• D.C. Council Pokes its Nose into School Business
• Exclusive Interview with Jessica Wodatch of Two Rivers PCS [Two Rivers PCS and Capital City PCS are mentioned]
• IMPACT: Does it Favor Younger Teachers?
D.C. Council Pokes its Nose into School Business
The Washington Post
By Editorial Board
March 26, 2012
When it comes to telling D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson how to do her job, it appears that D.C. Council members have only just begun. No sooner did the council approve a series of policy changes than a new proposal surfaced, requiring a study of school boundaries. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) needs to push back against council interference before school officials lose the authority to make student needs, not political interests, their priority.
A package of bills passed last week by the council calls for all high school students to take the SAT or ACT college entrance exams and to apply to college or another post-secondary institution, provides financial incentives to lure highly effective teachers to high-need schools and requires 3- and 4-year-olds to be ready for kindergarten. The goals are admirable: Who’s against preschoolers being ready to learn or twelfth-graders having high expectations? But will programs dictated by the council in a scattershot approach have any chance of success? And should its priorities — no matter how laudable — take precedence over the direction and agenda laid out by the education professionals hired to manage the system?
Such meddling prompted the District to abolish its school board in 2007. Authority for running the public school system was given to the mayor, who would also be held accountable for the results. The days of politicizing education, with ward representatives fighting each other for resources and credit, were supposed to be things of the past.
Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), the most education-savvy member of the council, having served on the old school board for six years, had the good sense to abstain from last week’s vote, and he noted how wrongheaded the council’s action was. “You are opening the floodgates to my curriculum bill against your after-school bill against another’s teacher-quality bill,” he told us.
The District is fortunate to have a qualified and hard-working chancellor with a clear vision of the path of reform. She should not have to spend time jumping from one piece of legislation to another, much of which the council may never fund anyway. Last week’s education package is far less objectionable than its original iteration, due to successful administration efforts to water down many of its provisions. But it should serve as a reminder that the city does not need 13 chancellors — not as the first step down a road to the dreary past.
Exclusive Interview with Jessica Wodatch of Two Rivers PCS [Two Rivers PCS and Capital City PCS are mentioned]
Examiner
By Mark Lerner
March 26, 2012
My time with Ms. Wodatch began with what I hope will be a new tradition for my exclusive interviews. She marched me right up to a classroom in her bright and colorful elementary school off Florida Ave, N.E., and pulled out three young students for me to meet. I even had the opportunity to ask them some questions. But I will come back to these students later.
We then sat down in her office so that I could learn more about Two Rivers. The Executive Director explained to me that it was founded by about three dozen parents who were looking for alternatives to the traditional schools for their children. Ms. Wodatch was familiar with the work being done by Capital City PCS and asked their representatives if they would open a branch on Capitol Hill. While she was told that there were no plans to do so she was informed that there were a group of individuals living in this area trying to form their own school. Ms. Wodatch immediately became involved.
Two Rivers opened in 2004 with 150 students and 25 teachers. It has grown to 450 students preschool through 8th located in two buildings across the street from each other. Ms. Wodatch estimates that she experienced “more than 20” failed facility deals before they settled on their permanent site. It is a Performance Management Framework Tier 1 school. Their elementary school DC CAS proficiency rate in reading of 78 percent is the highest of all charter elementary schools. The 68 percent DC CAS proficiency rate in math for the elementary school is the fifth highest of all D.C. charters. The scores are not quite as high for the middle school with a 59 percent proficiency rate for reading and a 54 percent proficiency rate for math.
Ms. Wodatch was extremely eager to tell me the reasons behind the school’s success. “First you have to understand that change takes time,” Ms. Wodatch informed me. She said that she has worked closely with her board on this subject and has received their support and encouragement. Second” Ms. Wodatch explained, “you need to pick a curriculum that is research based and stick with it.” Two Rivers uses the Expeditionary Learning approach, which according to the school’s web site “emphasizes interactive, hands-on, project-based learning. The school focuses on the whole child, recognizing the importance of character education and the social-emotional needs of children while helping them achieve academic excellence.”
I then asked Ms. Wodatch for her motivation behind opening the school. “I have a passion for equality and justice,” she answered without a moment of hesitation. “My father was a civil rights lawyer and one of the authors of the American for Disabilities Act. I started out at Teach for America working with third graders in the Bronx. I have worked with students in special education at both St. Coletta and Kingsbury Day School. Engaging with this population of kids instructs you how to teach all children. I believe that all children can learn and that they deserve the same opportunity to do well in life.”
