NEWS
- D.C. charters experience first break with Bowser Administration [FOCUS, E. L. Haynes PCS, Washington Latin PCS, and DC International PCS mentioned]
- What DC's two most sought-after schools have in common [Mundo Verde PCS and Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
- Despite minority student success, charter school segregation narrative continues
- National charter schools advocate wants Hogan to veto charter bill
- School closings are politically difficult. But are they good for student achievement?
- Shutting Bad Schools, Helping Students
D.C. charters experience first break with Bowser Administration [FOCUS, E. L. Haynes PCS, Washington Latin PCS, and DC International PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
April 28, 2015
Earlier this month it was reported here that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had blocked $4 million in city funds for construction projects at two charter schools, Washington Latin PCS and DCI PCS. In a follow-up article yesterday Moriah Costa of Watchdog.org reveals for the first time a public split between the Public Charter School Board's executive Director Scott Pearson and the relatively new Mayor on this issue. Ms. Costa quotes Mr. Pearson as commenting before the D.C. Council:
“It baffles me that this council can pass a law that appropriates money. That law is then signed by a mayor and then the will of the council is not fulfilled,"
He went on to add that Ms. Bowser's move "just seems wrong."
The relationship between the head of the Wilson Building and the sector that educates 44 percent of all public school students should not have gone bad. After all, in a move that received a standing ovation from charters, Ms. Bowser named Jennie Niles, the founder and executive director of E.L. Haynes as her Deputy Mayor for Education. In addition, just last week, Steve Bumbaugh of the CityBridge Foundation was confirmed by the D.C. Council for a seat on the PCSB. CityBridge as an organization is a strong friend to the charter movement. But there have been recent storm clouds on the horizon. Ms. Bowser skipped the annual FOCUS Gala that Mayor Gray made a priority to attend each year. Moreover, there has been silence from her office on two major issues facing the city's 110 charter schools; turning shuttered DCPS buildings over to them and the FOCUS coordinated funding equity lawsuit. Lastly, the Mayor has indicated in the past that she would like charters to offer a admission preference for neighborhood children, something many involved in these alternative schools find objectionable.
There is still time to turn things around. Ms. Bowser could discover that she has found the money to fulfill the promise to two schools in order to complete their facilities. This would go a long way to repairing a disagreement that never should have been started in the first place.
What DC's two most sought-after schools have in common [Mundo Verde PCS and Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
Greater Greater Washington
By Jessica Wodatch
April 27, 2015
A recent post analyzed the waitlist numbers for DC's traditional public schools and charter schools. Jessica Wodatch, executive director and one of the founders of Two Rivers Public Charter School, sent us this response. I agree with Natalie Wexler that "school waitlist data can tell us what families want." But Wexler didn't point out what the two schools with waiting lists of over 1,000 students, Two Rivers and Mundo Verde public charter schools, have in common: Both are Expeditionary Learning schools.
Expeditionary Learning is a model that emphasizes interactive, project-based learning along with student engagement and character development. EL schools are powerful learning communities where students learn by doing.
What does that mean? Two Rivers' eighth-graders recently studied genetics and ethics. But instead of reading chapters from textbooks and filling out worksheets, their expedition asked the question, "Who owns my DNA, and under what circumstances would I share it?"
Students read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, delved into the genetics behind DNA, and ultimately wrote the script for a mock trial of Johns Hopkins Hospital, which used Lacks' DNA without her or her family's permission. The students shared their learning with the author of the book and were invited to meet her and several members of the Lacks family.
This type of learning not only cements the basic facts about genetics, but also allows students to develop and grow their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Our younger students engage in the same approach. Recently our first-graders tackled a study of economics through the following problem: "Students at the local homeless shelter don't have books. How can we help them?"
Our students set out to open a store to raise money. They surveyed the school to find out what they should sell (popcorn won), wrote letters to families asking them to invest in the store, purchased supplies, wrote jingles, created posters, and advertised and operated their store.
Students were in charge of making the sales and keeping track of the money. At the end of the expedition, they returned investors' money with interest and created an economics coloring book they shared with other students.
