• Education Bills Get Initial Nod from D.C. Council
• Bill Extends Youth Mental Health Services
• DCPS Budget: IMPACT’s Impact
• ‘Creative … motivating’ and Fired
• DCPS Plans to Increase Class Size, Cut Special-Ed Positions
• Ward 5 to Get Standalone Middle School, Other New Programs
• In D.C., Reach Inc. Explores Tutoring as a Two-Way Street [Perry Street Prep PCS is mentioned]
Education Bills Get Initial Nod from D.C. Council
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
March 6, 2012
A bundle of education bills — including a controversial effort to make D.C. students take the SAT or ACT to graduate, and another paying top teachers to transfer to bad schools — passed their first hurdle Tuesday.
The D.C. Council passed Chairman Kwame Brown's “Raising the Expectations for Education Outcomes Act of 2012," which lumps together four education bills Brown introduced or co-sponsored this session.
Among them:
• A bill that requires high school students to take a college-admissions test and apply to at least one postsecondary institution before they can graduate;
• A bill that would give $10,000 annual bonuses to highly rated teachers who transfer to low-income schools with low math and reading proficiency rates;
• A bill to turn schools into after-hours community centers providing adult-education, among other services;
• And a bill to provide interventions for young students who are struggling academically.
While the bundled bill passed a council read-through, it's not unlikely that Brown's colleagues will propose amendments.
Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells said he was concerned that school officials don't wholeheartedly support the SAT/ACT bill.
The head of D.C.'s charter schools has called the bill "overreaching," while DCPS officials have expressed reluctance to add another graduation requirement.
At-large Councilman Vincent Orange — whose own early childhood bill was not included in the package — said Brown's interventions bill does not start early enough. Brown has proposed monitoring children in the fourth grade, which is when students begin standardized testing.
Councilman Phil Mendelson, also at-large, questioned the cost of luring top teachers into underperforming schools.
But Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh and Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry — the opposite sides of spectrum, incarnate — both said they supported the bill and applauded Brown's efforts.
In an emailed statement, Brown said, "We must raise our expectations for students, and create a culture of academic excellence and success in District schools...When we believe that our students are capable of more, they will believe it too. The very act of striving for high expectations will improve student achievement and bring about progress in our schools.”
Bill Extends Youth Mental Health Services
The Washington Post
By Tim Craig
March 6, 2012
The D.C. Council agreed Tuesday to increase behavioral health services and testing for city youths to try to keep students in schools and out of jail, but officials caution that the District still has to find money to pay for some key provisions of the bill.
After two years of work, the council tentatively approved a broad series of reforms in response to a March 30, 2010, shooting spree that killed four youths and injured six others in Southeast Washington.
Five men are on trial in the shooting, which District officials said exposed major gaps in efforts to preemptively address mentally unstable or violent youths.
The bill, a top priority for council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), calls for an extension of mental health services to all public and charter school students, including those in pre-kindergarten and Head Start.
The District also will implement new truancy rules, mandatory behavioral health screenings for youths in
the juvenile justice system and a citywide study to evaluate the mental health needs of District youths.
By the 2016-17 school year, the bill mandates that all students have access to mental health professionals in school. Currently, one in three District schools offers in-school behavioral evaluation and care.
The council unanimously approved the changes Tuesday, but it must vote on the legislation a second time later this month. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) is expected to sign it.
“This will represent the most comprehensive behavioral infrastructure in the country,” Catania said. “It represents two years of thoughtful engagement of the stakeholders to try to come up with something that will materially advance the well-being of our young people.”
One of the city’s worst mass shootings in decades came in March 2010 after teenagers gathered at a house party after a funeral in Southeast Washington. Some walked a few blocks away to South Capitol Street SE, and gunmen, allegedly armed with assault-style weapons and semiautomatic pistols, opened fire.
Police said the shooting capped a spiral of violence set off days earlier by the disappearance of a gold-colored bracelet.
The shooting shocked city leaders, some of whom questioned whether it could have been prevented if school and law enforcement officials had been more adept at spotting potential mental health problems.
Nardyne Jefferies, whose daughter, Brishell Jones, was killed in the shooting, helped the council draft Catania’s bill.
But some provisions of the bill may be implemented only if city finances improve.
