- D.C. charter officials seek to keep Options open [Options PCS mentioned]
Revisions to the SAT college admissions test follow years of gains for rival ACT exam [KIPP DC PCS mentioned] - D.C. leads nation in free school breakfasts
- Principals outline key principles for success [Maya Angelou PCS mentioned]
D.C. charter officials seek to keep Options open [Options PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
March 6, 2014
D.C. charter school officials who previously had said they would seek to close Options Public Charter School for financial mismanagement said Thursday that they will now push to keep the school open.
Options was thrust into turmoil in October when the D.C. Office of the Attorney General filed a lawsuit alleging that three former school managers funneled millions of dollars to two for-profit businesses they ran. The D.C. Public Charter School Board voted in December to take the first steps toward closing the school.
Board members said at the time that they had no leeway under the law to keep Options open. But their decision drew criticism and concerns from the D.C. Council and the school’s court-appointed receiver, Josh Kern, who wondered what would become of Options’ 400 at-risk students — many of whom have disabilities and have been expelled from other schools — if Options were to close.
Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, told the D.C. Council’s Education Committee that he now intends to ask his board not to revoke Options’ charter.
Instead, the school’s academic programs would be run by D.C. Public Schools next year, and its business and legal operations would remain under Kern’s oversight until another charter operator could be identified to take over.
Pearson said there are still several steps before the proposal can be put into action. First, the charter board must vote in favor of the plan, and then D.C. Superior Court Judge Craig Iscoe — who is overseeing the ongoing Options lawsuit, and to whom Kern reports — must also approve.
Education Committee Chairman David A. Catania (I-At Large) praised the proposal as a preferable alternative to closing a school without a plan for what should happen to its students.
“It might provide a road map in the future when we look at school closings,” Catania said. “This could be an introduction to how do we do this in a smooth way.”
Revisions to the SAT college admissions test follow years of gains for rival ACT exam [KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Nick Anderson
March 6, 2014
Anthony Simon’s experience with college admissions testing might shed light on why the College Board this week announced big revisions to its SAT exam, and why the rival ACT has become the most popular admission test in the country.
As Simon prepared for his college search, the D.C. teenager steeled himself for the SAT. He bought a book of vocabulary words and planned to memorize up to 10 words a day. He studied a lot and completed a couple of practice tests.
But he never took the official SAT. Instead, he took the other test — twice.
KIPP D.C. College Preparatory, the charter school Simon attends in Southeast Washington, asks all of its college-bound students to take the ACT in spring of their junior year and fall of their senior year. A consultant works with teachers to help students prepare for the ACT. School officials tell students that “24 opens doors,” referring to a composite score on the ACT scale that is above a college-ready benchmark. The top ACT score is 36.
Simon, now 17, got strong marks. He said he has been accepted to the University of Maryland at College Park and the University of Pittsburgh and is waiting on other applications to selective colleges.
Simon and others said a key factor that draws many students to the ACT is the SAT’s scoring format. Wrong answers to multiple-choice questions on the SAT draw a penalty, which is meant to deter random guesses. There is no such deduction on the ACT.
“The fact that we were penalized for getting answers wrong, it slows down my thought process,” Simon said. The ACT was different. “As I took more practice ACT exams, I felt better about taking it. I did pretty well.”
On Wednesday, the College Board announced an overhaul of the SAT to take effect in early 2016, when today’s high school freshmen start taking college admission tests. The wrong-answer penalty will be erased from the SAT. So will arcane vocabulary. The SAT essay, now required, will be made optional.
These steps and others were taken as part of a broader campaign to improve college access for disadvantaged students, College Board President David Coleman said. He wants to eliminate “tricks” from the SAT and make it more relevant to classroom learning. The College Board also will deliver four college application fee waivers to every SAT participant whose family meets an income-eligibility threshold. The waivers will enable those students to apply to college for free.
But for this agenda to gain traction, the SAT must capture the attention of students who appear to be gravitating toward the alternative.
Historically, the SAT has drawn more students on the West Coast and in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. It remains the leader in the Washington area. The ACT leads in the Southeast and in many states in the middle of the country.
For the high school Class of 2012, the ACT claimed an overall lead after trailing the SAT for generations. For the Class of 2013, the ACT reported about 1.8 million test-takers. The SAT reported nearly 1.7 million. The ACT has partnerships with 13 states, bolstering its market share.
Asked about the ACT, Coleman told reporters Wednesday: “Our true competition is not ACT. It’s poverty.” The College Board declined to comment further Thursday.
In the Washington region, the SAT remains the most popular test, but the ACT is growing much faster.
Argelia Rodriguez, president and chief executive of the D.C. College Access Program, which provides guidance to disadvantaged students, said many in the city’s public schools prefer the ACT’s “simpler, more direct line of questioning.” And these students, she said, like that the ACT’s essay is optional. Rodriguez made clear, though, that she was not endorsing one test over the other.
A Washington Post analysis of data on the number of test-takers in the graduating classes of 2006 and 2013 showed that the market appeared to change significantly after the SAT added a required essay in 2005 that drew mixed reviews. The analysis found that ACT participation rose 53 percent in the District, to 1,647; 78 percent in Maryland, to 13,820; and 92 percent in Virginia, to 22,165.
SAT participation in that time rose 6 percent in Maryland, to 48,106; 8 percent in Virginia, to 60,640; and 11 percent in the District, to 3,977.
The admissions tests have always sought to distinguish themselves.