They raised more than $200, which they used to purchase books for the shelter. Our six- and seven-year-olds learned valuable and complex lessons about economics by engaging with difficult and meaningful tasks.
At a time when many schools have taken the joy out of learning, Expeditionary Learning schools put it front and center. By asking students to be leaders of their own learning and engaging them in purposeful inquiry, we help them acquire not only basic skills but also the critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration skills required for success in life. And they have fun doing it.
We at Two Rivers are humbled by the waitlist for our school. We are opening another campus this fall to help address it. But we are not surprised at the demand for this educational approach and are encouraged to see more schools around the city embracing it.
What do the thousands of names on waitlists for Two Rivers and Mundo Verde tell us? That parents want educational models where students learn by doing, develop critical thinking skills, and are active participants in their education. That's the not-so-secret sauce of DC's most in-demand schools.
Despite minority student success, charter school segregation narrative continues
Watchdog.org
By Yaël Ossowski
April 28, 2015
At the recent Education Writers Association national seminar in Chicago, a small breakout session asked the following question: Is school choice a tool for opportunity and equity, or further segregation?
Following the latest negative spin on charter schools around the country, it seems most education journalists decidedly choose the latter.
“If you’re an education writer and aren’t covering segregation in schools, I’d ask you why,” said Nikole Hannah-Jones, winner of the EWA award for best education reporting, in her acceptance speech.
Her comments echo the controversial study released by Duke University researchers in conjunction with the National Bureau of Economic Research earlier this month, which claims charter schools in North Carolina are further segregating public schools and leaving minority students behind.
The Washington Post says this is proof white parents are using charter schools to “secede” from the traditional public system. But the figures show otherwise.
According to Watchdog.org reporter Moriah Costa’s report on Washington, D.C. schools, charter schools in the nation’s capital have 78 percent black students, a full 10 percent ahead of normal public schools.
And it’s not just in Washington, D.C.
The Center for Education Reform’s 2014 Charter School Survey finds charter schools serve more low-income students, more black and Hispanic students.
“Charter students are somewhat more likely to qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch due to being low-income (63 percent of charter students versus 48 percent of public school students), to being African-American (28 percent of charter students versus 16 percent of public school students) or to being Hispanic (28 percent of charter students versus 23 percent of public school students),” says the study.
Even applied locally, charter schools provide more academic results to a more diverse student body.
A March 2015 study from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, an institute hosted at Stanford University, examined 41 different metropolitan school districts and recorded a higher level of academic growth in kids who attend charter schools.
“Our findings show urban charter schools in the aggregate provide significantly higher levels of annual growth in both math and reading compared to their traditional public school peers,” claims the study.
That includes metros such as Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Memphis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Phoenix and Washington, D.C.
“Across all urban regions, Black students in poverty receive the equivalent of 59 days of additional learning in math and 44 days of additional learning in reading compared to their peers in traditional public schools,” write the authors.
That’s 48 extra days of math learning and 25 additional days of reading learning for Hispanic students.
In a provocative 2009 study, entitled “Do charter schools ‘cream skim’ students and increase racial-ethnic segregation?”, researchers from Mathematica Policy Research at Vanderbilt University couldn’t document any proof of segregation in charter schools.
“We find little evidence that charter schools are systematically creating greater segregation,” said the researchers. In addition, they found that students who transfer to charter schools receive better test scores once they begin in their new schools, not before.
That puts down the claim that charter schools are only recruiting amongst the best students and leaving poor-performing kids behind, a charge often cited by public school activists and teachers unions.
The most vociferous reactions to the claims of charter school segregation have come from black leaders in the charter school movement.
“Nonsense,” said David Hardy, CEO of Boys Latin of Philadelphia Charter. “Poor public schools do more to increase segregation than any charter,” he told Watchdog.org. Hardy’s school population is made up of approximately 97 percent black students.
Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom, a North Carolina-based charter school organization, blasted the claims as “false and disingenuous.” He points to figures which show charter schools in the Tar Heel State have a student population with over 30 percent while traditional public schools have only 26 percent.
Considering the facts, the notion that charter schools are further segregating minority students seems to be without support. Whether that will inform the arguments of charter school and school choice opponents is still to be determined.
