NEWS
- Five charter schools hope to open in D.C. next year [Lee Montessori PCS, Center City PCS, and Democracy Prep PCS mentioned]
- How does a teacher’s race affect which students get to be identified as ‘gifted’?
- Brain science: Should schools teach boys and girls different subjects?
Five charter schools hope to open in D.C. next year [Lee Montessori PCS, Center City PCS, and Democracy Prep PCS mentioned]
Watchdog.org
By Moriah Costa
April 22, 2015
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Parents may have more charter schools to choose from next year, as the D.C. Public Charter School Board considers applications from five new schools.
Leaders from all five schools presented their applications to the board at a public hearing Monday.
Many cited the long waitlist for charters as a reason for wanting to open a charter and the need for high-quality college preparatory programs. The number of students waitlisted by charters increased by 18 percent this year, to 8,526, with a high demand for Montessori programs, language immersion schools and preschool.
About 44 percent of D.C. students are enrolled in a charter school.
The applicants are:
Breakthrough Montessori Public Charter School, a partnership with Lee Montessori Public Charter School and the National Center for Montessori in the Public Center. The school would focus on human development with an emphasis on prevention programs for troubled children. It proposes to offer pre-kindergarten (ages 3 and 4), and eventually expand to sixth grade.
Legacy Collegiate Academy Public Charter School, a college-prep elementary and middle school with a focus on literacy, “strong character” and “a joyful school community.”
Washington Leadership Academy, a high school that would focus on blended learning, or using technology in the classroom. It was co-founded by Seth Andrew, founder of Democracy Prep Public Schools.
Sustainable Futures, a personalized high school program for youths ages 14-21 who are “disconnected”– homeless, in foster care, involved in the justice system, unemployed or not enrolled in school. It was founded by a group of current DCPS educators.
Goodwill Excel Center Public Charter School, an adult education program run by Goodwill Education Initiatives. It would allow adults who dropped out to return to school and earn a high school diploma.
Community input
Sean Hardnett, chief of student achievement at Center City Public Charter Schools, said Sustainable Futures would meet the needs of the city. “It’s looking to serve a group of children that are underserved,” he said.
Phillip Stephen, a D.C. resident and software developer, said establishing a technology focused school like Washington Leadership Academy is needed to prepare students for the future.
“What Washington Leadership Academy is looking to accomplish… is something that is very, very special and I think it’s going to have a huge impact on these students,” he said. “From my personal experience and my professional experience, technology is the future and we need to be preparing our students to live in this new world.”
But some D.C. residents and parents are concerned about the lack of collaboration between the charter board and the D.C. Public School district when opening new schools.
“This lack of planning results in an inefficient use of our tax dollars that go towards education, has a detrimental impact on both existing charter schools and the D.C. public schools, and creates more open seats than the city has students to fill them,” said Susan Wells, a D.C. resident who has a fourth-grade daughter at Tyler Elementary Spanish Immersion program.
Valerie Jablow, a parent and resident of D.C., said the board should analyze current charter and public schools and get a third-party assessment to determine if these charter schools are needed.
“…having privatized entities determine their own need for public funds falls short of the high standard we must hold for public resources for our kids,” she said.
The board votes on the applications at a public meeting May 18. The public has until 5pm on May 11 to submit written comments.
How does a teacher’s race affect which students get to be identified as ‘gifted’?
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
April 22, 2015
Black students are more likely to be identified as “gifted” when they attend schools with higher proportions of black teachers, according to a new study, and Latino students are more likely to be called gifted when they go to schools with more Latino teachers.
The study doesn’t get at why there is such a correlation, but it adds another layer to a long-simmering debate about why black and Latino children are less likely to be called “gifted” than their white and Asian peers.
The connection between teachers’ race and students’ likelihood of being called gifted “should give us pause,” said Jason A. Grissom, a professor at Vanderbilt University and the study’s lead author. “That does speak to something that fundamentally doesn’t feel right.”
“Really, a kid’s probability of being assigned to gifted services should not be a function of the characteristics of the teachers in the school,” Grissom said.
Black and Latino students are underrepresented in gifted programs. Graphic courtesy Jason A. Grissom.
Black and Latino students are underrepresented in gifted programs. From recent AERA paper by Jason A. Grissom, Luis A. Rodriguez and Emily C. Kern.
He and his colleagues presented their research over the weekend at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Chicago.
They examined data from more than 2,000 schools in the 2003-4 and 2011-12 school years, and they determined that on average, 6 percent of all students in a school are identified for gifted programs. Nearly 8 percent of white students are called gifted, compared with just 3-4 percent of black and Latino students, according to their work.
But a 10 percent increase in black teachers was associated with a 3.2 percent increase in the proportion of black students identified as gifted. Nearly the same pattern held true for Latino teachers and students.
Teachers often play a key role in identifying which students in their classrooms are highly intelligent and should be tested for admission to gifted programs.
In a separate study using different data, Grissom found that black students are more likely to be identified as gifted when they have a black teacher, whatever the racial composition of the rest of the staff. Students with very similar — and very high — test scores are assigned to gifted programs at different rates depending on race, he found; the disparities were less stark for students of color with teachers of the same race.
Observers seeking to explain the discrepancies in gifted representation are quick to raise questions about teachers’ biases or lack of cultural understanding, Grissom said. But he said there could be many other factors, including students who exhibit stronger performance when their teachers are the same race.
“It could be that two different teachers are actually seeing different capacities in a kid because that kid is behaving differently,” Grissom said.
Gifted assignment is far from the only aspect of education in which race appears to matter. Research has shown lower suspension rates for black students in schools with higher proportions of black teachers, for example. Minority students are less likely to be assigned to special education when there are more minority teachers. And students tend to achieve at higher levels when they have teachers of the same race.
Demographic change means it is all the more important to better understand these patterns, Grissom said. Minority students now compose the majority of students in public schools, but more than 80 percent of the nation’s teachers are white.
Brain science: Should schools teach boys and girls different subjects?
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
April 22, 2015
Among the more thought-provoking discoveries in the emerging science regarding the teen brain is the fact that the pace of brain development differs in males and females.
In her best-selling book, “The Teenage Brain,” Frances Jensen discusses how the part of the brain that processes information grows during childhood and then starts to pare down, reaching a peak level of cognitive development when girls are between 12 and 13 years old and when boys are 15 to 16 years old, generally speaking.
“The girls have a level of organization where they’re doing complex scheduling and social arrangements, and making lists,” Jensen said. “Meanwhile, boys at that same age, you’re lucky if they remember to bring their books home from school.”
That means boys and girls may be ready for challenging subjects — like complex math and science — at different points. It also could mean that schools are missing the right time to teach those subjects.
Schools ought to consider some gender-based curricula, Jensen said.
But beyond gender differences, if every student were given a neurological evaluation, educators would have powerful clues as to the best way to personalize learning, she said. “Brains are in such a different state from person to person, they should be taught differently,” she said.
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