The SAT, begun in 1926, is rooted in a tradition of assessing how students think regardless of the classes they took. After all, no one takes a class called “verbal.” That was the longtime name of the section of the SAT that covered language skills. It was changed in 2005 and renamed “critical reading.”
The ACT, launched in 1959, focuses on student achievement in core subjects. Its four required sections are English, mathematics, reading and science.
The two are still quite different. But the SAT revisions announced Wednesday signal important overlaps. The ACT takes two hours and 55 minutes, plus the optional essay. The SAT — now three hours and 45 minutes long with a required essay — will in 2016 become a three-hour test, plus an optional essay.
Time matters. Sean P. Burke, a counselor at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, said that an extra hour in a testing room makes a difference. “Sometimes kids wear out during the SAT,” he said. Nearly all students at his school take the SAT, he said, but a fair number take the ACT, too.
D.C. leads nation in free school breakfasts
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
March 6, 2014
It’s national school breakfast week, and federal officials say that the number of K-12 students who are eating the first meal of the day at school is on the rise.
Between 2009 and 2013, the number of students served free breakfast in the nation’s public schools jumped by about 2 million, with the District of Columbia leading the country in terms of having the biggest percentage increase in participation compared to all 50 states.
Nationally, the number of K-12 students eating free breakfast at school grew by an average of 18.9 percent in the past five years, from 11.1 million in 2009 to 13.2 million in 2013.
But in the District, the rate ballooned by 72 percent over those same years, from 20,431 participating students to 35,038.
The District also leads the country in the percentage of hungry children. In 2011, New Mexico and the District had the highest rates of children in households without a consistent food supply — about 30 percent, according to Feeding America, a national nonprofit. That same year, 20 percent or more of the child population in 36 other states lived in households where they did not get enough to eat, the group said.
Maryland also outpaced the national rate, feeding 154,317 students in 2009 to 211,651 students in 2013, or a 37.2 percent increase. Virginia growth rate was below the national average at 16.3 percent; it fed 234,396 students in 2009 and 272,501 in 2013.
“The champions of school breakfast are not just the school nutrition directors,” said Kevin Concannon, USDA’s undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services. “It’s principals and superintendents. They see the results. They see kids who aren’t falling asleep, who are doing better in classes.”
Several factors have propelled the jump in the number of students eating free breakfast at school, Concannon said.
Program officials saw a spike in the years following the 2008 recession, he said. School meals started featuring more fresh fruits and vegetables as a result of the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. And an increasing number of schools began serving breakfast in the classroom instead of the cafeteria, a simple shift that drove up participation, Concannon said.
In the rush before the first bell of the school day, it’s difficult to get students to make a detour and go to a cafeteria for breakfast, he said. Bringing breakfast into the classroom makes it much more convenient, especially for young children. “It doesn’t send the children trundling down the hall to a central location,” he said. “It brings breakfast to them.”
On a recent visit to an Anne Arundel County school, Concannon saw first-hand why educators are serving breakfast in the classroom. “The students came in, were handed a Ziplock bag and they could take the foods they wanted and sat at their desks,” he said. “It was all done quietly with no great fuss.”
Principals outline key principles for success [Maya Angelou PCS mentioned]
The Northwest Current, pg. 5
By Graham Vyse
March 5, 2014
The principals of two high-achieving D.C. public schools reflected on their students’ successes at the D.C. State Board of Education’s Feb. 19 meeting, opining on what factors lead to academic achievement.
The Board of Education heard testimony from Richard Trogisch of School Without Walls in Foggy Bottom and Harold Miles of Maya Angelou Public Charter School’s middle school campus in Capitol Heights.Both leaders run “reward schools” with high standardized test scores.
Trogisch listed several key principles for success, including maintaining transparency in school decision- making and keeping high levels of trust between schools and families. He spoke of the constant need to collaborate with government agencies to ensure “the basic needs of food and shelter” for all students.
With regard to classroom instruction, he said the first priority is that teachers be truly engaged. “We want coaches in the classroom, not referees,” Trogisch said. “We can teach teachers to teach. We can’t teach them to care.”
At the request of Ward 3 board member Laura Slover, Trogisch provided an in-depth description of how his high school approaches its senior project requirement. The Walls principal said this was an idea he brought with him from his time as a principal in Rhode Island, where the project was one of three prerequisites for receiving a diploma. Students choose a research question, write a 15-page paper graded by George Washington University faculty members, and ultimately make a formal presentation to a panel of judges.
“We had a considerable amount of frustration at the beginning — students not wanting to do that,” Trogisch said. But the principal reported that many former students were amazed by how well the project prepared them for college, especially in terms of writing skills.
Ward 2 board member Jack Jacobson asked Trogisch about his timeline for achieving “reward school” status for School Without Walls’ newly acquired Francis-Stevens campus, which houses students in lower grades.
“I would hope two to three years,” the principal said, describing plans to align the curriculum between the two campuses to ensure readiness for Advanced Placement courses.
Ideas for strategies at the middle school level came from Miles of Maya Angelou Public Charter School. These included using educational computer programs for students struggling with specific subject matter and adding extra algebra prep for eighth-graders. “As a part of our enrichment program, we ran Saturday school, and we did that Saturday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon,” he said.
Miles highlighted results from the last academic year, when the voluntary program averaged 20 to 25 students each weekend and ran for the first three Saturdays of each month from November through March.
“What we’re trying to do is get students ready to handle the academic rigor that goes along with high school, whether it’s School Without Walls or any high school across the country,” he said. “We’re making sure that every student we send out of the building as an eighth-grader is ready for those challenges.”