- District officials oddly unwelcoming to a KIPP charter high school [KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
- Washington Post editorial on KIPP points to injustice toward charter schools [KIPP DC PCS and Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
- DC charter school board seeks to reduce zero-tolerance policies that lead to expulsions
- Examiner Local Editorial: DCPS achievement gap widens
- CHAVOUS: Closing the achievement gap in education: Give families school choice
- Ability grouping is back despite scholarly qualms
District officials oddly unwelcoming to a KIPP charter high school [KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Editorial Board
March 16, 2013
“KIPP is a great school, they do good work, they’re a valuable part of the District. But that doesn’t mean that we’re simply going to hand over a parcel of land to them.” So said Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s spokesman, explaining why there has been no action on a proposal by the high-performing public charter network to build a high school in Southwest D.C.
But KIPP is not seeking a handout; it would lease the land from the city and use $40 million in private money to build a state-of-the-art school while providing the community with a medical clinic and recreation center.
More important: Why, in a city desperately short of good schools, are officials not doing everything they can to support a school that succeeds in educating underserved students?
KIPP DC officials, The Post’s Emma Brown reported, want to put a campus at the centrally located and Metro-convenient Randall Recreation Center north of Nationals Park in Ward 6 to replace its Southeast high school that is bursting at the seams. The officials, searching for new high school facilities for five years, feel a sense of urgency in wanting to expand educational opportunities for D.C. children, so they are pushing to break ground this summer for an opening in 2014. (Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post, is on the board of trustees of KIPP DC.)
Mr. Gray unfortunately doesn’t seem to share that sense of urgency on behalf of D.C. students. He’s made no move to put the land up for public bid in a process that would allow KIPP to compete for it. The land is zoned for educational, recreational and health-care purposes, so it’s hard to follow the logic of some opponents who say that a KIPP campus would be incompatible with a development planned for an adjacent parcel. Even more illogical is how the District blithely justifies spending tens of millions of dollars to rebuild or restoreunderenrolled high schools (Cardozo, $119 million; Ballou, $112 million; Roosevelt, $127 million) while doing little to help a school where students excel, where someone else is willing to pay and where there is high demand from parents.
The District government’s record in providing facilities for its publicly funded charter students, now 43 percent of the public school population, is abysmal. Of the 15 schools to be closed by the D.C. public school system, none will be made available for lease or purchase by charters. KIPP would have liked to take over the soon to be vacated Spingarn High School, but when Chancellor Kaya Henderson couldn’t be persuaded, KIPP — rejecting unworkable locations the city suggested — turned to the Randall site. It has support from some neighbors, who see benefit in private investment, and from five D.C. Council members, including David Catania (I-At Large), who heads the education committee. KIPP officials told us Mr. Gray has always been supportive of their efforts and they are hopeful he will give them the chance to make their case.
“Folks are getting ahead of themselves,” said Mr. Gray’s spokesman in reporting no plans to advertise the land. If so, it’s only because the mayor hasn’t gotten out in front. It’s not too late for him to lead the way on a project that promises so much to a community and to students needing a better education.
Washington Post editorial on KIPP points to injustice toward charter schools [KIPP DC PCS and Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
March 18, 2013
Over the weekend the editors of the Washington Post expressed their disgust over the lack of support Mayor Gray is providing regarding a proposal by KIPP PCS to open a new high school in Southwest D.C. The piece points out that KIPP is not asking for public money for this project as the charter plans to raise an estimated $40 million from private sources. What makes this non-action especially egregious, according to the Post editors, is what the city is currently spending on DCPS high schools.
"Even more illogical is how the District blithely justifies spending tens of millions of dollars to rebuild or restore underenrolled high schools (Cardozo, $119 million; Ballou, $112 million; Roosevelt, $127 million) while doing little to help a school where students excel, where someone else is willing to pay and where there is high demand from parents.
Washington Latin PCS, whose board I chair, is currently renovating the old Rudolph Elementary in Ward 4. At full capacity we will house about 650 students at this PMF Tier 1 middle and high school. However, we have received over 900 applications for next year for slightly less than 100 seats. Therefore, we could have probably doubled the existing 75,000 square feet and had little difficulty filling the space. But under current charter school economics this is impossible. We have borrowed $16 million to repair the thoroughly dilapidated building we were awarded, and will spend the absolute maximum we could have been loaned in the commercial market based upon our enrollment and a $3,000 per child facility allotment.
