- D.C. Mayor Gray Gets What He Wants Out of School Funding Equity Report [FOCUS is mentioned]
- Clark Ray’s New Job: Bring DCPS and Charter Sports Together [Friendship PCS is mentioned]
- Catania Proceeds with South Capitol Street Memorial Amendment Act
- Shuttering Bad Charter Schools
D.C. Mayor Gray Gets What He Wants Out of School Funding Equity Report [FOCUS is mentioned]
Examiner
By Mark Lerner
February 22, 2012
The District of Columbia Public Education Finance Reform Commission released its report the other day which was supposed to look at revenue inequities between DCPS and charter schools around the Uniform Per Pupil Funding Formula. While FOCUS's Robert Cane gets all excited about an opening sentence like this one I realize that I'm writing about a highly technical subject for most of us, even for those involved in education reform.
Therefore, I'll save you the trouble of reading the 78 page study. What the Commission was able to do apparently without the slightest bit of guilt was ignore the annual $72 million to $127 million received by DCPS on an annual basis over the amount charters receive even though they are supposed to be funded according to the same standard.
Clark Ray’s New Job: Bring DCPS and Charter Sports Together [Friendship PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Mike Debonis
February 21, 2012
Sometimes a football game is more than a football game. Sometimes there’s more on the line than adolescent dreams, parental cheers and popcorn sales. Sometimes there’s educational philosophies, decades of tradition and mayoral campaign promises at stake.
So while Clark Ray has one simple job to do in the next 10 months — plan a championship football game for D.C. public high schools — it’s actually quite a bit more complex than that.
Yes, of course, there’s the venerable Turkey Bowl, the Thanksgiving Day matchup of the top two teams in the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association. That, however, is part of the problem; the DCIAA includes only high schools in the D.C. Public Schools.
With more than 40 percent of students now attending independent charter schools rather than DCPS schools, Ray is faced with reconciling a storied history of D.C. schoolboy and schoolgirl athletics with a governance structure that is increasingly incompatible with the reality of public schooling in the District of Columbia.
Putting DCPS and charter students on a level playing field, as it were, has been a priority of Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) — himself a schoolboy athlete of some renown — for some time, dating back to his term as D.C. Council chairman. Gray quietly made Ray, the former city parks and recreation director and an ex-D.C. Council candidate, the city’s first “statewide” athletic director last month.
Yes, the District is not a state; the “statewide” part of his title nods to his place in the administrative superstructure of State Superintendent of Education Hosanna Mahaley, who has responsibility for overseeing education in both DCPS and charter schools. It falls to Ray to bring the two under the same athletic aegis for the first time.
Ray’s first task — his only task at the moment — is to plan a new city football championship open to all public schools. It’s not a simple chore, and if he can accomplish it, the relentlessly upbeat Arkansan will have solved some of the larger obstacles that stand in the way of a more sweeping integration of DCPS and charter athletics.
“How that’s going to look, no one knows yet,” Ray said. “I’m sure everyone has many different opinions. ... Right now, the key word is flexible.”
Gray might seem to have made an odd choice in picking Ray to accomplish one of his signature goals — Ray was, after all, a member of predecessor Adrian M. Fenty’s Cabinet until showing political ambitions and taking on longtime incumbent Phil Mendelson (D-At Large).
But Ray kept a low profile after his failed council bid, and he’s kept a reputation for being a get-it-done kind of guy who can manage tricky politics and trickier personalities. And Ray said his ill-fated run and his new fatherhood have cured him of his political ambitions.
He’ll have to deploy his considerable energy, charm and political savvy in his new assignment. “There’s a little bit of everything involved,” he said. “There’s politics, there’s hurdles, there’s buy-in.”
For one, he’ll have to soothe concerns that integrating charter schools into school athletics programs means discarding decades of DCPS tradition. He’ll also have to address the even trickier issue of creating uniform eligibility standards across all public schools — something that’s been a particularly nettlesome issue in the past.
“The men and women who created the DCIAA certainly need to be paid homage,” Ray said. “We have to take the model they have and expand on it. ... I don’t think it will go away at all.”
But how that happens remains to be seen. Will charter high schools be granted admission to the DCIAA? Will the extant Washington Charter School Athletic Association be set up parallel to the DCIAA, to meet in a epic DCPS-charter showdown — much as the NFC and AFC champions meet in the Super Bowl?
Last week, Ray convened a first meeting of about a dozen DCPS and charter school coaches and athletic directors to talk through how they might go about bringing their worlds together via a football game.
The good news is that most everyone agrees the status quo cannot persist. The unsurprising and less good news is that there’s little consensus on how things should change.
Aazaar Abdul-Rahim — coach of charter Friendship Collegiate Academy’s extremely good football team, which last year could probably have beaten any DCIAA team — has as much as anyone to gain from a more equitable city athletics regime and said he’s been pleased with the initial talks.
“Both sides want to definitely get something accomplished,” he said. “I think both sides are open to discussion, but it’s going to be a little more difficult than a roundtable. ... At the end of the day, I don’t think everyone is going to be happy.”
DCPS interests, for one, appear to want to keep the Turkey Bowl and its holiday scheduling an all-DCPS affair, meaning a D.C. Super Bowl would likely get pushed into early December — about a month after charter schools, which don’t have playoffs, wrap up their schedules.
Abdul-Rahim said he’s willing to be flexible if others are. “I respect the other leagues. I respect tradition,” he said. “If we don’t play for a month, we won’t play for a month. We’ll figure out another week of games.”
He has faith in Ray to bring the sides together. “He’s a very charismatic person, and he’s able to be that mediator,” Abdul-Rahim said. His political skills, he added, “come in handy. There’s some tense type of situations.”
