- Mayoral candidate Bowser should support giving closed DCPS sites to charters [FOCUS, Two Rivers PCS, and Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
- A school that wasn't small before may now be small
- Evaluators discuss reliability of D.C. test scores in light of security concerns
Mayoral candidate Bowser should support giving closed DCPS sites to charters [FOCUS, Two Rivers PCS, and Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By March Lerner
March 26, 2013
In today's Washington Post Mike Debonis has an in depth interview with Councilwoman Muriel Bowser who last weekend announced that she is running for D.C. Mayor. I, of course, was most interested in what she had to say about the subject of public education:
Mr. Debois: Is there any initiative that the chancellor or anyone has proposed where you don’t see the wherewithal or political will to get it done?
Ms. Bowser: I don’t think we have that big idea. What have we really seen in that last two years around schools? So we’re going to close some, we’re going to change the boundaries. Where are the big ideas?
Mr. Debois: Do you have a big idea?
Ms. Bowser: I think what we have to do first of all is set some goals around what should school reform look like. And that’s not just K-12, which has taken all of our attention, not just preschool, but it’s collecting UDC, it’s connecting the community college, It’s connecting the private universities and it’s connecting workforce development. Call those things what they are. It’s a system of education for the District of Columbia.
One big idea she should have mentioned is turning over the about to be shuttered 15 DCPS buildings to charters who desperately need them. Or what about the other 10 that are sitting around gathering dust? Her comments come on the heels of a crises over space that these alternative schools are facing. From an editorial last weekend by former Public Charter School Board ChairmanTom Nida:
"Last school year, D.C. charters received 15,000 more applications than available seats. By contrast, DCPS school buildings have space for 20,740 additional students, the city has found. Over the next four years, currently open D.C. charters will require 1.6 million additional square feet of space, and new charter schools will need 1.7 million extra square feet of space, to accommodate new students. Meanwhile, DCPS middle and high schools are one-third empty."
If Ms. Bowser really cares about school reform she do whatever it takes to get kids into quality seats. Here is just one example of how she could help. At the FOCUS Gala last week I asked Two River's executive director Jessica Wodatch about her recently announced expansion plans. She explained to me that the school does not know exactly the form it will take but it will almost certainly involve acquiring another building. This Tier 1 Performance Management Framework charter had over 1,800 applications this year for about 30 spaces.
Ms. Bowser provided assistance in having Rudolph Elementary awarded to Washington Latin PCS. Now she should do the same for others. Without delay the Mayoral candidate should announce that her vision of school reform involves immediately turning closed DCPS facilities over to charter schools.
Greater Greater Education
By Joe Weedon
March 25, 2013
The DCPS budget allocations for next year contained a major surprise for some communities: allocations to schools for art, music, foreign language, and library as well as office and support staff funding changed. Schools that had qualified last year are suddenly under the threshold for full-time staffing, which increased from 300 to 400 students.
Maury Elementary, for example, faces losing its librarian and staff for many other programs, just after growing large enough to get out of the "small school" category under the old rules.
While each school within DCPS receives funding for classroom teachers using a per-pupil ratio, funding for other specialized positions is based on school-wide enrollment. Sandra Moscoso already discussed how this could take away full-time librarians from many schools. It will also impact art, music, and PE teachers as well as office and support staff.
DCPS mentions this change in its Budget Development Guide for SY13-14, but it otherwise seems to have happened without public input or notice.
What is a "small school"?
There is no clear threshold for "small schools" in last year's (FY 2013) Budget Guidelines. However, last year elementary schools with enrollments over 300 students received funding for full-time librarians, art, music and physical education teachers as well as office staff and other support staff, including social workers and psychologists.
Over the past year, during discussion on the plan to consolidate and reorganize schools, Chancellor Henderson often cited 350 students as the threshold for "small" schools at the elementary level:
When schools reach a certain threshold, 350-ish at the elementary school level, 450 at middle, 600 at high school, you actually have the ability to do more flexible grouping. You have teachers who are able to work together because they're on a team and are not isolated teaching one grade.
DCPS' Consolidation & Reorganization proposal also clearly lists 350 students as a threshold: "Schools with fewer than 350 students require additional per-pupil funding to offer a full range of services. Sixty-four percent of DCPS elementary schools have fewer than 350 students." In next year's budget, elementary schools with under 400 students are classified as "small schools."