National charter schools advocate wants Hogan to veto charter bill
The Washington Post
By By Ovetta Wiggins
April 27, 2015
A national charter advocacy organization wants Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to veto a bill passed by the General Assembly that would change how charter schools operate in the state.
The bill originally was pushed by charter advocates because it would have given charter operators greater authority and was a way to increase the number of such schools in the state. But it was significantly watered down as it made its way through the legislature.
Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, sent a letter to Hogan last week asking him not to sign the bill.
“The Public Charter School Improvement Act of 2015, no longer reflects the bold change your original proposal envisioned and will do nothing to improve the state’s already ‘F’ graded charter school law,” Kerwin wrote. “In fact, some of the provisions are a step backwards.”
Hogan legislative director Joseph M. Getty said the governor nevertheless plans to sign the bill, citing support for other charter advocacy groups like Maryland CAN. Getty called the bill “small progress, but it’s progress.”
The governor’s original bill made sweeping changes to the state’s charter law, giving schools the ability to hire and fire teachers, doing away with a requirement that charters fall under state collective bargaining rules and giving charters more say over who can attend.
The amended bill does not change hiring rules, but it does provide some leeway on enrollment. It also offers some flexibility regarding certain state educational requirements for high-performing charter schools that have been in existence for at least five years, are in good financial shape and have a student achievement record that exceeds the local school system’s. Those charters would be exempt from specific requirements about scheduling, curriculum, and professional development.
Kerwin said the bill would prohibit online charter schools, which are operating in 29 states across the country. She said it also gives the state Board of Education less power.
“If this is signed into law, Maryland will be the first state to roll back its charter law, which isn’t good for the movement,” Kerwin said.
Kerwin said even one of the most promising elements of the bill, providing some charters with more flexibility, could prove to be a problem. Instead of those charters being able to negotiate throughout the term of the charter to make operational changes, the bill makes all negotiations subject to a legal agreement, Kerwin said.
Not all advocates agree with Kerwin. Jason Botel, executive director of Maryland CAN, said the bill is a “good step in the right direction” and added that he looks forward to the bill being signed.
“This is a building block to build more improvements in the future,” Botel said.
But Kerwin said if Hogan signs the bill it could impede future efforts for reform.
“We know there will not be another at-bat to try to bring meaningful change,” Kerwin said.
Getty said legislators are more likely to consider additional reforms next year or two years from now.
“Some people think you have one at-bat per term,” Getty said. “I don’t think that’s true. We got a lot of buy-in on this legislation. . . I don’t view it as one bite at the apple. . . We’re in a better bargaining position with this bill in place. It gives us an opportunity to experiment and to make fixes.”
School closings are politically difficult. But are they good for student achievement?
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
April 28, 2015
Closing public schools is a political minefield — just ask Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who had a tough reelection bid this year after dozens of school closures on his watch left voters concerned.
But what do school closings mean for student achievement?
Critics of closings have long argued that shuttering schools not only undermines communities but also destabilizes students. They say a child’s ability to learn is disrupted when routines and trusted adults are ripped away.
Now a new study from the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute challenges that orthodoxy, concluding that students displaced by school closings actually tend to make gains faster on math and reading tests than their peers in schools that stay open.
“Everyone agrees that shutting down low-performing schools is beneficial to those students who have not yet entered them,” write the authors. “However, we show that this is also the case for the students currently attending them.”
The study tracked more than 20,000 Ohio children who were students in nearly 200 traditional and charter schools that closed between 2006 and 2012. It found that, three years after their schools closed:
- Students from traditional public schools that closed ended up gaining the equivalent of 49 extra days of learning in reading and 34 extra days in math
- Students from shuttered charter schools had 46 extra days of learning in math and no statistically significant extra days in reading
- Students from shuttered traditional public schools who went to “higher-quality” schools (as judged by test scores), had the equivalent of 69 extra days of learning in reading and 63 extra days in math
- Students from shuttered charter schools who went to higher-quality school, had 88 extra days of learning in reading and 58 extra days in math.
