NEWS
- District embarks on plan to bring more quality teachers to poor schools
- Fight for Children announces over $1 million in grants to help low income youth [Friendship PCS mentioned]
- What’s so scary about a charter school in Fairfax County?
- Top senators agree to start over on bipartisan federal education law
District embarks on plan to bring more quality teachers to poor schools
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
February 6, 2015
District officials are developing a plan to bring more effective teachers to schools in poor neighborhoods, part of their response to a federal mandate to address the historically short supply of talent in schools where children have the greatest needs.
At a public meeting with educators Thursday night, officials with the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which is overseeing the development of the plan, said that ensuring equity is key to the success of the city’s public schools.
“We think equitable access is not just a civil rights issue, it’s a school improvement issue,” said Etai Mizrav, OSSE’s education policy and compliance specialist.
Mizrav said the plan will give schools a chance to share what’s working and to try to alleviate common obstacles. The plan also will look at differences between traditional and charter schools overall, between schools, and if possible, within schools.
Charter schools, operated independently, have different methods of evaluating and rewarding successful teachers.
D.C. Public Schools has made improving teacher quality the cornerstone of reform efforts underway since 2007, when the mayor took control of the schools and appointed Michelle Rhee chancellor. Rhee implemented a controversial teacher evaluation program — IMPACT — that led to the termination of more than 400 teachers deemed “least effective” and rewarded many more who are considered “highly effective.”
Research shows that the teachers deemed most effective are far more likely to work in the wealthiest parts of the city, according to an analysis of four years of IMPACT data that was released in 2014.
The highest average IMPACT score was in Ward 3 — 332.7 on a 400-point scale. The lowest scores were in Wards 7 and 8 — 292.3 and 288.5, respectively, according to an analysis by EdCORE at George Washington University under contract with the National Academy of Sciences.
The report, which examined 13,488 teacher IMPACT scores across all eight wards from 2009-2010 to 2012-2013, also looked at average IMPACT scores within each ward and found consistently higher teacher scores in more affluent schools.
In the 2011-2012 school year, 41 percent of Ward 3 teachers were rated highly effective, while just 9 percent were highly effective in Ward 8, according to an analysis by Mary Levy, a school finance expert who was hired as a consultant by Marion Barry while he was a Ward 8 D.C. Council member.
The imbalance has caused many people to question whether the District’s formula for evaluating teachers — which includes classroom observations and measures of student achievement growth — is fair to the teachers working in schools with high numbers of struggling students.
D.C. Public Schools has taken many steps to encourage qualified teachers to work in high-poverty schools, and to stay there. Most notably, the school system has offered bonuses of up to $20,000 for highly effective teachers in high-poverty schools, compared with $2,000 in low-poverty schools.
Compensation differences are also built into the pay scale, so that a highly effective teacher with a master’s degree working for seven years (or more) in a high-poverty school can earn $100,000 compared with $70,000 in a low-poverty school.
The school system also is targeting more support for teachers in struggling schools, including professional development and opportunities for teachers to play greater leadership roles, said Jason Kamras, chief of human capital for DCPS.
“We want to make sure we have a great teacher in front of every child,” Kamras said. “We are going to continue to think very hard and be as innovative as possible to make sure we can make that happen.”
The federal government is hoping that more transparency about the challenges districts face will spur change.
The District, along with every other state, has to submit an “educator equity plan” by June that will identify gaps in teacher effectiveness between schools and offer an analysis of the root causes of disparities and strategies for addressing them.
Mizrav said the plan will give schools a chance to share what’s working.
The plans are a response to a lesser-known requirement of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which requires states to ensure that all teachers in core academic subjects are “highly qualified.”
The federal definition of “highly qualified” requires teachers to have college degrees, a full state license and some mastery of content, provable by coursework or a standardized test. That definition has been criticized as insufficient, because such qualifications have not been closely connected to student success.
The District also plans to look at other measures, including teacher experience, which has been linked more closely to effectiveness, with teachers in their first or second years performing worse than veteran teachers.
David Tansey, a math teacher at Dunbar High, said he has been the second-most senior math teacher on staff since his third year at the school.
He cited the unpredictably that comes with teaching in a classroom where enrollment is constantly changing and large numbers of students are behind academically.
Teachers feel that getting a good classroom evaluation is often a matter of luck, he said.
“It’s a very high-stress environment,” Tansey said.
