when I was board chair. By having conference calls at 11 p.m. at night we were able to compress a process that should have taken a couple of months into two weeks so that we could open the school on time.
It turns out that the Doar School is not the only institution these individuals are trying to help. The Washington Post’s Bill Turque reported recently that they are consultants for IDEA (Integrated Design Electronics Academy) PCS. Here is some information about the school from Mr. Turque’s article:
“The school offers career and technical training in computer science, computer-assisted drafting and electrical house wiring, along with a JROTC program. But standardized test scoreshave been bad for a decade: Reading proficiency has never broken 45 percent and has declined over the last four years to just below 40 percent. The re-enrollment rate is less than 60 percent, and just 48 percent of ninth-graders have credits that put them on track to graduate, according to charter board data.”
Mr. Turque also provides an interesting tidbit about a D.C. PCSB hearing the other day to consider revoking IDEA’s charter. Apparently Mr. Marcus threatened to sue the PCSB if it went ahead with the revocation because the school has not received a customary one-year notice that shuttering the school was a possibility.
Now I respect both of these men, but I think their actions on behalf of poor performing charters is misguided. We desperately need to close those institutions that are not serving their students well. At the same time, as the Illinois Facility Fund documented, we must increase the number of quality seats for students. Prolonging the inevitable is not doing a service to our kids or the overall movement. In fact, Mr. Marcus’ threat of coercive action is distorting the competitive forces that have made D.C.’s charters some of the best in the country and have directly led to significant improvements to the traditional school system.
Instead of earning a living by making sure sub-par schools survive, their valuable creative energies should be used to figure out how our leading charters can expand and replicate.
The Washington Times
By Ben Wolfgang
February 12, 2012
A little-noticed proposed change in Internal Revenue Service regulations could have devastating effects for charter school teachers by making them ineligible for state retirement plans, and they could stand to lose much of the money that they already have accrued.
The proposed rule, released with little fanfare near the end of last year, would make major changes to the definition of “governmental plans,” the federal standard for who can be considered a government employee for the purposes of participating in state pension systems.
“The IRS did not have charter schools in their sights, but whether they had them in their sights or not, it could have negative consequences for us,” said Todd Ziebarth, vice president for state advocacy and support at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “Our concern is that this could raise some questions. It’s a gray area around whether charters would meet the test.”
The proposed change would establish five criteria for determining eligibility in state retirement plans, the most troublesome of which, from the point of view of whether charter school teachers could participate, is a provision stating that “the governing officers either are appointed by state officials or publicly elected.” Another condition is that a government body must be responsible for all the debt a participating institution accumulates.
On the surface, charter schools may not meet either criteria because they are not wholly public institutions. For example, elected school boards do not have hiring or firing power over the employees at a charter school, and charter schools can go bankrupt and out of business without a government guarantee of their debts.
NAPCS estimates that if the rule is enacted, more than 95,000 charter school teachers nationwide - more than 93 percent of the charter workforce - would be forced either to leave their schools or risk losing their pensions.
After an uproar from the charter school community, the IRS last week extended until June a public comment period for the proposed rule, which could go into effect as soon as this summer.
Several Republican members of Congress also are putting pressure on the IRS to clarify its rule or risk inflicting a crippling blow to charter schools, which are responsible for educating more than 2 million students in 41 states and the District.
In a letter last week to the IRS, Republican Reps. John Kline of Minnesota, chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and Duncan Hunter of California, chairman of the early childhood, elementary and secondary education subcommittee, said the proposed rule “could unfairly jeopardize the retirement security of charter-school teachers.”
“The draft regulations could effectively prevent many public charter schools from recruiting or retaining veteran traditional public school teachers, significantly interfering with charter schools’ ability to achieve their educational goals,” the two men wrote.
In a post on the IRS website explaining why it drafted the rule, the agency said it was attempting to limit governmental-plan eligibility to those working directly for “an agency or instrumentality of the state.”
The IRS also says it has become “increasingly concerned with the growing number of requests for governmental-plan determinations from plan sponsors whose relationships to governmental entities are increasingly remote.”
The IRS has not named any specific groups of state, county or city employees that could be affected by the change, but in a statement to The Washington Times disputed the notion that the proposed regulation is an attack on charter schools.
“It is important to note that the proposed regulations are in draft form, and that there is nothing in the proposed regulations excluding public charter schools from being treated as governmental entities,” the IRS statement said. “The IRS is accepting and reviewing comments. … [T]axpayers with concerns are encouraged to submit comments.”
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
February 12, 2012
Fads rule much of American education. A good example is block scheduling. In most high schools in the Washington area — and much of the rest of the country — that innovation has replaced the traditional 45-minute daily class periods with classes that meet every other day for as long as 90 minutes each.
The block approach, influenced by the work of University of Virginia school administration expert Robert Lynn Canady, swept through this area in the 1990s. I had to explain it in several stories then. It was not easy. The array of colors and numbers used to distinguish each class was bewildering.
Still, about three-quarters of this region’s high schools, and many middle schools, have stuck with block schedules, even though many educators have a difficult time explaining why. Studies say neither block nor regular schedules make much of a difference.
Some schools have shifted back to regular schedules. Few had adopted block scheduling in recent years until Arlington County sparked a parent rebellion this year with a plan to install block scheduling in all five county middle schools.
Arlington middle schools are already doing well in a county with the nation’s highest percentage of college-graduate residents. Many parents ask: Why mess with a system that works?
The idea of altering middle school schedules grew out of a series of reports from the teacher-parent-resident committees that look into everything in Arlington. School officials say many expressed concern that middle school lessons weren’t as deep or as varied, or as accessible to low-income students, as they ought to be.
School Superintendent Patrick K. Murphy, who installed a block schedule when he was the principal of a middle school in Fairfax County, said regular-length periods are too short for the kind of creative teaching needed. “We are doing a disservice to students to run them through a seven-period day with a 45 minute turnaround,” he said.
Margaret Gilhooley, interim assistant superintendent for instruction, said that, in elementary school, “if a class is not grasping a concept, you can expand the time.” With just 45 minutes in middle school, that is difficult to do.
Some Arlington parents say they fear the mind-twisting complications of the block system will shortchange English, physical education, music, art and foreign language instruction. “For students who miss school occasionally for various reasons, it could be harder for them to catch up,” said Doug Levin, who has both middle school and elementary school children.
Another protesting parent, Tara Claeys, noted that Glasgow Middle School in Fairfax was returning to regular scheduling because its test scores dropped during three years of block scheduling.
The research is slippery and inconclusive. A 2006 U-Va. study said students on block schedules in high school did somewhat worse in college science courses than those who had regular schedules. A 2010 review of research in British schools concluded that block scheduling did not produce negative outcomes but that the positive effects “are not strong enough to recommend their implementation.”
Many teachers like the opportunity to go deeper in each class period than allowed by just 45 minutes. They will object to my calling block scheduling a fad. But in Montgomery County, where individual schools decide the issue, faculties have been split. When Montgomery’s Albert Einstein High School dropped block scheduling in 2007, students — particularly in foreign languages — said they preferred the daily schedule because they were less likely to forget their lessons.
Murphy canceled a plan to have two middle schools try block schedules next fall. The earliest the switch would be made will be fall of 2013. He said he will review what parents and others say at community forums and listen to his teachers and principals.
When schools adopt policies, fads or not, that don’t appear to help children learn more, parents resisting the change have a strong argument, and deserve to be heard.
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