Why is DCPS doing this? In its Consolidation and Reorganization Plan, DCPS outlines the increased expenses and challenges of operating small schools. DCPS officials claim that small student populations limit access to academic and extracurricular programs, limit flexibility on class size and student grouping, and minimize the impact of highly effective teachers. Additionally, DCPS believes that small schools result in disproportionately high spending on non-instructional staff. A DCFPI report disagrees with this assessment, noting that small schools get only about 4% more funding than larger schools.
This change will directly affect many kids. Schools which fought to reach the 300 threshold over previous years will no longer receivefull-time allocations for librarians; arts, music and language positions; or office and support positions. Maury Elementary School on Capitol Hill, which my kids attend, is one example of a school that will feel the impact of this change. Maury has seen significant growth over the past five years. Its enrollment increased by more than 150 students and is projected to reach 330 students next year. Maury also has approximately 475 students on its waitlist. Yet, the school, despite plans to add a module classroom for next year, cannot meet the new 400-student threshold.
This means that unless the school community is able to obtain annual waivers to allow it to reallocate funds within its budget (which the Chancellor has granted for next year), Maury ES will continually face losing its librarian and staff for other programs. At Maury, and in many other schools across the city, librarians and special teachers (art, music, PE and world language) do much more than just teach their subject. The lead collaborative projects, work with students who are struggling, and lead innovative programs (Maury has a special "Reading Lunch" for 4th and 5th grade students, the specials teachers support reading interventions, and specials teachers are leading science and technology classes).
Why is small now 400? DCPS has yet to explain publicly why this threshold has increased from 300 to 350 to 400 over the past year. DCPS spokesperson Melissa Salmanowitz also did not respond to a request by Greater Greater Education for comment. Councilmember David Catania, chair of the Education Committee, has pledged to look at the number of schools impacted by this decision and what the impact is on the overall budget. But DCPS still needs to explain why this decision was made, what impact it will have on our children, and how it will help DCPS achieve its ambitious goals.
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
March 25, 2013
How reliable are the District’s standardized test scores, especially given persistent allegations of cheating on those tests?
That’s a key question for the members of an independent panel at the National Research Council charged with evaluating the progress of D.C. schools during the past five years, a period of sweeping and controversial policy changes. The panel, composed of 10 researchers from across the country, met Friday in Washington. The public portion of its day-long meeting was devoted to discussing how firmly test scores can be trusted in light of security concerns.
It’s an issue the panel will have to confront as it uses test scores to draw conclusions about D.C. students’ academic performance during an era of closely watched reforms. The group’s broad evaluation, required by the same 2007 legislation that brought the city mayoral control of the schools, is due in September 2014.
“Our evaluation is so dependent on the test score data,” said Lorraine McDonnell, a co-chair of the panel and a professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “We see this as an issue of trying to ascertain data quality.”
Suspicions that cheating skewed D.C. schools’ test results have simmered since 2011, when USA Today published an investigation showing more than 100 schools with unusually high numbers of wrong-to-right erasures on answer sheets. Multiple subsequent investigations turned up no evidence of widespread cheating. Still, there are lingering concerns that haven’t been explained, such as schools that made rapid gains until test security was tightened and their scores plummeted.
In an effort to better understand the security concerns, the NRC panel invited Carswell Whitehead, a representative from the test developer ETS, to explain statistical tools that can be used to flag possible irregularities. Whitehead also described precautions that school systems can use to prevent cheating. There was little discussion about the District’s test-security protocols. But several panel members raised concerns about rumors that there are no time limits on the city’s standardized tests — which would put schools at a higher risk for cheating, according to Whitehead. A testing guide that the Office of the State Superintendent for Education published in 2011 specifies that there are “suggested” and not “fixed” time limits. But Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who attended part of the two-hour session, told the panel that tests are always timed. The panel also invited Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Heather Vogell to recount cheating probes in that city. Vogell described how the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, armed with subpoena power, turned up evidence that nearly 200 Atlanta teachers and principals cheated on 2009 state tests at dozens of schools.
State and local authorities’ multiple previous investigations into the same allegations had failed, Vogell said, because they were hobbled by lack of resources and lack of independence from school leaders.
McDonnell declined to comment on the panel’s discussions about test security. She said the final report may include recommendations for tightening security in the future. The panel is working in conjunction with the DC Education Consortium on Research and Evaluation (DC-EdCORE), a group of local experts led by researchers at the graduate school for education at George Washington University. DC-EdCORE will publish a series of analyses of D.C. schools data that the panel will use to inform its final evaluation. The first of those analyses is scheduled to be published in April.
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