- Brown: Keep Charter Facilities Allowance at $3000 Per Student
- D.C. Charter Schools Tout Success, Ask for More Money
- D.C. Test Erasures Scandal Needs Full Probe
- White House to Issue Waiver List on No Child Left Behind
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
February 8, 2012
D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown has called on Mayor Vincent C. Gray to maintain a “floor”of $3,000 per student for charter school facilities. Public charter schools, which must secure their own buildings, use the allotment to cover rent, mortgage, debt service and renovations. In fiscal year 2010, then mayor Adrian M. Fenty cut the allowance from $3,109 to $2,800. It’s been supplemented with federal funds to keep it at $3,000.
The broader issue of charter school funding has been the focus of a mayoral commission. It recommended this week that the allowance remain at $3,000, but added that further study is warranted. Brown said he realized that the discussion was ongoing, but that in the near-term charters need more stability and certainty in their finances. He urged that the full $3,000 be built back into the local budget.
“This is the right thing to do for our students,” Brown said.
The Washington Examiner
By Liz Farmer
February 8, 2012
Charter school representatives seized the opportunity Wednesday to tout their performance against D.C. Public Schools, just weeks after a city report was released that favored the public-private institutions.
At a D.C. Council hearing on the performance of all public schools, charter school representatives showed up in droves to remind council members about their higher average test scores and graduation rates and to beg for more funding.
Ramona Edelin, executive director of the D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools, said charters don't get funding for the arts or sports programs like DCPS does even though roughly 40 percent of public school students attend charters. By her analysis, nonuniform funding for DCPS -- money that charters do not get -- ranges from $72 million to $127 million annually.
"We urge the council and the city ... to walk the talk with respect to and resources for its charter schools," Edelin said. "They're doing everything you want them to."
Last month D.C.'s deputy mayor for education released a reportrecommending that three dozen D.C. Public Schools campuses be closed or turned around, likely reinvented as charter schools. While a boost for the charter community, some on Wednesday warned that special education children could be left behind in such a transition.
Shawn Ullman, an attorney for the advocacy group University Legal Services, reminded the council that a complaint had been filed with the U.S. Department of Justice claiming discrimination in charter schools admission policies against special education children. As "decisions are being made about closing schools," she said, she hoped city leaders would pay attention to the needs of all children.
"There are lots of charter schools serving special education well ... it just needs to be even," Ullman said. "And if you are focusing on charter schools [as a solution], you need to make sure that includes students with disabilities."
But DCPS' handling of students with special needs still must be improved, said Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children's Law Center. She said one of her clients with a neurological disorder was placed in a wheelchair after an operation. DCPS suggested three schools that were handicap accessible -- turns out only one of them actually was, she said.
"There's a sort of disconnect between what people wish were true and the reality of what's true on the ground," she said.
The Washington Post
By Robert McCartney
February 8, 2012
What exactly did Wayne Ryan do that cost him his job? Every District politician, educator and civic activist ought to be demanding an answer to that question.
What? You don’t know who Wayne Ryan is? The public’s lack of awareness is part of the problem. And the District school system seems to want to keep it that way by apparently allowing a quiet coverup of past fake results on its standardized exams.
Ryan was once the star principal at Noyes Education Campus (K-8) in Northeast. His was one of the faces used to promote former chancellor Michelle Rhee’s education reforms. Recruiting literature featured Ryan’s photo and purported success raising students’ test scores.
Then that pesky controversy emerged over suspiciously high numbers of erasures on some of those exams. Correct answers had mysteriously replaced wrong ones on a large number of test sheets, including at Noyes when Ryan was in charge.
In June came news that Ryan, who had been promoted to a supervisory position, was no longer working for the school system. No explanation has been provided, then or now, and some parents are frustrated about it.
“We heard about it one moment, and then it got brushed underneath. My thing was, is anybody going to investigate this? If not, how do you know it’s not going to happen again?” said Ashaunti Wilson, 26, as she accompanied a friend dropping a child at Noyes on Wednesday.
Wilson withdrew her 8-year-old daughter from the school and moved her to a charter school because of the scandal. “It was just pathetic,” she said. “I like knowing where my child is [academically]. If you’re making her test scores higher, it’s impossible.”