The findings come with a few grains of salt. The study focuses on Ohio, so it’s not clear how the conclusions might translate elsewhere, and it zeroes in on math and reading test scores, which — many critics of ed-reform argue — fail to capture important things, including students’ social-emotional well being.
The study also confirms what one might suspect, concluding that displaced children who end up in a higher-quality school, as judged by test scores, tend to make bigger gains. But it offers no specifics about the fate of children who end up in lower-quality schools, and they are not a small proportion: About six in 10 children in traditional public schools that close end up in better-performing schools, according to the study. That leaves about four in 10 who do not end up in better-performing schools.
So in order for school closures to work as a way to improve students’ learning, there have to be good schools for displaced children to go to. In many communities, good schools are hard to come by.
The study also acknowledges that school closures might bring less-than-desirable effects to schools that absorb displaced students. In general, test score gains tend to be diminished at those “receiver schools” as they adjust to the influx of new students.
Still, the findings are sure to add a new dimension to the debate about school closings. Turning around persistently troubled schools has proven difficult, and examples of success are rare. Fordham’s paper argues that closing schools and opening new, better schools could be a faster route to improvement.
Shutting Bad Schools, Helping Students
The Wall Street Journal
By Michael J. Petrilli and Aaron Churchill
April 27, 2015
As difficult and disliked as school closures can be, a new study being released Tuesday by the Fordham Institute indicates that the students usually benefit. When we looked at the impact of closures on their achievement, we found that, on average, children directly affected by closure gained significantly—the equivalent of an extra month of learning in their new schools.
Shutting schools is politically dangerous. Just ask a big-city mayor or superintendent who has tried it. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has had to fight for his political life after taking heat for closing scores of schools in 2013. Even with school budgets drowning in red ink, authorities in Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C., and many other places have faced intense resistance to school closures. Survey data helps explain: Nearly 60% of Chicago voters disapproved of the school closures supported by the mayor.
So shutting schools is unpopular. But what if that’s best for the kids trapped inside?
For our new study, we looked at Ohio, home to cities that have struggled with sluggish economies, waning populations and competition from charter schools. Taken together, the school districts in the state’s eight major cities lost more than 50,000 pupils over eight years. Some schools wound up with too few kids to be sustainable; others were closed because of educational failure. Some charters closed, too, for the same reasons.
As one might expect, these urban school closings affected mainly disadvantaged pupils. In the nearly 200 closed district and charter schools we studied, 73% of students were African-American and more than 85% were poor. The average student in a closing school scored at approximately the 20th percentile on Ohio’s math and reading tests.
The study utilized state records to chart the trajectory of students’ test scores before and after the school closings. Our research team from Ohio State and the University of Oklahoma estimated the academic impact of closure by comparing displaced-students’ achievement trends with those of similar students who were unaffected by closure.
To suggest the size of the educational impact of closure, we presented the findings as “additional days of learning,” which assumes that a year’s worth of learning happens over a 180-day school year. This metric captures the incremental benefit of an intervention—in this case, school closure—on test scores, and is frequently used in education research to convey the results of statistical analyses.
The research reveals that displaced students typically receive a better education in their new school, relative to what they would have received in their closed school. Three years after closures, the public-school students had gained, on average, what equates to 49 extra days of learning in reading—gaining more than a year of achievement growth, as measured by state reading exams. In math, they gained an extra 34 days of learning, as measured by state math exams. In the charter sector, displaced students also made gains in math—46 additional days. These learning gains correspond to an improvement that moves students from the 20th to 22nd percentile in the achievement distribution.
Across both sectors, when students landed in higher-quality schools than the ones they left behind, the gains were even larger—60 days in both math and reading for public-school students, and 58 and 88 days, respectively, for charter students. In other words, students displaced into a higher-quality school make gains that boost their achievement from the 20th to 23rd percentile.
These results suggest that charter and district authorities should welcome school closures as a way to improve the education outcomes of needy children. Of course they must also be judicious, take into account the supply of higher-quality schools, and work with parents and community members to ease the transition. But done properly, shuttering bad schools might just be a saving grace for kids who only get one shot at a good education.
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