In a statement to the council, Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi warned that there is not enough money in the city’s spending plan through fiscal 2015 to fund the bill.
Gandhi estimated that the bill will cost taxpayers almost $23 million over the next three years, which will require Gray and the council to prioritize the initiative when they make spending decisions later this year.
The biggest cost — about $20 million over three years — will be for the expansion of mental health and truancy services to all schools, Gandhi said.
Gandhi said he is concerned that many charter schools do not have enough resources to pay for the changes.
But Catania and several council members argued that the city will have to find the money to pay for the changes, noting that some of the costs stem from the school system’s failure to fulfill existing legal requirements.
Among other changes, the bill requires an “analysis of the root cause” of bad or truant behavior and mandates that the school system connect the student with needed services.
“Parents are screaming out for resources to help their children, and they don’t exist,” Catania said. “This is going to be an expensive proposition, but we ignored it long enough.”
Last year, 20 percent of D.C. public school students had at least 15 unexcused absences, council officials said. Under current rules, students are permitted up to 25 days of unexcused absences before they are referred to truancy court. The bill reduces that number to 20.
Lee F. Satterfield, chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court, worries that the change could result in too many students clogging the federally funded D.C. court system.
“We would have to add several staff members in order to meet the expected increase in the volume of referrals,” Satterfield wrote. “We propose delaying the effective date . . . pending the Congress appropriating sufficient funds to the Superior Court.”
Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) countered that lawmakers have to act to prevent another “atrocious, terroristic act.”
“Someone who takes a gun on a whole group of people must have psychological problems that must be addressed,” Barry said.
DCPS Budget: IMPACT’s Impact
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
March 6, 2012
There’s plenty for DCPS stakeholders to dislike in the newly released school-based budget allocations proposed for 2012-13. While they reflect a two-percent increase in the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, they will still mean larger class sizes--as in, fewer teachers--at the middle and high school levels, along with cuts in positions such as special education coordinator.
One of the drivers of this unpleasant news is the projected exhaustion of the private foundation money that has underwritten IMPACT bonuses for “highly effective” teachers under the terms of the 2010 collective bargaining agreement. After the current school year, the annual cost of the bonuses--about $7.2 million for the first two years of the program, according DCPS--will be borne by the individual schools.
For FY 2013, those bonus obligations will be loaded into the average cost of a classroom teacher, which will rise from $90,681 to $95,574.
DCPS was clear in 2010 that this reckoning was coming. The $64 million pledged by the Broad, Arnold, Robertson and Walton foundations was a three-year ride set to end in the fall of 2012. What was largely unexpected was to see these costs passed down to the school level.
At the time the contract was approved, then-Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and other officials said that savings and efficiencies achieved elsewhere in the school system--such as reductions in private special education tuition and transportation --could be used to help sustain the contract. But we’ve since learned that at least some of those savings have gone elsewhere, including the Department of Disabilities--to offset the loss of a federal grant--and economic development in Ward 7 and on the Southwest waterfront.
Where the rest of the $64 million has gone is not clear. I’ve asked for clarification from DCPS. A District study at the time of the contract’s approval estimated that without continued private help, the annual cost of supporting the 2010 contract was about $30 million.
Look for another contentious budget season.
‘Creative … motivating’ and Fired
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
March 6, 2012
By the end of her second year at MacFarland Middle School, fifth-grade teacher Sarah Wysocki was coming into her own.
“It is a pleasure to visit a classroom in which the elements of sound teaching, motivated students and a positive learning environment are so effectively combined,” Assistant Principal Kennard Branch wrote in her May 2011 evaluation.
He urged Wysocki to share her methods with colleagues at the D.C. public school. Other observations of her classroom that year yielded good ratings.
Two months later, she was fired.
Wysocki, 31, was let go because the reading and math scores of her students didn’t grow as predicted. Her undoing was “value-added,” a complex statistical tool used to measure a teacher’s direct contribution to test results. The District and at least 25 states, under prodding from the Obama administration, have adopted or are developing value-added systems to assess teachers.
When her students fell short, the low value-added trumped her positives in the classroom. Under the D.C. teacher evaluation system, called IMPACT, the measurement counted for 50 percent of her annual appraisal. Classroom observations, such as the one Branch conducted, represented 35 percent, and collaboration with the school community and schoolwide testing trends made up the remaining 15 percent.
