NEWS
- Next-generation tests roll out in Maryland, the District amid concerns
- DCPS schools are more likely than charters to have high concentrations of at-risk kids [corrected article]
Next-generation tests roll out in Maryland, the District amid concerns
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler and Donna St. George
March 6, 2015
The D.C. Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a 3 percent pay raise for Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, increasing her salary to $284,000, the first increase Henderson has received since she took the job in 2011.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) cited “dramatic improvements” in the 47,000-student school system “under the steady leadership of Chancellor Henderson” in a letter to D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) prior to the vote.
D.C. Council member David Grosso said in an interview that Henderson does not have specific performance goals written into her contract, something he prefers to see for the city’s executive-level employees. But he highlighted multiple school system achievements during her tenure, including improvements in enrollment, academic performance and attendance rates.
“I figure you pay people what they are worth,” Grosso (I-At Large) said. “How many people out there in the world are qualified to do this job?”
The chancellor is one of the highest-paid executives in the city. She earns more than Bowser ($200,000) and more than Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier ($230,743), according to salary data released in January.
James E. Lyons Sr., interim president of the University of the District of Columbia, is paid $303,850, and city administrator Rashad M. Young earns $295,000 annually.
A Washington Post analysis of executive pay at the city’s charter schools showed that at least two charter executives also earned salaries about the same or higher than Henderson’s despite leading far smaller organizations. More than 20 charter leaders earned less than the average D.C. public school principal.
In some cases, though, top salaries among charter executives are unknown, if they are employed by a private management company that contracts with the school.
Grosso introduced a bill during Tuesday’s legislative meeting that would give the D.C. Public Charter School Board greater authority to see financial records of such private management organizations, allowing the board to be a more effective watchdog of public funds.
The law would apply to organizations that receive 10 percent or more of a charter school’s annual revenue or those that derive at least a quarter of total revenue from a charter school. The bill would help to give the board “the tools it needs to head off problems before they rise to the level of an attorney general’s investigation,” said D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), who co-introduced the bill.
The legislation comes in response to two pending lawsuits that allege that District charter officials diverted millions of taxpayer dollars from schools to private management companies they created, money that allegedly was for personal gain.
The charter board voted in February to revoke the charter of Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter School for fiscal mismanagement. According to court documents, the school’s founder, Kent Amos, paid himself a salary of more than $1 million annually through a private management company to run the school. Attorneys for the school and for Amos say that the contracts were legal and that Amos did nothing wrong.
The D.C. Council also passed emergency legislation Tuesday that facilitates a plan that will allow the 1,600 children enrolled in Community Academy’s three campuses to stay in their current school building next year.
The legislation gave the charter schools taking on Community Academy’s assets — DC Bilingual and Friendship public charter schools — the ability to give first preference to Community Academy students who applied to the school through the citywide enrollment lottery by the Tuesday deadline. Preferences in the lottery are already given to siblings of current students, or, in some charter schools, to children of staff members.
D.C. Public Schools is taking over the third Community Academy campus, and the school system also plans to give priority to the students currently enrolled at that school.
DCPS schools are more likely than charters to have high concentrations of at-risk kids [corrected article]
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
March 3, 2015
Students who are homeless, in foster care, or otherwise "at risk" are more likely to be in the DC Public School system than in charter schools are concentrated in a few DC Public Schools but are more spread-out in the charter sector. And the more at-risk kids a school has, the lower its standardized test scores.
The sloping green line on this graphic shows that when a school has a lot of at-risk students, it generally has low test scores. That's no surprise.
But the graphic also shows something that's been hard to get at through existing data: DC's traditional public schools A subset of DC's traditional public schools are serving a disproportionate number of students who are likely to be the hardest to educate.
In addition to students who are homeless or in foster care, the at-risk category includes those receiving welfare or food stamps, and those who have been held back a year or more in high school. A DC law that went into effect this school year set up the at-risk category and appropriated additional funds for those students.
Data show which schools have the most at-risk students
Guy Brandenburg, a blogger and former DCPS math teacher, used the data generated by the legislation to create the graphic above and the ones below. To his surprise, he found that only three DC charter schools have 70% or more of their students in the at-risk category. Within DCPS, on the other hand, there are 31 such schools.
Two of the three charter schools with over 70% at-risk students—Maya Angelou and Options—are specifically targeted to kids in that category. The third school is Friendship Blow Pierce.
The usual yardstick for the degree of poverty in schools is the number of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals. But students in that federal program can have a family income of up to 185% of the poverty level. The at-risk measure identifies the subgroup of students who are likely to be living in the deepest poverty.
Leaders of DC's charter sector often point out that charter schools educate a higher percentage of low-income students than DCPS. But they're talking about students who are eligible for free and reduced meals, not those in the at-risk category.
Graphics showing school size and names
The graphic below shows the same data as the one above, but the size of the dots corresponds to the size of the school.
A third graphic provides the names of some of the schools.
Brandenburg has also posted a table with all the data that he used to create the graphics.
Visit link above to view graphics.
Based on the data, Brandenburg predicts that DC is moving to a tripartite education system. He sees wealthier students attending DCPS schools in Ward 3 or a handful of charters that appeal to more affluent families. Those "in the middle of the wealth/family-cohesion spectrum," many of them black or Hispanic, are largely in charters. And those "at the seriously low end of the economic spectrum," most of them black, are in highly segregated DCPS schools.
Correction and clarification: The graphics above are based on estimates of at-risk students that schools submitted to DC education officials last year. According to the Public Charter School Board, the actual enrollment figures for this school year show that at least ten charter schools have 70% or more at-risk students. DCPS has not yet provided updated figures on how many of its schools serve a high percentage of at-risk students.
In addition, the PCSB has compiled data showing that the overall proportions of at-risk students in the DCPS and charter sectors are about the same (49.3 in the charter sector and 50.6% in DCPS). However, at-risk students are more concentrated in a subset of DCPS schools, while they are generally spread more evenly through the charter sector.
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