FOCUS DC News Wire 2/3/2014

 

 

National School Choice Week celebrates the growing number of effective education options for children nationwide and the expanding coalition of individuals and organizations that support them.. In the nation’s capital, for decades considered to have one of the worst urban public school systems in the US, school choice has transformed the educational landscape and brought high-quality options to once-chronically underserved communities.

 

In the latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation’s report card, D.C. Public Schools was the system with the greatest improvement of any U.S. urban district. And the District’s publicly-funded but independently-run charter schools, which now educate 44 percent of all D.C. students enrolled in public school, significantly outperformed the school system among students from low-income families.

 

Fourth grade students in D.C.’s public charter schools who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals scored, on average, nine percentage points higher in reading, and eight points higher in math, than their DCPS peers on the federal NAEP test. Eighth grade public charter school students eligible for federal lunch subsidies scored even better, outperforming their DCPS counterparts by 12 points in reading and 15 in math.

 

Alongside this federal data, new local statistics confirm the success of school choice. D.C. public charter schools’ on-time high school graduation rate increased by two percentage points, to 79 percent, in 2013. This is higher than the national average, and almost equal to Maryland and Virginia, even though D.C. charters serve a much more disadvantaged population. The DCPS rate also increased this year, up to 58 percent but still 21 points lower than D.C. charters.

 

These latest encouraging results confirm the recent trend in D.C.’s standardized tests: improving scores for students enrolled at both traditional and public charter schools, with charters leading the way. On D.C.’s standardized math and reading tests, charter students in wards 7 and 8—the District’s most disadvantaged—score on average 19 percentage points higher in reading and 25 points higher in math, than their fellow students in DCPS.

 

These wards, once burdened with the city’s worst public education outcomes, are now home to some of D.C.’s highest performing charter high schools that by dint of creativity and hard work see 100 percent of their graduating class accepted to college.

 

These encouraging results are a far cry from D.C.’s pre school-choice days. In the mid-1990s, half of the school system’s students dropped out before graduating. Academics and safety were rated among the worst in the nation. Schoolhouses lay derelict thanks to falling enrollment.

 

The popularity of these programs is not in doubt: last school year public charter schools received 22,000 more applications than they had seats. Smaller in scale, the D.C. voucher program nevertheless got six applications for every place available. For the first time this school year, enrollment in public education increased—charter and traditional combined—thus reversing decades of decline.

 

Key to D.C.’s success is the School Reform Act, which in 1996 enabled the first charter schools to open. These publicly-funded, tuition-free public schools are open to all D.C. resident students and have the authority to choose their own instructional methods, hire and fire teachers as needed, and control their finances. While enjoying autonomy over their curriculum and finances, charters are held strictly accountable for improved student performance.

 

The explosive growth in charter schools in the District and the concomitant decline in DCPS enrollment finally forced the D.C. mayor and council to address DCPS’s woeful performance. Taking its cue from New York City, the D.C. Council placed DCPS under mayoral control. Two school reformers—first the no-nonsense Michelle Rhee and then her deputy, Kaya Henderson—were appointed Chancellor. DCPS enrollment has now stabilized, accountability for results has increased, and standardized test scores have improved.

 

This week, let’s celebrate the success that school choice has brought students in D.C.—especially the most disadvantaged. This success was achieved over the last 18 years in an environment characterized by official disdain and, at times, hostility. Just imagine the transformation that will take place if politicians, like parents, get on board.

 

 

Ahead of a vote Tuesday to give District residents one of the nation’s few publicly financed college scholarship programs, the city’s delegate to Congress is sounding alarms.

 

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) says the plan proposed by council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) could upend a long-standing federal scholarship program that’s unique to the city and has become key to how thousands of families budget for college.

 

The fate of the federal program, known as the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant program, or TAG, has been the only question looming over Catania’s D.C. Promise proposal, which has sailed through early test votes and appears headed for initial council approval on Tuesday.

 

The new citywide program would provide low-income high school graduates with up to $60,000 each for college, meant both to defray the cost of post-secondary education and as an incentive to keep students from dropping out of high school.

 

Holmes Norton says TAG has been “at risk” ever since congressional appropriators caught wind of the D.C. Promise bill. She said the latter could lead Congress to conclude that D.C. students no longer need TAG, which is designed in part to help students in almost any income bracket offset the higher out-of-state college costs they face when applying to schools around the country.

 

“Senate and House appropriators have made clear that the federal government will not pay for DCTAG if D.C. has a similar program at similar funding levels,” Norton recently wrote to council members.

 

Catania, who is weighing a mayoral bid as an independent, and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) met with Norton’s staff last week to try to assuage concerns.

 

Mendelson said that he and Catania tried to emphasize that the Promise program would not duplicate TAG, and Catania offered major revisions to the program that he said would further make the distinctions clear.

 

But Norton’s office has not responded, and it appears the D.C. Council will head into Tuesday’s vote with the future of TAG — at least in Norton’s estimation — in doubt.

 

Since TAG’s inception in 2000, Congress has provided nearly 20,000 D.C. students with more than $317 million in college aid.

 

TAG provides city high school students with up to $10,000 per year to defray the cost of attending out-of-state public colleges or up to $2,500 a year to attend a private university in the Washington area or a historically black college.

 

“We don’t want to jeopardize D.C. TAG, which has helped so many students and been around so long,” said Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7). “We want all the help that we can [get] for our students.”