This town will never reach the dream the providing all D.C. students with a quality education unless something drastically changes.
The Washington Post
By Associated Press
March 15, 2013
WASHINGTON — The D.C. Public Charter School Board is urging charter schools to eliminate their “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies to help reduce the number of students being expelled.
Scott Pearson, the board’s executive director, tells The Washington Examiner (http://bit.ly/ZU7Ewe ) that overall charter schools expel and suspend too many students.
Pearson says some severe offenses like bringing a weapon to school or threatening to kill someone warrant automatic suspensions or expulsions. But he says a zero-tolerance policy for students who get into fights or bring drugs to school limits the disciplinary options for educators.
An analysis by The Washington Post in January found charter schools are expelling students at a far higher rate than traditional public schools.
The charter board is discussing policies with new schools and those seeking renewals for their charters.
The Washington Examiner
By Examiner Editorial
March 14, 2013
If it took Hurricane Katrina to improve New Orleans' failing public school system, one shudders to think what it will take to improve Washington's. A recent study by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute underscores this grim reality.
Between 2008 and 2012, while the District was spending record amounts of money on its traditional public school system under former Chancellor Michelle Rhee's widely heralded "reforms," a third of the city's schools "saw a notable decline in proficiency" in reading and math as measured by the DC Comprehensive Assessment System test. The declines were concentrated east of the Anacostia River, which were already far below basic proficiency levels.
"Schools in Wards 4, 5, 7 and 8 face declining proficiency levels," the FPI report noted, while "typical school proficiency level grew the most in Wards 1 and 3." So the achievement gap between affluent and high-poverty neighborhoods has actually widened.
In contrast, charter schools as a whole posted solid gains in reading and math at almost every grade level, with the exception of high school reading, which stayed about the same. But DC Public Schools saw losses in both reading and math across all age levels, with the only bright spot being a slight increase in middle school math scores. And despite $10,000 teacher bonuses and other inducements, a worrisome drop in reading proficiency at the elementary level is a harbinger of future failure.
When CBS reporter Scott Pelley asked New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu about the condition of the Big Easy's school system the day after Katrina hit, Landrieu replied that not only was every school under water, but "in terms of governance, it just disappeared." The state-run Recovery School District made a conscious decision to replace the old public school system -- which like D.C. had a graduation rate below 50 percent -- with mostly charter schools.
"Chartering is the replacement system for the failed urban system," Andy Smarick, author of "The Urban School System of the Future," pointed out during a panel discussion in the District in January. The chartering process is dynamic, he says, and creates "a continuous improvement cycle" that replicates high-performing schools and closes failing ones.
So seven years after Katrina, New Orleans "has nearly caught up with the state average in student proficiency," and its high school graduation rate last year exceeded both the state and national average. Meanwhile, DCPS students continue to lose ground.
The Washington Times
By Kevin P. Chavous
March 16, 2013
Recently, the Equity and Excellence Commission — a commission of the Department of Education — released recommendations on how to close the persistent achievement gap that exists among 22 percent of children attending substandard schools and living in poverty. Although it’s a product of 27 first-rate minds, the report is remarkable for what it doesn’t address.
Two things jump out: The report focuses on laying out a long-term roadmap for closing the inequity gap, and there is seemingly no effort made to identify immediate steps that can be taken to rescue children currently trapped in underperforming or failing schools. Parental choice is mentioned briefly, but only in the context of recognizing the existence of inter-district choice and charter schools. The proven and successful concept of publicly funded private schoolchoice, with 32 programs in 16 states and the District of Columbia, is completely ignored.
No report on education and equity should exclude parental choice because, unlike most of the well-intentioned education reforms proposed and tried over the past 30 years, parental choice creates parity in education virtually instantaneously. It is the great equalizer.
Research shows that students trapped in poor-performing public schools, or who are poor performers themselves, show improvement when they are given the opportunity to participate in publicly funded private school choice programs. Moreover, their parents, based on surveys in multiple states, are overwhelmingly satisfied with their choice.
Dr. Patrick Wolf at the University of Arkansas, the nation’s leading expert in the study of these programs, analyzed the results of 10 “gold standard” studies examining the impact of private school choice programs on students. Nine out of 10 concluded that some or all participating students saw improvements in academic achievement by using a voucher to attend a private school.
The results are so encouraging that during the 2011-2012 state legislative sessions, more than 40 states introduced legislation to enact publicly funded private school choice programs, and 35 legislative chambers in 19 states passed a bill.
