- How much time do D.C. Public Schools spend testing?
- Amended ‘Promise’ program wins initial nod
- When is it OK to have an empty classroom?
How much time do D.C. Public Schools spend testing?
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
February 6, 2014
D.C. Public Schools do not spend as much time on testing as some other urban school districts, according to a new report from the national nonprofit Teach Plus.
Teach Plus examined school system assessment calendars in 12 large cities and found that kids spend an average of 1.7 percent of their time testing each year. But there is huge variation, with kids in high-testing districts spending five times as many hours on testing as kids in low-testing districts.
And teachers surveyed by Teach Plus said that they actually lose much more instructional time to testing than is reflected on official calendars. Elementary-school teachers said they spent more than twice the amount of time testing than accounted for on the calendars.
With that caveat in mind: Kindergartners in D.C. Public Schools spend about 1.7 hours per year on standardized tests, according to the report, compared to zero hours in Shelby County, Tenn.; 3.1 hours on average; and 10 hours in Atlanta. (For charts, see link above.)
D.C. third-graders spend 14.3 hours per year testing, compared to 5.1 hours in Chicago; 16.3 hours on average; and 25 hours in Cleveland.
D.C. seventh-graders spend 17 hours testing — about the same as the average, 16.9 hours.
The report urges policymakers to consult teachers as they seek to streamline tests and to more accurately reflect the amount of instructional time teachers and students lose to tests.
D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson recently established a task force to study testing, consult with parents and teachers, and recommend changes to ensure that the school system is only administering essential tests.
The task force includes two teachers, two instructional coaches, six principals and three instructional superintendents. It also includes Henderson and 16 other representatives from DCPS, including the offices of Teaching and Learning, Human Capital, Specialized Instruction, Data and Strategy and Family and Public Engagement.
“What’s important now is how schools, parents and students can use the information we get from testing and how schools coordinate testing to ensure we minimize the impact on student learning time,” Henderson said in a statement Thursday. “Our taskforce is helping us look holistically at testing in DCPS to ensure our use of tests is smart and placed in the proper perspective.”
Amended ‘Promise’ program wins initial nod
The Northwest Current, pg. 3
By Elizabeth Wiener
February 5, 2014
A bill promising extra money to help low-income District students attend college nearly got caught Tuesday in a buzz saw of concern that it could jeopardize federal out-of-state tuition grants.
After an hour of debate, the council unanimously passed a heavily amended D.C. Promise bill on first reading, with further debate to come.
The “Promise” bill, authored by at-large D.C. Council member David Catania, has had wide support on the council. As originally introduced, it would have provided grants of up to $12,000 a year to attend any college, costing the city an estimated $50 million. The amended version cuts the top annual grant to $7,500 and the cost over four years to $40 million.
The measure spurred a strong protest from D.C. Del. Eleanor Homes Norton, however. The availability of so much local money, Norton said, might prompt a deficit-cutting Congress to cut back on D.C. Tuition Assistance Grants.
DC TAG, as it’s called, is another popular program that currently benefits about 5,000 college students from the District. It was started to give District residents access to public universities in other states at in-state tuition rates. Since its inception it has been cut to provide $10,000 a year for those attending public colleges outside the District, or up to $2,500 annually to help out with private colleges in the Washington area and historically black schools.
The TAG program, unique to the District, is intended to make up for the fact that the city has only one public institution of higher learning, the much-maligned University of the District of Columbia. The program’s current budget, entirely federally funded, is $30 million a year.
If the Promise bill passes, Norton wrote to the council Monday, “the council should be prepared to fund at least any current DC TAG students who may lose TAG funding, and to fund future students, if necessary.” She noted that the House last year tried unsuccessfully to cut TAG funds in half, “inviting the city to fund the rest.”
In response, Catania, who chairs the council’s Education Committee, offered several changes that he said should assuage Norton’s concerns. They:
■emphasize that Promise is “non-tuition assistance” to supplement TAG funds at public colleges, with money, say, for books, food and board;
■restrict the maximum grant to $7,500 a year, with a lifetime limit of four times that amount; and
■clarify that Promise can be used to help out with tuition only at private colleges not eligible to take TAG money.
But that didn’t satisfy the bill’s critics. “I think we’re playing with fire,” said at-large member Vincent Orange. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and we don’t even have two yet,” he said, noting there is still no funding in place for the Promise program.
“My concern is losing TAG. Are we willing to take that risk, when our delegate has said it’s too risky?” asked Ward 2 member Jack Evans. He moved to postpone debate until April, noting that the grants wouldn’t be available until 2015 anyway, but the motion lost on a 3-9 vote.
Catania stoutly defended his amended bill. “We’ve gone to great lengths to clarify that Promise won’t supplant federal dollars,” he said, adding that many disadvantaged students still can’t afford the full cost of college even with a federal TAG grant.
More dollars also gives students more choice if they want to “follow their dreams” and attend a private college elsewhere, Catania said. A group of high-schoolers in the audience waved signs that said “I want to attend ... ,” with schools like Harvard, Lehigh and Syracuse filling in the blank.
An argument from Ward 6 member Tommy Wells helped carry the day. “Seems like we’re being held hostage from supporting our young people because we receive federal money,” he said. “Is this a vote about whether we’re able to provide our own money to our students?”
Mayor Vincent Gray indicated that he supports the Promise program. Catania pledged to consult further with Norton prior to a final vote on the bill, probably in early March.
When is it OK to have an empty classroom?
The Washington Post
By Natalie Wexler
February 6, 2014
If you put more advanced classes into low-performing middle and high schools, will you get students who are capable of doing more advanced work? Or will administrators be tempted to fill those classes with students who aren’t ready for them?
One thing that D.C. Council member David Catania and DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson agreed on at a D.C. Council hearing last week was that DCPS needs to standardize the offerings for its middle-grade students to ensure that all kids have access to advanced classes. Catania noted, for example, that some middle schools don’t offer algebra, while Alice Deal in Ward 3 offers pre-Algebra, Algebra I and geometry.
At the same time, Catania acknowledged that many students at DCPS middle schools aren’t prepared to do middle-school-level work. “We may have some empty algebra classes at the beginning,” he said. Henderson agreed, noting that standardizing the curriculum will mean that “every space is not going to be full.”
Catania advanced the notion that “if you build it, they will come.” That is, if you introduce more advanced programming in middle schools, students who can handle the academic challenge will be drawn to them.