- It's Time D.C. Council Funds Charter Schools Fairly
- Simmons: D.C. Council Interns Shine Hopeful Light on City Youth [Washington Math Science and Technology PCS is mentioned]
- Education Must Move Center Stage in the Presidential Election
The Washington Examiner
By Tom Nida
March 4, 2012
Each year, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools ranks the public charter school laws on the books in 40 states plus the District of Columbia.
The ranking takes into account the amount of autonomy granted to these schools, the level of public funding provided to them, and other factors. The District, which for years was ranked first or second, this year scored 11th out of 41.
Given the strength of D.C.'s public charter school movement, this lower ranking may seem odd. Some 41 percent of students enrolled in the District of Columbia Public Schools attend charters.
Charter enrollment grew 8 percent compared to last school year, while attendance at DCPS facilities fell.
Among large cities, only New Orleans, whose public school system is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, has a larger share of charter students.
Sadly, however, the District government refuses to provide these schools with the public funding to which D.C.'s charter school law entitles them.
Charter schools are public schools, but of a different kind. They offer tuition-free education and, in the District, cannot screen students by administering entrance exams.
They must enroll any D.C.-resident student until they have filled their available places. And D.C. law requires that funding for charter and DCPS' school operating costs be based on a uniform per student funding formula.
But since the charter law was passed in the mid-1990s, D.C.'s government has increasingly resorted to funding DCPS outside the formula.
A recent study found that DCPS received additional funds and government services ranging from $72 million to $127 million over the past four to five years.
There are many reasons to be offended by the city's unequal treatment of its public charter schools. Some 87 percent of D.C.'s public charter school students are African-American, compared to 67 percent of DCPS' students.
Charters also serve a higher share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunch: 75 percent of their students do so, compared to 67 percent in DCPS.
And there are no charter schools in Ward 3, the city's most affluent area; charter schools open their doors where the need is greatest.
The city government's discrimination against charters is not justified by charters' accomplishments. Charters' high-school graduation rate is 84 percent higher than before the charter law passed, when half the District's public school students dropped out.
The charter graduation rate is higher than that of DCPS. Charter students score higher, on average, on D.C.'s standardized reading and math tests than their peers enrolled in DCPS.
In a recent study commissioned by District government, some 34 percent of charter schools were identified as "high performing," compared to 20 percent of DCPS schools.
East of the Anacostia river, there are only six schools that qualify as "high performing" in that study, and all are charters.
Despite the needs of charters' students, and their accomplishments, the city continues to find ways to deprive them of city funds.
DCPS schools receive nearly twice the city dollars per student in school building funds as charters, for example.
Recently, DCPS received an additional $25.2 million from the city because it overspent its budget. But charters, which receive less city funding per student, have to live within their means.
Charters receive formula funds according to the number of students they actually enroll. DCPS is funded according to enrollment estimates, which frequently overestimate enrollment.
Before he was elected mayor, Vincent Gray supported a D.C. law creating a commission to investigate public school funding inequities, and propose remedies.
The commission reported last week, but failed to make recommendations to fund D.C.'s public schools as the law and equality demand.
Mayor Gray was elected on a platform that pledged to fund both types of our public schools fairly. Will our mayor move to implement the changes he campaigned upon?
Tom Nida, is regional president for United Bank in Washington, D.C., and Maryland, and the former chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board.
Simmons: D.C. Council Interns Shine Hopeful Light on City Youth [Washington Math Science and Technology PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Times
By Deborah Simmons
March 4, 2012
Eighteen years ago, when it had become clear that D.C. Public Schools was well on its way toward failing another generation of children, members of the 2012 class were but a vague gleam in their parents’ eyes.
Today, as city officials ponder such questions as what works and what’s next on the education-reform front, the true answers are sitting right under their noses.
All officials need do is look at the students participating in the D.C. Council’s Youth Internship Program, which allows high school juniors and seniors to get a bird’s-eye view of how their government works, fully engage their government leaders, offer ideas and decide whether city leaders are indeed looking out for their best interests.
These teens share much in common, as most of those I sat down with attend public charter schools or magnet schools, educational institutions that, for the most part, are decidedly at arm’s length from the usual suspects that control DCPS.
Inquisitive, highly motivated and academically focused, they are determined to fulfill their own dreams, and by extension their parents’ dreams, of receiving a post-secondary education as they anxiously await letters of acceptance from Ivy League universities, as well as state schools and historically black colleges.
The engaging Ricardo Dupree, who attends Washington Mathematics Science Technology Public Charter High School, applied to Princeton and several black schools including Morehouse, an all-men’s college in Atlanta. He also applied to Emory in Atlanta, a school with alumni including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Lee Hong-koo, former South Korean prime minister.
Ricardo hopes to major in accounting and business administration and position himself to become a famous entrepreneur or Fortune 500 executive.
“It’s the math and technology that I like best,” he said.
Honor Williams has cast her sights upon ivory towers in the Northeast and cannot wait to hear back from Dartmouth, Harvard and Columbia. She wants to focus on law and political science. She, too, has applications at historically black schools. And like the other interns, she volunteers because she “likes to be involved” and “be connected.”
Imagine, if you will, this petite teen, who attends the School Without Walls and volunteers at Martha’s Table, as a fully grown woman, her unflappable demeanor in a judge’s robe perched on the bench.
As youngsters in grade school, most of the interns attended regular elementary schools until their parents saw something in them and eventually took advantage of the broad options that charter and magnet schooling provides.
Yet even those interns who attend tradition D.C. schools are an exception to popularly held views.