For now, this much is clear: The Turkey Bowl as we know it — a Thanksgiving Day matchup of the top DCPS teams — will survive at least through 2012, Ray said. But charter schools will have the opportunity to play in a citywide public school title game this year.
“You have the mayor’s commitment,” Ray said.
The Washington Informer
By Staff
February 21, 2012
On the same day the case against five men accused in the South Capitol Street shooting of 2010 went to trial, the Council of the District of Columbia's Committee of the Whole considered and moved the landmark youth behavioral health and truancy legislation, the "South Capitol Street Memorial Amendment Act of 2012", setting the stage for a first reading vote a the Council's legislative meeting on March 6.
The legislation is the result of the combined efforts of Councilmember David A. Catania, Nardyne Jefferies, the mother of South Capitol Street shooting victim Brishell Jones, Mayor Vincent Gray, and Chairman Kwame Brown.
"The correlation between unmeet behavioral health needs and delinquent activity is clear," said Councilmember Catania. "It is critical children in need are provided with appropriate behavioral health services before it's too late. The Act will transform how the District addresses youth behavioral health needs, strengthening our ability to identify signs of unmet behavioral health needs early, and allowing us to effectively intervene in order to prevent negative outcomes later."
In the days after the shooting, Catania and Jefferies began working to come up with real and substantive reforms that would make tragedies like the one on South Capitol Street less likely. Nixon Peabody, LLC provided extensive research into both youth mental health services and truancy in the District.
This past summer, Catania's office convened four public meetings to get input on the Act from residents, stakeholders, and advocates. The Act as it stands today is the product of hundreds of hours of research, scores of meetings, and significant input from those on the frontlines of the relevant issues. The Act calls for the extension of behavioral health services to all public and public charter schools students, enhances truancy regulations to ensure needed services are delivered to youth, and increases behavioral health screening at District agencies that deal with youth.
Specifically Title I of the Act calls for a comprehensive study of the behavioral health needs of District youth. This epidemiological study would collect data on the type and prevalence of behavioral health conditions including demographic and geographic information, utilization of behavioral health services, the location of services accessed, the barriers preventing access to services, and efforts to remove them. It will create evidence-based responses to address unmet needs and inform efforts to improve the current delivery apparatus.
Title II requires the creation and implementation of a comprehensive plan to expand school-based mental health services to all schools by 2016-2017 school year with a ramp up period in preceding school years. Currently only about 1 out of 3 schools in the District have behavioral health services. The plan would implement services at both public and public charter schools that include interventions for families of student with unmet behavioral health needs, reduce aggressive and impulsive behaviors, and promote social and emotional competency.
Title III enhances the District's truancy protocols by focusing the first intervention, which occurs after 5 unexcused absences, on the underlying causes of truancy and providing appropriate services. Mandating this root cause analysis will increase identification of youth with unmet behavioral health needs. Behavioral health interventions and connections to care improve outcomes for youth. The Act also empowers the Mayor to create needed enforcement mechanisms to increase the accountability of administrators and teachers involved in preventing truancy.
Title IV establishes a behavioral health training program within the Department of Mental Health for teachers, principals, and licensed staff at child development centers to identify youth with behavioral health needs and refer them to appropriate services. The Department of Mental Health will draw on its expertise to create behavioral health resource guides for parents and youth. Title IV also establishes an Ombudsman for Mental Health, an office that will serve as an advocate for District children and parents. The Ombudsman's office will help parents negotiate the inter-agency bureaucracy, resulting in better outcomes for children.
Title V addresses behavioral health practices in the District's agencies dealing with vulnerable and at-risk youth. It requires all youth in CFSA and DYRS receive behavioral health screenings within 30 days of their initial contact with either agency and, if needed, more comprehensive assessments by behavioral health professionals. It also requires the creation of resource guides for parents who come into contact with the child welfare agency or the juvenile justice system. These resource guides ensure that parents are informed of their rights and responsibilities as soon as their children enter the either the juvenile justice or child welfare systems.
The New York Times
By Editorial
February 20, 2012
The charter school movement has expanded over the last 20 years largely on this promise: If exempted from some state regulations, charters could outperform traditional public schools because they have flexibility and can be more readily tailored to the needs of students. Another selling point is that these schools are supposed to be periodically reviewed when they renew their operating permits — and easily shut down if they fail.
It has not worked out that way. Despite a growing number of studies showing that charter schools, financed with public money and operating in 40 states, are often worse than traditional schools, the state and local organizations that issue charters and oversee the schools are too hesitant to shut them down. That has to change if the movement is to maintain its credibility.
A new study from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, a nonprofit, pro-charter school organization, found that a smaller and smaller percentage of schools are being denied charter renewals.
According to the study, charter authorizers who oversee many of the nation’s approximately 5,600 charters have, in recent years, shut down fewer schools. Only 6.2 percent of those that came up for renewal in 2010-11 were shuttered, down from 8.8 percent in 2009-10 and 12.6 percent in 2008-9.
A 2009 study from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that 37 percent of charter schools performed worse on student test measures than their traditional counterparts. Given that data, closure rates should clearly be higher. Those rates vary widely across the country. The District of Columbia Public Charter School Board is one of the agencies that sets clear standards and shuts schools that fail to meet them, according to the study. It oversees 98 charter schools and has closed 14 over the last three years.
The study raises troubling questions about the management practices of the oversight groups. Nearly a third of charter authorizers have not established clear revocation criteria; fewer than half have the kinds of strong, independent review panels the association recommends; and about only half issue annual reports that show the schools how they are doing.
State governments and local districts need to do a much better job overseeing these schools, which now educate more than two million students. When weak charters stay open, students are deprived and public money is wasted.
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