Ernest Butler, 45, who was dropping off his nephew and niece at Noyes, is happy with the school, but he faulted its handling of the testing scandal. “They need to let people know what’s going on, what was the outcome of it. Test scores and grades are very important,” Butler said.
It seems quite likely, to say the least, that Ryan was fired or pressured to quit over falsified test results. A third-grade teacher and a special-ed instructor also lost their jobs.
No details have been provided, and almost nothing has emerged about classes in about 100 other schools with suspect numbers of erasures from 2008 to 2010. Considering that such erasures were first identified as a problem more than three years ago, it’s appalling that the District hasn’t gotten to the bottom of this.
Initial investigations by an outside contractor called Caveon are widely viewed as incomplete. Caveon has admitted it didn’t use all the tools at its disposal. Some District officials concede the city didn’t insist that the contractor do so — while promising that vetting of tests from 2011 and beyond will be more rigorous.
We’re still waiting for results of a second investigation of past irregularities, underway for nearly a year, by the District’s Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Department of Education. Neither would comment this week.
That lackadaisical approach compares poorly with an energetic probe of a testing scandal in Atlanta. In 2010, after months of foot-dragging by the school system (sound familiar?), then-Gov. Sonny Perdue tapped three veteran investigators to dig into the problem. Their blockbuster report concluded that more than 178 educators, including 38 principals, were involved in cheating at 44 schools.
D.C. officials insist that past problems here weren’t nearly as bad as in Atlanta. But without a full investigation, how can we be sure that current principals or other officials have been held accountable if they previously conspired to falsify test results or winked at those who did so?
It wasn’t reassuring that the school system seemed to be stonewalling again in December. After promising for months that it was about to release test erasure data for 2011, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education decided in December to withhold the names of 54 schools involved.
Tamara Reavis, the office’s director of assessments and accountability, said the office did not want to fan suspicions about any school until after a fuller inquiry by an outside contractor. “It’s the whole innocent until proven guilty idea,” Reavis said.
Cate Swinburn, who in January became the school system’s chief of data and accountability, said the focus should be on the future.
“One reason I don’t think we can do much more about 2008 and 2009 is it would be a witch hunt. If you interview a student, a student is not going to remember what happened,” she said. “I think we need to focus on 2011 and then making sure that 2012 is as strong as possible.”
It might be convenient just to pretend these problems never happened. But it’s hardly the lesson we want to teach our children about integrity. The city owes the public a full accounting of whether Wayne Ryan — and possibly other principals — cheated in the past.
Robert McCartney discusses local issues at 8:51 a.m. Friday on WAMU (88.5 FM). To read his previous columns, go to postlocal.com.
The Wall Street Journal
By Stephanie Banchero
February 9, 2012
The Obama administration will announce Thursday the list of 10 states it is releasing from key requirements of No Child Left Behind, according to a White House official familiar with the decision, in a major move away from the decade-old education law.
The states getting waivers are: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Eleven states applied for waivers from the law and 28 others and Washington, D.C., have told the U.S. Department of Education that they plan to apply in the next round.
New Mexico applied for the waiver but didn't get it.
The states on the waiver list will no longer have to meet some of the most onerous requirements of No Child Left Behind, such as ensuring 100% of students are proficient in math and reading by 2014, the official said. In these states, students must still be tested annually, as required by the law.
In exchange, the states must adopt specific reforms favored by the administration, including adopting college and career ready standards and evaluating teachers on student achievement and other factors, such as parent and student feedback, according to the White House official.
The states must also have plans to intervene in the lowest achieving schools and must implement policies to raise the achievement levels of low-income, minority and special education students.
The Obama administration decided to grant waivers after Congress has failed—since 2007—to reach agreement on an overhaul of the controversial law.
The No Child Left Behind law has been under attack by critics who charge that it labels too many schools as failures, prodded teachers to teach only math and reading at the expanse of other subjects, and led states to water down standardized exam.
Under the law, states had to set annual targets for the share of kids who must pass state exams, and lift that number until 100% are passing by 2014. Schools had to ensure individual groups of students—identified by race, income and special-education needs—met the mark. If one group fails on a test, a school is labeled low-performing and may face penalties such as closure.
By getting the waivers, the administration will allow the 10 states more leeway in deciding how to intervene in low-performing schools.
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