Her story opens a rare window into the revolution in how teachers across the country are increasingly appraised — a mix of human observation and remorseless algorithm that is supposed to yield an authentic assessment of effectiveness. In the view of school officials, Wysocki, one of 206 D.C. teachers fired for poor performance in 2011, was appropriately judged by the same standards as her peers. Colleagues and friends say she was swept aside by a system that doesn’t always capture a teacher’s true value.
Proponents of value-added contend that it is a more meaningful yardstick of teacher effectiveness — growth over time — than a single year’s test scores. They also contend that classroom observations by school administrators can easily be colored by personal sentiments or grudges. Researchers for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reported in 2010 that a teacher’s value-added track record is among the strongest predictors of student achievement gains.
Which is why D.C. school officials have made it the largest component of their evaluation system for teachers in grades with standardized tests. The District aims to expand testing so that 75 percent of classroom teachers can be rated using value-added data. Now, only about 12 percent are eligible.
“We put a lot of stock in it,” said Jason Kamras, chief of human capital for D.C. schools.
Yet even researchers and educators who support value-added caution that it can, in essence, be overvalued.
Test results are too vulnerable to conditions outside a teacher’s control, some experts say, to count so heavily in a high-stakes evaluation. Poverty, learning disabilities and random testing day incidents such as illness, crime or a family emergency can skew scores.
The District attempts to compensate for some of these factors, weighing special education status, English proficiency, attendance, and eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch — a common proxy for poverty — in developing growth predictions for students.
But some experts say it should never be a decisive factor in a teacher’s future.
“It has a place, but I wouldn’t give it pride of place,” said Henry Braun, professor of education and public policy at Boston College. He contends that only random assignment of teachers and students — wholly impractical in big school systems — can eliminate enough bias and error to obtain a valid measure of how much teachers improve student performance.
Some states are taking a more conservative approach than the District. New York recently set value-added at 20 percent of annual evaluations. Tennessee and Minnesota have the ceiling at 35 percent. Other states, such as Colorado and Ohio, mandate that 50 percent of teacher assessments must use student growth data but leave it up to local school districts whether to use value-added or other measures.
“You can get me to walk down the road with you to say value-added is relevant, but 50 percent is too weighted,” said Washington Teachers’ Union President Nathan Saunders.
Kamras said the disconnect between the observations of Wysocki’s classroom and her value-added scores was “quite rare.” Most teachers with poor ratings in one area, he said, are also substandard in the other.
“It doesn’t necessarily suggest that anything wrong happened,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just not possible to know for sure.”
Wysocki said there is another possible explanation: Many students arrived at her class in August 2010 after receiving inflated test scores in fourth grade.
Fourteen of her 25 students had attended Barnard Elementary. The school is one of 41 in which publishers of the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests found unusually high numbers of answer sheet erasures in spring 2010, with wrong answers changed to right. Twenty-nine percent of Barnard’s 2010 fourth-graders scored at the advanced level in reading, about five times the District average.
D.C. and federal investigators are examining whether there was cheating, but school officials stand by the city’s test scores.
Kamras acknowledged that the Barnard data are “suggestive” of a problem but said that without clear evidence, nothing could be done. Overall, he said that Wysocki was treated fairly and that her case does not reflect a deeper issue with IMPACT.
“I stand behind my evaluation of her,” he said. “It does not, in my view, call into question anything.”
Wysocki was out of work for only a few days. She is teaching at Hybla Valley Elementary School in Fairfax County and came forward to tell her story because she believes it is one that D.C. teachers and parents should know.
“I think what it says is how flawed this system is.”
‘Needs to be clear’
Like many young educators, Wysocki struggled at first. The Chicago-born daughter of a physicist, she came to the District in 2009 from Washington state, where she was a teacher assistant in a private Waldorf school that minimized testing and focused on the emotional and ethical development of the whole child.
In D.C. schools, she found another culture entirely. IMPACT spans an exacting set of nine performance criteria covering virtually every aspect of pedagogy, including clear presentation, behavior management and skill at asking questions. Teachers are graded on a 1-to-4 scale (ineffective, minimally effective, effective and highly effective).