It was at this point that I understood what really drives Ms. Wodatch. She is doing this for the children. This founder has none of the self-focus I have seen from others who have created successful schools despite the tremendous odds working against them. Ms. Wodatch believes in her heart that “learning should be fun and relevant to the kids’ lives,” and that “building a school involves building a community.” The executive director, whose three children attend Two Rivers, quickly got to the bottom line. Quoting a parent whose child has been at Two Rivers for eight years, she said “Walking into school is like walking into a hug. Having a kid here makes me a want to be a better parent.”
These notions are consistent with her belief that the school needs to be welcoming and diverse. There are other foundations behind her work and that of her staff. For example, they believe that the arts and P.E. are not extras to be provided as an obligation but subjects that should be fully integrated into the curriculum. Music and Spanish are also emphasized at the school.
Besides the high academic student scores, the end result of these efforts to provide a truly special and caring learning environment are an extremely stable staff and student population, Ms. Wodatch proudly said. “On the student population side our re-enrollment rate is around 90 percent.”
But the school is not content to stay in one place regarding their progress. The staff spends time every week on professional development and is heavily dependent on data to drive student assessment. According to Ms. Wodatch “the goal is not to just teach the basics but for our kids to learn 21st century skills. We focus on developing expert thinking and complex communication in our students.”
Which now brings me back to the students I met at the beginning of my visit. All three were well dressed, professional, and extremely articulate. They looked me straight in the eye as they spoke. These kids had a confidence you don’t usually see in kids their age.
The students uniformly described their school as a community. When I asked whether they missed their friends since Two Rivers is not a community school they each shook their heads no. “We have made plenty of new friends here,” remarked one of them, “and the work is harder than it would be at my neighborhood school.”
IMPACT: Does it Favor Younger Teachers?
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
March 26, 2012
I finally obtained some data from DCPS on the demographics underlying the 2010-11 IMPACT scores. It’s difficult to draw strong conclusions from a one-year snapshot of the 4,000 educators who were evaluated. But it appears that, at least through the prism of IMPACT, the best teachers improve quickly in their first few years on the job and then hit a kind of plateau.
You can see the bar charts here.
The percentage of teachers with “highly effective” ratings increases with every year of experience up to year five, topping out at 28 percent. After that it’s up and down, peaking again at 26 percent in year nine before bottoming out at 15 percent in years 19 and 20.
The age chart is interesting because it shows a moderate hollowing out of the teacher corps at mid-career. There are about half as many teachers between the ages of 45 and 49 as there are in the 25 to 29 bracket. Seventy percent of the WTU bargaining unit is split evenly between the high and low ends of the age scale: 36 percent between 20 and 34, and the other 36 percent 50-plus. Twenty-eight percent are ages 35 to 49.
The age data also suggests that the young may have an easier time navigating IMPACT. The highest percentage of effective teachers (76 percent) is in the age group 20 to 24. Only 65 percent of teachers ages 60 to 64 were rated effective, a rate that drops to 62 percent for those 65 and older. Hard to say what exactly this proves, although it’s possible that principals and master educators might cut inexperienced teachers slack that is not extended to senior educators.
Both charts depict the brutal attrition rates common to most big city public school systems. In 2010-11 there were 667 teachers with two years experience in DCPS but 296 with three years service. The number continues to dwindle to year nine, which has a cohort with just 47 teachers. By age, the 25 to 29 group is the most heavily represented (666), and then dropping to 341 between ages 40 and 44.
I also got responses to a couple of other long-standing questions. What happened to teachers who were highly effective in 2009-10 but did not repeat in 2010-11?
There were 595 highly effective teachers in 2009-10 who remained in the WTU bargaining unit for 2010-11. Of those, 359 (60 percent) repeated as highly effective. Another 229 (38 percent) dropped to effective, and seven to minimally effective.
My other question: What happened to the 528 teachers found minimally effective in 2009-10? In 2010-11, 288 (54 percent) became effective while 142 (27 percent) remained minimally effective for a second year and were subject to dismissal. It means that DCPS probably had some success in coaching up teachers who were struggling. Seven teachers (1.3 percent) made the leap from minimally effective to highly effective.