 

Mendelson said he hopes the council can get assurances from Norton.

 

“If people are concerned that we can’t put local dollars to help low-income students with college, then we will never be able to build upon TAG to help low-income students,” he said.

 

Catania on Tuesday plans to outline a downsizing of his proposal that includes reducing the total size of the scholarship to less than TAG; limiting universities where the money could be used; and requiring that for students receiving TAG, the Promise money would be supplemental, to cover the cost of books plus room and board.

 

Catania and Mendelson sent a letter to Norton last week outlining the amendments, including shrinking the maximum D.C. Promise award from $12,000 to $7,500 a year.

 

Students could apply D.C. Promise money toward some expenses at TAG-eligible schools, but not for tuition. And unlike TAG, which is available to almost all D.C. graduates, D.C. Promise would be available only to students from families earning below 200 percent of the area median income for a family of four, or about $215,000 per year.

 

It’s not clear whether the compromise is palatable to Norton, who plans to issue a public statement if the council moves forward with the bill, spokesman Daniel van Hoogstraten said.

 

“The threat to DCTAG is how much the D.C. Promise program would cost in total, not individual grant amounts,” van Hoogstraten wrote in an e-mail last week. “The appropriators only care about the total cost of D.C. Promise and whether it seems that D.C. can pay for its own college access program.”

 

Catania and Mendelson’s letter says that the revised Promise would cost $7.8 million next year, rising to $20.25 million in fiscal 2017. Congress appropriated $30 million for D.C. TAG this year.

 

Catania originally had envisioned a much larger program that would have cost the city more than $50 million annually.

 

Shrinking Promise much further would defeat the purpose of trying to help D.C. students meet the escalating costs of college, Catania and Mendelson wrote.

 

“We’re trying to be very careful in how we thread this needle so that we’re listening and trying to create a program that serves a dual purpose: that provides additional resources to kids so they can afford to go to college and at the same time doesn’t threaten existing federal resources to the city,” Catania said.

 

 

Look for references to KIPP charter schools on the Internet, and you will find critics saying they are akin to military schools or concentration camps. That is far from the truth. The schools have rules but are full of games, songs, choices and critical thinking. Some of those most hostile to KIPP have never been inside a KIPP school, but that doesn’t stop them.

 

So it goes for the nation’s largest and best-known charter network, which receives glowing research results and inspires dark rumors on the Web.

 

The teachers who keep KIPP standards high are amused to hear they are slaves to an evil model since many joined KIPP for its creative team spirit. They are happily improving on the methods developed by KIPP co-founders Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg.

 

A good example is KIPP’s network of 12 schools in the District. The executive director and founder of KIPP DC is Susan Schaeffler, 43, a former D.C. elementary school teacher. From the start, she had the gumption to defy Levin and Feinberg. They wanted her to start a school in Atlanta. She told them her KIPP school would be in the District, near her family and friends, or nowhere.

 

Thirteen years later, 87 percent of her 3,640 students are from low-income families and yet on average score 20 or 30 percentage points higher on annual tests than students at regular D.C. schools with similar demographics. But the KIPP team still makes changes, such as the reduction of KIPP’s long school day. At Schaeffler’s first school, students arrived at 7:30 a.m. and did not leave until 5 p.m. A KIPP student’s day is now an hour and 15 minutes shorter.

 

In part, this is because KIPP’s middle schools no longer need so much extra time to pull new fifth- graders up to grade level. Most KIPP DC middle school students come from KIPP elementary schools, and they are much better prepared.

 

KIPP DC also has changed the way it recruits and trains new teachers. In the early years, I watched Schaeffler hire the best people she could find and provide them with much support, but she refused to give them the usual multiyear probationary period. If they weren’t up to KIPP standards by Thanksgiving, they were replaced. Students deserved better, she said, than a weak probationer holding onto a job.

 

The KIPP team has found a better way, called Capital Teaching Residents. They are bright students fresh out of college, like the people in other alternative teacher training programs. Unlike other programs, KIPP DC does not put its residents in charge of classes after a few weeks of summer training. Instead, each resident becomes an assistant to a seasoned KIPP teacher. The trainees gradually get more responsibility so that by the end of the year they can teach classes on their own.

 

“I could literally stop into any classroom to observe excellent teaching,” said former CTR Keith Dykstra, who now teaches math at a KIPP DC middle school. Bianca Brown, a CTR at a KIPP elementary school, said that “the relationship I have with my mentor teacher is a partnership. We are together 10-plus hours a day.”

 

After the residency, new teachers commit to two years in a D.C. school. KIPP takes as many as possible. Of the 100 new teachers KIPP DC hired last year, 43 were former Capital Teaching Residents.

 

A trouble spot for Schaeffler and her teachers is their one high school, KIPP D.C. College Preparatory.

 

The school’s test scores are more than 40 percentage points above D.C. high schools. Just four D.C. schools have higher passing rates on Advanced Placement tests than KCP. But it is not where the KIPP team wants it to be.

 

“It is hard. It is very humbling,” Schaeffler said. The fifth-graders she used to teach had seven years to get ready for college. But if an 11th-grader at KCP “fails chemistry,” she said, “there is no time in her life to make up chemistry” before college begins.

 

Fixing that will take time and effort. KIPP welcomes visitors. Interested critics should stop by and see how it works.