- Charter Board Relents on IDEA Closure, Pushes to Shutter Community Academy’s Rand Campus [IDEA, Thurgood Marshall, and Community Academy PCS are mentioned]
- D.C. PCSB Closes One Campus, Allows Another to Continue [Community Academy and IDEA PCS are mentioned]
- Charters Should Not Give Admission Preference to Neighborhood Residents
- Can D.C. Handle Gifted Education? [BASIS PCS is mentioned]
- 26 States, DC Apply for Waiver From Bush-Era No Child Left Behind Law
Charter Board Relents on IDEA Closure, Pushes to Shutter Community Academy’s Rand Campus [IDEA, Thurgood Marshall, and Community Academy PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
February 29, 2012
For a D.C. Public Charter School Board (PCSB) that says it is committed to closing underperforming schools, Integrated Design Electronics Academy PCS (IDEA) looked like a prime candidate.
Reading proficiency at the Ward 7 middle and high school hasn’t broken 45 percent over the last decade and has declined over the last four years to just below 40 percent. Less than 60 percent of students re-enroll and just 48 percent of ninth-graders have credits that put them on track to graduate, according to charter board’s new performance data management system.The board voted tentatively in December to revoke IDEA’s charter.
But board members said IDEA officials put together a turnaround plan that changed their minds, one that called for the wholesale replacement of school leadership and a review of the teaching staff. It also probably didn’t hurt that IDEA retained as a consultant Thurgood Marshall Academy co-founder and former CEO Joshua Kern--who was also the charter board’s first choice last year to replace retiring executive director Josephine Baker. Kern pledged the assistance of Thurgood Marshall staff — who run one of the city’s top open enrollment high schools -- in sharing best practices with IDEA.
“IDEA gave us and extremely comprehensive turnaround plan that was worth taking a chance on,” said PCSB executive director Scott Pearson. “I think if the proposal had not been as substantial and comprehensive the board wouldn’t have had any trouble voting to close.”
The other proposed closure the board took up Monday evening was was a little stickier. In December it voted tentatively to revoke the charter of Community Academy, which serves more than 1,800 students in grades PS-8 on six campuses — five brick-and-mortar and one online. The Butler campus on Thomas Circle NW in Ward 2 received a top ranking in the board’s new performance system. But four of the other five (located in Wards 4 and 5) are in some form of corrective action or restructuring under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The board’s principal concern is the Rand campus, a PS-5 school in Ward 5, where only 25 percent of third graders were proficient or advanced in reading on the 2011 DC CAS. The school scored just 19.5 percent on the charter board’s performance system. Anything under 20 percent can trigger closure.
But under the law, a vote to revoke the charter would close all six campuses, including Butler. After several weeks of difficult behind the scenes discussion, the charter board apparently extracted an agreement from Community Academy to close Rand on its own. The charter board voted Monday evening to accept Community Academy’s decision to close Rand, which serves 339 students.
“I think after they thought through their options the [Community Academy] board thought this was in their best interest,” said charter board member Darren Woodruff.
Twelve charter schools have closed in the last three years. Seven voluntarily relinquished their charters. Five were closed by the board for academic or governance reasons.
D.C. PCSB Closes One Campus, Allows Another to Continue [Community Academy and IDEA PCS are mentioned]
Examiner
By Mark Lerner
March 1, 2012
The charter board got what they wanted from Community Academy, forcing the charter to close its underperforming Rand Campus. Apparently when Community Academy's board did not move fast enough to shutter Rand the PCSB threatened to shut down the entire network of schools. Of course, they can do this since the revocation process covers the school's charter and not the individual locations. Community Academy then decided to follow the PCSB's suggestion.
The board did not exactly get its way when it came to IDEA. The PCSB accepted a turnaround plan instead of going ahead with revocation. Did the fact that IDEA threatened to sue the PCSB over closing the school have something to do with its decision? Probably not. But you do have to wonder whey Community Academy was not permitted to try its own restructuring plan.
In other PCSB news long-time Director of School Performance Management Jacqueline Scott-English has announced she is leaving and her last day at the job is this coming Friday. Ms. Scott-English joins others who have recently departed the PCSB such as Josephine Baker, Tamara Lumpkin, and Nona Richardson.