Fight for Children announces over $1 million in grants to help low income youth [Friendship PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
February 9, 2015
The other day I received one of my favorite press releases among those that arrive in my email inbox throughout the year. Fight for Children had just released the list of non-profit organizations to which it provides grants in order to support its goal of improving the lives of low income children in the Washington metropolitan area and Baltimore. The over $1 million in awards is raised through its annual Fight Night Fundraiser.
One of the exciting bits of news contained in the press release regards the partnership that Fight for Children has formed with Georgetown University’s Center for Child and Human Development. The organization provided the Center with a $100,000 grant to bring to the nation’s capital a proven method for supporting the social emotional needs of public school students in early childhood. The two groups are piloting the program at the 700 student pre-kindergarten through 8th grade Friendship Public Charter School Chamberlain Campus located in Southeast D.C. Chamberlain Friendship PCS was a Fight for Children 2014 Rising Star Quality Schools Initiative Award winner.
Nine other awardees were also announced. Fight for Children’s website has compelling descriptions of each grant that is definitely worth time reading. Below is a quick summary:
• $75,000, CentroNia, professional development system for teachers of 3 and 4 year olds;
• $140,000, Children’s National Health System, IMPACT DC Asthma Clinic and school staff education on treating asthma in children age 2 through 8;
• $87,000, DC Special Education Coop, credited teacher courses for student inclusion strategies;
• $108,000, DC Public Education Fund, expand Literacy Lab Metro DC Reading Corps in 2 public schools;
• $158,000, Playworks, expand to 6 elementary school its program of play and recess to improve academic outcomes;
• $200,000, Reading Partners, recruits, trains, and supports reading tutors in 15 schools, from existing 11;
• $100,000, Science in Pre-K, trains pre-Kindergarten charter school teachers on teaching through physical sciences based at Air and Space Museum;
• $75,000, Turning the Page, school-based family engagement program for improved literacy expanded to 3 additional schools; and
• $97,000, The Wendt Center for Loss and Healing; development of play therapy rooms at two Wendt facilities and teacher training for early childhood teachers to address children suffering from trauma.
I had the distinct pleasure of speaking to Fight for Children’s Chairman and Vice Chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment’s Raul Fernandez about these grants. I asked him what his organization’s goal was in making these awards. He answered without hesitation. “The goal is the same one that founder Joseph E. Robert, Jr. had when he created this organization 25 years ago,” the Fight for Children Chairman answered. “We strive to improve the lives of kids in the D.C. area that are most in need. Whether the grant is to Children’s National Health System in support of its asthma clinic or a literacy program targeted for improving early childhood education, and whether it is for $3,000 or $300,000, we are attempting to make tremendous strides in the health and education of those young people at the low end of the economic spectrum.”
I then inquired how Fight for Children knows whether the grants are supporting the organization’s mission. Mr. Fernandez responded, “The staff carefully vets each proposal. They spend a considerable amount of time during the pre-grant process. Once the award has been made our team has established metrics for evaluating progress. We also put aside time in our board meetings to receive updates form the leaders of the non-profits that have received funding. Many of these groups, like Children’s, we have worked closely with in the past. I’m particularly impressed with the diversity of the awards. They represent the true legacy of Joe of giving back to the Washington D.C. community.”
I ended our conversation by asking Mr. Fernandez what providing these awards meant to him personally. Again, he was eager to reply. “I have been supporting the work that Fight for Children is doing in education, the work that Joe led for a decade, before it was cool or the in thing to do. It pre-dated all the talk about reform. Joe understood that the wealth gap in this country was due to an education gap. We want to make sure low income kids have the same opportunities as everyone else. They will then become the next set of great workers and leaders, many of whom will become great entrepreneurs. Then they will pick up the mantle and become great philanthropists, helping the generation behind them, making Joe’s dream, all of our dreams, a reality.”
What’s so scary about a charter school in Fairfax County?
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
February 8, 2015
Last year, I wrote about the sad decline of J.E.B. Stuart High School in Fairfax County from a decade ago, when President George W. Bush hailed its success at raising achievement for low-income students and its leader, Mel Riddile, was named National High School Principal of the Year.
The reasons for its drop in passing rates of the state math exam and college-level exam participation are murky. Successful, if unconventional, ways of teaching algebra were canceled by the school district. Principals who succeeded Riddile got less support. Last year, just 25 percent of Stuart staff said school leaders were effective, more than 30 percentage points lower than any other high school in the district. Its buildings are stuffed with 1,950 students, compared with just 1,550 four years ago.