Importantly, educational choice programs are moving forward with bipartisan support. Many of the programs enacted or strengthened over the past five years have had strong Democratic support. Why? Because the programs work and they help children most in need.
Despite the evidence that educational choice is empowering families to overcome systemic inequity that exists in public education, opponents have long argued that it should be rejected as a viable reform because it allegedly drains funds from public schools. Politicians should be focused on improving public education for the majority, the argument goes, rather than focusing on the few who need help now.
Besides the obvious moral imperative that we should be committed to helping every child access a quality education, studies have also consistently demonstrated that educational choice has had positive effects on achievement in traditional public schools. It applies needed pressure on bureaucracies that are unwilling to change, and in cases where the system is simply unable to change, it provides an escape hatch for children from low-income families who would otherwise remain trapped.
The best way to educate a child trapped in a bad school is to allow them to go to a school that will work for them – right now.
To a hammer, everything may look like a nail. But the challenge in bringing equity to education isn’t about widgets, it’s about children – children who will enter adulthood facing virtually insurmountable odds that come with a lack of education.
We should have the determination to continue pressing for long-term reform initiatives that help create educational equity. Yet we must also recognize the inherent unfairness that comes with asking another generation of children to sacrifice their future in order to protect the system.
Kevin P. Chavous, executive counsel for the American Federation for Children, is a former D.C. Councilman and chairman of the Council’s Education Committee.
The Washington Post
By Jay Matthews
March 17, 2013
My elementary School in San Mateo, Calif., had reading ability groups in every classroom. I arrived in the middle of third grade in 1952, and I was put in the lowest group, the canaries. By June, I had clawed my way up to the top group, the bluebirds.
This pedagogical device made sense to competitive types like me. My mother, a teacher, thought it was a troublesome crutch, but it was too tightly woven into American culture to change.
Except that it did, as Brookings Institution education expert Tom Loveless reveals in a new report. The canaries, redbirds and other ability-group fauna took a huge hit from scholars studying inequity in American schools in the 1970s and 1980s. Teachers moved away from ability grouping.
Now, without much notice, they have moved back. Depending on your point of view, the No Child Left Behind law deserves credit or blame for the return of my bluebirds and lesser fowl.
Loveless, senior fellow at Brookings’s Brown Center on Education Policy, examines this turnabout in his new report, “How Well Are American Students Learning?” He is a former teacher with an eye for newsworthy developments in education reform.
One of the earliest and sharpest attacks on ability grouping was Ray C. Rist’s 1970 paper, “Student Social Class and Teacher Expectations: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in Ghetto Education.” Loveless says Rist “followed a group of kindergarten students through the first few years of school and noted how the composition of the reading groups rarely changed, consistently reflecting students’ socioeconomic status.” Rist said teachers developed higher expectations for the more affluent kids in the top groups.
Other scholars assaulted tracking, the practice of putting classes at different levels in the same grade, rather than the ability-grouping approach of different levels in the same class. Jeannie Oakes’s 1985 book “Keeping Track” argues that tracking was an attack on social justice, making inequality worse.
Loveless’s research shows that the anti-tracking movement had some effect, although middle schools and high schools still have one set of courses for college-oriented students and a less demanding set in the same subjects for those not so academically inclined.
The biggest triumph of the anti-trackers, particularly evident in this area, has been the opening of college-level classes like Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and the Advanced International Certificate of Education to all students who want to take them.
Ability grouping declined more sharply than tracking did in the face of the scholarly assault. A 1986 Johns Hopkins survey found bluebird/redbird/canary/etc. groupings in at least 80 percent of elementary schools. By the mid-1990s, such grouping had dropped to as low as 27 percent, according to another study.
Then it rebounded. A 2006 survey found that ability grouping was back to 63 percent of teachers. The jump was even more pronounced in fourth-grade reports from the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress, from 28 percent of students in ability groups in 1998 to 71 percent in 2009. The jump in math ability groups was from 40 percent of students in 1996 to 61 percent in 2011.
Washington area school officials tell me tracking and ability grouping is permitted as long as students are not stuck at one level and are helped to improve.
Studies show teachers prefer ability grouping to teaching all students, fast and slow, at the same time. Ability grouping also helps them focus on those children closest to reaching the proficiency targets under No Child Left Behind. This retread from my youth is back, and likely to stay, no matter what researchers and my mom think of it.
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