Examiner
By Mark Lerner
February 29, 2012
The other day, in an article about whether DCPS should be allowed to authorize charter schools, Councilman Wells suggested that these schools could be established to provide admission preference to those living near the facility.
This would be a terrible idea.
One of the main foundations behind the creation of the charter school movement is that these facilities are not “one size fits all” institutions like the traditional schools. Almost all charter schools have a unique curricular focus, but more than this they have a pedagogical framework that often appeals to children who don’t do well in other settings.
A charter school’s ability to serve those in need is what creates competition between sites. Since money follows the child, it is competition for students, and the potential loss of money from one school to another, that helps raise the quality of all facilities.
Giving charter admission preference to neighborhood children exerts pressure for these schools to become just like DCPS, namely facilities that are attractive to the general population. This would have the effect of removing incentives to improve that are the basis for school choice.
The CATO Institutes Ed Crane likes to say that you can have a civic society or a political one. The two are exclusive. In reference to charter schools you can create quality though public school choice or you can revert to the traditional system of DCPS. Unfortunately they do not mix.
Can D.C. Handle Gifted Education? [BASIS PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
March 1, 2012
Gifted education rarely draws headlines. Gifted classes are most common in affluent suburbs with many academically oriented families. The kids do well. The parents are happy. No news there.
Gifted education receives little notice in low-income urban school districts because it often doesn’t exist there. Big-city schools have more pressing issues than serving children with unusual intellectual talent. Such districts might designate some students as gifted but rarely do much with them.
That is going to change in D.C. public schools when the new academic year begins. D.C. officials are installing an unusual method of gifted education for all in two very different neighborhood middle schools, Kelly Miller and Hardy. At the same time, a new charter school called BASIS D.C. is opening, with the most academically challenging program ever seen in this region.
BASIS D.C. is an offshoot of a Tucson charter school that last year gave 10 Advanced Placement exams for every graduating senior. This region’s most demanding magnet school, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, gave seven AP exams per senior.
There is skepticism that any of the gifted initiatives will work in the District. Four consultants and staff members of the D.C. Public Charter School Board recommended not allowing BASIS to open. “The founding group could not satisfactorily explain how the school would meet the needs of low-performing, special education and English learner students effectively,” one consultant said.
BASIS, a middle and high school that will start with grades five to eight, has to take all students who apply or who win a random lottery if the school is oversubscribed, under D.C. law.
The gifted education program being introduced in the two D.C. middle schools is the Schoolwide Enrichment Model. It will attempt something gifted programs almost never do: give enriched lessons to all children no matter their level of achievement.
“The SEM emphasizes engagement and the use of enjoyable and challenging learning experiences constructed around students’ interests, learning styles and product styles,” said Sally M. Reis, an educational psychologist at the University of Connecticut who, with husband Joseph S. Renzulli, pioneered the method.
In research Reis did with several other scholars, students in an urban elementary school were randomly assigned to either an extra hour a day of standard remedial reading instruction and test preparation or an extra hour of SEM-guided reading of books in their areas of interest, independent reading of challenging self-selected books and other choices typical of gifted programs. Reis reported on the Web site of her university’s Neag Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development that the SEM group “scored statistically significantly higher than those in the control group in both oral reading fluency and attitudes toward reading.”
BASIS D.C. will be near the National Portrait Gallery in a lively commercial section. Charters in such areas sometimes attract more high-achieving students than regular D.C. schools, but it is not clear how many students below grade level it will have.
By contrast, teachers preparing for the Schoolwide Enrichment Model program at Kelly Miller in Northeast Washington and Hardy in Northwest Washington know what they will be getting. As my colleague Bill Turque reported, 66.2 percent of students at Hardy read at a proficient or advanced level, while only 23.4 percent of Kelly Miller students read at that level.
The three schools comprise the most daring experiments in gifted education for non-gifted students the city has ever seen. The outcome is likely to affect not only the future of enriched lessons in the District but also whether gifted education for all will spread in the suburbs.
The Washington Post
By Associated Press
February 29, 2012
The Education Department says more than half of all states have applied by this week’s new deadline to be freed from the strenuous requirements of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law.
The Obama administration is allowing states that agree to improve how they prepare and evaluate students to get a waiver around the law.
Earlier this month, 11 states that applied for a waiver under an earlier deadline were given waivers.
Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia submitted an application for the latest round.
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