This would be a good time to help one of the school’s — and the school system’s — best teachers realize his dream of creating the county’s first charter school. Eric Welch has earned raves from colleagues and national experts as coordinator of Stuart’s Advancement Via International Determination (AVID) program, which prepares students for college. He submitted his plan for the seventh-through-12th grade Fairfax Leadership Academy (FLA) charter more than three years ago. The school board indicated it liked the concept and would work with him to get it done.
Yet the charter school — with features that have succeeded elsewhere, such as service projects, longer school days and required summer school — still has not been approved.
Fairfax school leaders might use sweet words to keep Welch on a string, but I do not think they want a charter school. They are doing everything they can, short of honestly expressing their disdain for the idea, not to have a force for change within district borders. There is only one charter in Northern Virginia, a small elementary school in Loudoun County.
Even high-achieving systems such as Fairfax need to innovate. Bill Horkan, a veteran Stuart math teacher, said letting 300 students move to the charter would relieve pressure on Stuart and help inspire a resurgence of creativity. Welch “has basically been stonewalled,” Horkan said. “I think the county doesn’t want to have a charter school because they think they are too good to have one.”
Welch was more diplomatic. “Because the school board expressed an interest in the FLA concept, we have been working with and will continue to work with” the school district to see whether it “can be adopted by the district as a way to address the educational needs of at-risk students,” he said. He noted a recommendation by a Virginia Chamber of Commerce subcommittee that the state be allowed to authorize charter schools if local school boards refuse to.
The idea sends shivers down the spines of many Northern Virginia school leaders and board members. They fear a threat to their reputations if great teachers such as Welch are allowed to show them up. The explanation I got from Fairfax County Schools Superintendent Karen Garza is typical. She said the district couldn’t afford to start a charter when it is “siphoning off limited funds for its existing schools with nearly $500 million in budget reductions made since 2008.”
Yet, as Fairfax County School Board member Sandy Evans (Masons) told me, the district is spending a great deal of extra money to help Stuart improve. She said “much energy and focus” are going into the school. I asked whether she knew how much more the district would have to spend to support 300 students at a charter, rather than at Stuart. She said she would find out.
Why not take some of the funds being allocated to rescue Stuart and give Welch an opportunity to solve the problem in a different way? Evans, whose territory includes Stuart, said she doesn’t like charters in general but thinks the Fairfax Leadership Academy idea has merit.
Creative teachers can work wonders without a district bureaucracy sitting on their shoulders. Give Welch and his team a chance.
Top senators agree to start over on bipartisan federal education law
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
February 6, 2015
As the Senate education panel attempts to rewrite the nation’s main federal education law, the panel’s top Democrat has convinced the Republican chairman to start over and craft what both sides say will be a bipartisan bill.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the panel’s chairman, had released a GOP draft bill and held two hearings and a roundtable discussion on various aspects of the complex legislation, which governs the way the federal government interacts with the nation’s 100,000 K-12 public schools.
The current version of the law, known as No Child Left Behind, was due for reauthorization in 2007, but efforts to rewrite the law during the past several sessions of Congress have collapsed. Nearly everyone involved in education — teachers, principals, and policy makers on the state and federal levels — agree that the current law is outdated and broken. But there are deep disputes about the appropriate federal role in education.
In this Congress, both Alexander and the ranking Democrat on the panel, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, say they are determined to find common ground and draft a new law that will get bipartisan support.
Senate staffers representing Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been holding near-daily negotiations about proposed legislation, outlining what each side wants to see in a final bill.
But in recent days, aides to Murray have suggested that Alexander was “jamming” his GOP bill through the committee on an aggressive timetable that would bring it to the Senate floor for a vote by early March.
That led to a lengthy conversation Thursday night between Alexander and Murray, aides on both sides said. The talk ended in agreement that the pair would ditch Alexander’s GOP proposal and start over to create a bipartisan bill that they would bring to the rest of the Senate committee. The new approach is likely to add to the timetable for passing a bill out of committee and bringing it to the Senate floor.
“We’ve agreed to move forward to develop a bipartisan chairman’s mark to fix No Child Left Behind,” Alexander and Murray said in a joint statement. “Our staffs will begin working today with each other and with the staffs of other senators on the committee. We know our constituents expect us to fix this broken law and improve education for students, families, and communities across the country — and we expect to succeed.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol, Democrats in the House have been railing that the Republican majority has filed a partisan bill to address No Child Left Behind, one which they say they cannot support. The bill is a nearly identical to a bill passed by the GOP-controlled House in 2013, a bill President Obama had threatened to veto.
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