Shanta Wilson, for example, attends H.D. Woodson in far Northeast, where violence, low test scores, joblessness and a welfare state of mind are daily reminders that school reform has yet to cross the Anacostia River.
When I met Shanta a couple of weeks, she was interning in the office of Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown alongside Imani Humphries, who attends Woodrow Wilson, the only traditional high school in Northwest.
As I happened into the chairman’s office, Imani and Shanta greeted me with smiles, courtesy and key information without any prompting.
Their professionalism was hardly shocking, but what I later learned was truly revealing of their character.
Both girls were supposed to be off the day of my visit, but they volunteered to work because school was closed.
These young people, future professionals in training, don’t need the mayor, council or school officials tethering their hands or those of their teachers or parents to laws, rules or restrictions that would place a noose around their necks.
These seniors and rising seniors, who answered in a chorus of “yes” when asked if they want to go away to college, are the first generation to benefit from the D.C. school-reform seeds that were planted in the 1990s.
Every time D.C. officials what to know what works and what should be the next steps in education reform, they should turn to Ricardo, Shanta, Honor and Imani, and the other 2012 interns.
The chances that all or any of them will become as renown as Michelle Obama (Princeton) is slim, to be sure. But one thing is certain: The hands-off approach to school reform works for children.
This week, as the Gray administration and the council continue to search for clues to positive educational outcomes, they really don’t have to look too far.
Hey, they don’t even have to leave city hall, where the interns aid lawmakers and their staff, learn what makes government tick, and are ginning up their own perspectives on the rules of public discourse.
If education truly is the next embattled frontier in the realm of civil rights, D.C. leaders would be wise to do right by the current and next generation.
The Washington Post
By Joel Klein
March 4, 2012
Until former senator Rick Santorum called President Obama “ a snob ” last month for wanting all Americans to attend college, education had been practically invisible in this presidential campaign. Only 1 percent of the time and questions in Republican debates have touched on schools since an education forum I co-moderated in New York in October.
This is crazy. Does any parent or CEO in America think education is 1 percent of the agenda in an age of global competition? Unless voters insist that candidates give education the attention it deserves, this will be another political season in which both sides offer pablum without seeking a mandate for the ambitious reforms our schools require.
New research shows that only one-quarter of America’s 52 million K-12 students perform on par with the average performance of the world’s five best school systems — which are now in Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, Taiwan and South Korea. Even worse is U.S. performance in advanced achievement in math and science, the best predictor of the engineering and scientific prowess that will drive future growth. Sixteen countries produce at least twice the percentage of advanced math students we do, according to research from Harvard and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The United States spends more on schools than most wealthy nations as a share of GDP yet ranks in the middle to the bottom of the pack on international comparisons. McKinsey estimates that the cost of this achievement gap vs. other nations is up to $2 trillion a year — the equivalent of a permanent national recession.
The conventional wisdom holds that education “doesn’t work” as a central issue in presidential campaigns. What little talk there is on schools aims to shore up union support (among Democrats) and demonstrate “compassion” to independent voters or anti-federal credentials (among Republicans). Meanwhile, the countries out-educating us view education as central to their success. When the future of our economy and society turn on our ability to dramatically upgrade the skills of all our children, how can we view it as anything less?
Americans must demand from candidates concrete ideas on how to prepare our children to thrive in a global age. A serious debate would compel all seeking the White House to explain how they would do three big things:
1. Accelerate common standards. Most of our industrial competitors have rigorous national standards in education. The United States has a patchwork of largely inadequate standards whose expectations for student learning vary wildly depending on whether children live in Albany or Albuquerque. (This because, the joke goes, the right hates “national” and the left hates “standards.”) The accountability regime set up by No Child Left Behind likewise left the design of standards to the states. The result has been what many consider a “race to the bottom,” as states eased requirements to create the illusion of progress. State leaders have recently forged a consensus on a path to Common Core Standards in English language arts and mathematics.
My question: Do candidates support the push for Common Core Standards (as Obama does)? Although adoption is ultimately a state decision, how would the next president speed implementation so we don’t lose another decade without the rigor our competitors insist on for their children?
2. Professionalize teaching. There is almost universal consensus that effective teaching is the most powerful way to improve student performance. But we’re not serious as a nation about making teaching an attractive career. Finland, Singapore and South Korea recruit 100 percent of their teachers from the top third of high school and college students. Their teachers train in prestigious institutions that accept only one of every seven or eight applicants. By contrast, only 23 percent of new U.S. teachers come from the top third (14 percent for high-poverty schools). Our teachers are trained mostly in open-enrollment institutions seen as second-rate; poor pay and working conditions compel the best to leave the classroom within a few years. A trade union mentality makes it hard to reward excellence and promote accountability.
My question: How do candidates propose to professionalize teaching and make it the career of choice for our most talented young people?
3. Promote choice and innovation. Whether a public school performs well or badly, it basically keeps students in that neighborhood, because most families have no other choice. This monopoly leaves no incentive to innovate to improve performance and efficiency — inducements as vital to public schools as they are elsewhere. Families with more means can choose private schools, can move to another town or can otherwise navigate the system. Those families who are least powerful, however, remain trapped. To support choice and innovation, we need to provide real funding equity and ensure that money follows children, not schools. Child-centered funding would give entrepreneurial educators the ability to reimagine how teachers and students do their work, and to compete to serve families with breakthrough pedagogical tools that creatively tap new learning technologies.
My question: How will candidates promote choice and innovation to improve teaching and learning, and unleash the power of technologies that have raised quality and lowered costs in every other part of the economy?
There is still time for a real debate on improving our schools. The stakes are too high to let platitudes substitute for the call to action our educational system needs.
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