Wysocki’s 2009-10 evaluation was peppered with twos.
“Your instruction needs to be clear and differentiated to meet your students’ diverse needs,” Sean Precious, then MacFarland’s principal, wrote. “Instructional time should be maximized and student misbehavior should be minimized. Please review your IMPACT binder.”
For the year, classroom observers rated her just short of effective. Her value-added score was low. That left her overall rating in her rookie year as “minimally effective.” If it happened again, she would face dismissal.
MacFarland, on Iowa Avenue NW in the Petworth neighborhood, also was struggling. Four out of five students at the school come from families poor enough to qualify for meal subsidies. Fewer than three in 10 scored proficient on the 2010 city reading test.
But Wysocki got better in 2010-11, improving her ability to tailor lessons and gaining a reputation for her skill at managing multiple groups of children in various activity centers. She drew praise from Assistant Principal Branch for “new and innovative ways” of engaging parents, “dedicating a truly exceptional amount of time towards partnering with them,” through invitations to class events and walking home students who live nearby.
“One of the best teachers I’ve ever come in contact with,” said Bryan Dorsey, head of the MacFarland PTA in 2010-11, who had a daughter in Wysocki’s class. “Every time I saw her, she was attentive to the children, went over their schoolwork, she took time with them and made sure.”
The twos from her first year’s classroom observations were replaced by threes and fours.
But Wysocki was worried. Some students who had scored advanced in fourth grade, she said, could barely read.
“I’m getting a little nervous about testing,” she wrote in an e-mail to Branch and new Principal Andre Samuels in February 2011.
Complicated system
The calculus that ended Wysocki’s career in D.C. schools started as a way of measuring the value of strawberries turned into jam. Value-added began in agriculture, where it was employed to establish the worth of farm products as they changed form. Statistician William Sanders pioneered its conversion to classroom use, starting in Tennessee in the early 1990s.
It’s complicated enough that D.C. schools hired Mathematica Policy Research of Princeton, N.J., to crunch the numbers for each of the 471 teachers in the District from fourth through eighth grades whose students took reading and math tests.
In Wysocki’s case, the firm took the fourth-grade scores of each student in her class and searched for all students in the city with the same numbers. Then, after the students took the spring 2011 tests, Mathematica averaged the scores, weighted for the actual amount of time each student spent in her class and taking into account demographic variables.
Wysocki’s actual average reading score was 54.2 out of 99, less than Mathematica’s predicted average of 59. Her math score, 56.2, was more than 6 points shy of the forecast. Her classroom observation score was 3.2 out of a possible 4, but she was still rated minimally effective and fired in July.
Wysocki was furious. “I want to know how my IVA [Individual Value-Added] can be so OUTRAGEOUSLY different from ALL my other data,” she wrote to the central office on July 19.
School officials said that if she had concerns about cheating she should have alerted the Office of Data and Accountability with specific information, including names of teachers and students from whom she heard allegations of cheating. They said that the office told her this in July 2011 but never heard back from her.
She appealed her dismissal in August to a three-member panel of central office staff, writing a detailed letter outlining concerns about possible cheating on the Barnard scores.
“I was under the impression that the letter with my appeal would be enough to prompt an investigation,” Wysocki said.
It was December before she learned that the firing was upheld. Panel members repeated that Wysocki should have gone to the accountability office sooner. But the panel added that it wouldn’t have mattered.
“The Board and the Chancellor note that investigations of cheating are outside the scope of the Chancellor’s appeals process,” the panel wrote. “As a result, the [value-added] score remains valid.”
Colleagues said they were stunned to hear of the firing. MacFarland’s other fifth-grade teacher, also highly regarded by administrators, also was let go. Teachers said they were bewildered because Samuels and Branch had repeatedly pointed out the progress fifth-graders were making in reading.
“It was celebrated within the school,” said one of several former colleagues of Wysocki’s who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals.
Samuels, who did not respond to calls or e-mails for comment, left Wysocki a sterling recommendation. He endorsed her “without reservation” and described her as “enthusiastic, creative, visionary, flexible, motivating and encouraging.”
Wysocki said she is comfortable in Fairfax. Hybla Valley Elementary, in the Alexandria section of the county, is not a cushy suburban posting. Of her 18 fifth-graders, half are children of immigrants. She is taking courses toward a master’s degree in education at Trinity University.
“We feel fortunate to have Sarah supporting the students at Hybla Valley,” Principal Lauren Sheehy said in an e-mail. “She is a positive and valued team player. Sarah has created a positive learning environment allowing students to be successful academically and socially.”
Wysocki said she feels more at ease generally, especially in seeking help from Sheehy and other mentors. In the District, she said, she often felt that reaching out was considered a sign of weakness.
“Teaching is an art,” she said. “There are so many things to improve on.”
DCPS Plans to Increase Class Size, Cut Special-Ed Positions
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
March 6, 2012
D.C. Public Schools is planning to increase class size in its middle and high schools, and cut funding for special-education coordinators, according to budget documents.
Next school year, each middle-school teacher will oversee 22 students instead of 20, and high-school teachers will take on 24 students instead of 22.
In addition to cutting funding for special-education coordinators, DCPS will no longer budget for Schoolwide Application Model coaches.
"Schools may elect to fund either or both positions through their specialty funds if they choose," according to a budget guide on fiscal 2013 that appeared on DCPS's website some time before Tuesday afternoon.
Last year, Impact bonuses for highly effective DCPS teachers were funded through private donors. "DCPS has absorbed this cost for FY13," the guide says.
The Washington Examiner is reaching out to DCPS for comment.
Mayor Vincent Gray announced this week that he is planning to increase per-pupil funding for the schools by 2 percent.
According to documents, DCPS is planning to increase the amount of psychologists at all school levels, and add more guidance counselors at the high-school level.
The school system also has budgeted for four new pre-kindergarten classrooms, at Leckie, Orr, Peabody and Amidon-Bowen elementaries.
Hardy and Kelly Miller middle schools are set to receive extra funding for the start of a new gifted-and-talented program, as first reported by The Examiner.
Preliminary budgets for each of DCPS's individual schools are publicly available, and principals have until March 7 to petition DCPS for changes.
Gray is scheduled to submit his budget to the D.C. Council on March 23.
Ward 5 to Get Standalone Middle School, Other New Programs
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
March 6, 2012
D.C. Public Schools announced Tuesday that it will open a middle school in Brookland, giving Ward 5 residents a standalone school for students in grades six through eight after years of community outcry.
The school system also will create an International Baccaleurate program at Brown Education Campus and a middle-school program at McKinley Technology High School, to feed into the magnet high school.
DCPS hopes to open the programs in time for the 2013-2014 school year.
School officials announced the decision on Tuesday evening after months of meetings with the Ward 5 community. Family and community members were asked to sign up for committees focused on recruiting students and fostering the transitions and renovations.
Currently, middle-grade students in Ward 5 can attend one of seven "education campuses," which combine the students with elementary-school students or, less frequently, with high-school students. For instance, Noyes Education Campus serves students in preschool through grade 8.
Many education campuses were created under former Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who saw them as a solution to underenrolled schools that DCPS didn't want to close. Most are elementary schools refurbished into preK-8 campuses.
But parents and community members were far from satisfied. In some cases, preteen and adolescent students use desk chairs and toilets designed for children half their size, Ward 5 representatives told The Washington Examiner.
Many of the middle schoolers don't have access to extracurriculars like music, art and athletics, because there aren't enough students to fund these programs under the city's per-pupil budget formula. Across seven education campuses, Ward 5 middle-grade programs enroll 790 students, a small fraction of the 2,100 students they have capacity for.
"Everywhere I turn in Brookland there are kids in strollers, and we lose them to charter schools, or we lose them to other schools in the city," Raenelle Zapata, president of the Ward 5 Education Council, told The Washington Examiner in September. "It's like 'Field of Dreams': If you build it, they will come. If you have a great school, who would drive their kids across town?"
The new Brookland Middle School is set to cover the northern portion of Ward 5, and serve up to 500 students with arts integration and world languages programs.
The school would host at least two guest artists or performances each year, and students would present at two showcases, while half of students would participate in an "artist-in-residence" program each year.
Brookland Middle also would offer two languages, in some cases providing high school credit, with specialized year-long instruction.
Browne Education Campus, which already serves grades six through eight in southeastern Ward 5, is to feature an IB program for both elementary and middle-grade students. "An IB program is one of the ways we can see more rigor, increases student outcomes, and a specialized curriculum," school officials said in a press release.
The new science, math, engineering, and technology (STEM) program at McKinley Tech — dubbed McKinley Middle School — is to include two showcases of student work each year. Students also will participate in STEM-related competitions, as the high-school students do.
In D.C., Reach Inc. Explores Tutoring as a Two-Way Street [Perry Street Prep PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By John Kelly
March 6, 2012
At first blush, it sounds like a recipe for disaster: Take kids who need to improve their reading skills and have them tutor other kids who have trouble reading. But that’s exactly what goes on twice a week at Perry Street Prep, a pre-K-to-12th-grade public charter school in Northeast Washington’s Woodridge neighborhood.
“There are very few kids who don’t need this,” Mark Hecker told me in the hallway outside a third-grade classroom last week.
Mark is the founder and executive director of Reach Inc., a nonprofit tutoring program that’s halfway through the second year of trying out his crazy idea.
Educators know that one-on-one tutoring can help younger students who are struggling to read. “Most often it’s taking really high-performing kids and putting them with low-performing kids,” Mark says. “It’s a good program for the younger kids. It’s college application material for the older kids.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But Mark wondered why both sides of the equation couldn’t benefit the same way. Could a high-schooler get as much academically out of the relationship as a kid in elementary school? And so Reach takes second- and third-graders who aren’t reading at grade level and pairs them with ninth- and 10th-graders who are in the same boat.
It isn’t hard to find participants. About 80 percent of D.C. schoolchildren can’t read at grade level.
“Most remedial programs are pretty stigmatizing,” Mark said. With Reach, though, the older kids have a sudden responsibility.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, tutors work with Reach’s small staff — two full-timers and two part-timers — to prepare lesson plans and identify words that their charges may have trouble with. (A recent book was “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss. You can bet that “truffula” was circled.) On Tuesdays and Thursdays the mentors and mentees pair up for an hour.
In addition to its Perry Street program, Reach has Eastern High students tutoring at Payne Elementary. About 80 kids from the three schools take part.
“I don’t think they look at it as ‘I’m going to get some tutoring,’” Mark said of the high school students.
“They think of themselves as workers, not participants, which I think in terms of stigma is helpful.”
Ah, workers. That’s the interesting twist. The tutors are paid $50 a week. If they’re late or miss a day, their pay is docked.
What I like about Reach is that it illustrates an old truism: If you’re going to teach something, you’d better learn it yourself first.
“These are kids who’ve never been asked to take a leadership role,” Mark said. It’s in its early days yet, but he says it’s working. Tutors have increased their GPAs , and none of them have dropped out of school.
Sarah Berg, the Perry Street third-grade teacher whose classroom we were in, said her pupils come up to her all day, begging to know if it’s a Reach day.
Mark is 30 and has a degree in social work from the University of North Carolina. When he came to Washington seven years ago, he was a social worker in the foster-care system. When he got the idea for Reach, he decided to get a master’s degree in education from Harvard to explore the possibility.
At Perry last week, Chivaune Shorts, a 14-year-old ninth-grader, was helping a lanky third-grader write a paragraph for a work sheet. “Really, it’s to better myself,” Chivaune said when I asked why she signed up for Reach. “I’ve already learned to be patient, because it’s not the easiest job in the world.”
As for the money, Chivaune said she saves some and shares some with her family. Some she donates to the animal shelter. “I’m a real animal fanatic,” she told me. She’s also interested in journalism.
Take it from me, there’s a lot of reading involved in that job.
Music to my ears
I decided to write about Reach because I’m intrigued by it. I’m also helping to raise money for it. On Friday night, my Monkees cover band, the Stepping Stones, is performing at Journopalooza, one of seven acts made up of media musicians who will take to the stage at the Hamilton, at 14th and F streets NW.
Proceeds benefit Reach Inc. and Writopia Lab, a nonprofit that holds writing workshops for kids ages 8 to 18. For information and tickets ($20 in advance; $30 at the door), visit www.journopalooza.com.