- What does DCPS acquisition of Hospitality High say about school reform? [Hospitality High PCS mentioned]
- Private school says it could have taken over troubled special needs charter if it had been asked earlier [Options PCS and Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS mentioned]
- Catania Trashes Bowser’s Education Record at Parents Meeting [Cesar Chavez PCS mentioned]
- Watch D.C.’s School Demographics Change Over the Past Decade
What does DCPS acquisition of Hospitality High say about school reform? [Hospitality High PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
May 1, 2014
Yesterday, the Washington Post revealed that Hospitality High will relinquish its charter to become part of the traditional school system, the first time in the history of the local movement that a charter will convert to being under the umbrella of DCPS. The school did this to avoid having the D.C. Public Charter School Board fail to renew its charter when Hospitality High comes before the body this September. It appears that the move signals a new greater level of cooperation between PCSB and DCPS. It does not.
On the 2013 DC CAS Hospitality High recorded a math proficiency rate for its students of 34.6 percent in math and 30.8 percent in reading. It is a middle-of-the-pack Performance Management Framework Tier 2 school that according to the Post has failed to meet its established academic goals. After 15 years of operation this is not the level of excellence we have come to accept from charter schools in the nation's capital.
So while the PCSB has set the standard for a high level of achievement from the schools it oversees apparently DCPS does not live up to the same expectation. Here is where I think the take over Hospitality High is a mistake. The two school systems should be united in setting goals for academic results. If the charter board has determined that Hospitality High is not good enough to continue operating than that should be the same criteria for Chancellor Henderson's facilities..
I understand that Mayor Gray is extremely interested in growing the vocational educational opportunities among the regular schools. If this is the case then he should create his own institution focused on training young people to enter the hospitality industry. But accepting mediocrity as part of DCPS sends completely the wrong message. The resolution announces loud and clear that it is perfectly permissible to be a failing school as long as it is not a charter. Our commitment to public school reform should be significantly stronger than this decision.
Private school says it could have taken over troubled special needs charter if it had been asked earlier [Options PCS and Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS mentioned]
Greater Greater Education
By Ken Archer
April 30, 2014
A troubled DC charter school for kids with special needs will stay open for one more year under the management of a court-appointed receiver. But a private DC-area school with experience in special education could have taken over the school if it had been contacted earlier, according to an official at the school.
The Public Charter School Board (PCSB) voted yesterday to allow Options PCS, which had been threatened with closure after DC sued its former managers for self-dealing, to remain open through the end of the next school year. A court-appointed receiver, Josh Kern, will continue to oversee Options and plans to hire an executive director to manage day-to-day operations.
Kern founded and served as the leader of a high-performing charter school, Thurgood Marshall Academy, but he has never managed a special education program before.
When asked if the PCSB had approached any private schools about operating Options, PCSB official Tami Lewis said that the agency's staff had "made considerable effort" to do that, but that several schools had "indicated they were not ready to take on so quickly the responsibility of managing a whole school."
But an official with the local private school, where many DC public schools place special needs students they cannot serve adequately, contends that the school could have operated Options next year if the PCSB had raised the possibility earlier. The official says the PCSB approached the school only recently.
Lisa Ott, executive director of DCASE, an organization that represents several private special education schools, said her group was approached on February 10, and that it would have had to submit a charter application by PCSB's deadline of March 3. "We stand ready to assist in the transition and in the long term solution," Ott said. "If they had reached out to us earlier in the process, we could be doing that right now."
In January the PCSB approached DCPS about operating Options, which serves a low-income student body with severe special needs. But those talks recently fell apart, and DCPS says its neighborhood schools lack the ability to serve Options students.
PCSB Executive Director Scott Pearson told the DC Council in January that the PCSB was trying to determine the future of Options by working with OSSE, DCPS, other charter schools, and a charter special education cooperative. He made no mention of private special education schools.
Private placement
Another possibility for Options students would have been to place them with private schools that cater to students with special needs.
That suggestion came up at a DC Council hearing in January. Councilmembers Tommy Wells and David Catania pressed PCSB officials on the need to consider private placements for Options students whose special needs cannot be accommodated at the school.
"We may just have to get the money from the PCSB budget to pay for these private placements," Catania told PCSB officials.
Under federal law, public schools that cannot fully accommodate the needs of a student with medical or learning disabilities are required to enroll the student in a private school. Public schools typically negotiate tuition rates with private schools, but the rates commonly exceed what the DC government spends on such students, about $29,000 per year.
During the last school year about 1,000 DC students were placed in private special education schools, or about 9% of all students with special needs in both traditional public schools and charters.
One of Mayor Vincent Gray's goals has been to cut the number of the private placements in half. At a DC Council hearing on special education last year, several parents and advocates questioned how the city was achieving this goal. City officials claim they are expanding special education capacity in public schools.
The possibility of private placements for Options students has not been discussed in public charter board meetings and court hearings, according to the Washington Post.
While Gray has spoken of how much money DC has saved through reducing private placements, Tami Lewis of the PCSB said that cost was not an issue in determining how to handle the Options situation. Lewis told the Post that the quality of private schools serving students with disabilities is uneven.
"I think there's almost this fantasy that if we put these children in non-publics, it would be a magic pill," Lewis told the Post. "That is not the case."
In response, Ott, from the non-public advocacy group DCASE, told me, "There are a number of non-publics that serve this very population and serve them well, students with these very disabilities."
Few private placements at Options
At Options, the rate of private placement for students needing special education was only about 1% last year (two out of 241 eligible students), far lower than the District average. (Figures appear on p. 1097 of the linked document.)
In their 2011-2012 annual report, Options told its board that it had received a financial award from OSSE in recognition of its low private placement rate.
Generally, parents hire lawyers to secure private placements for their children. But the low-income families at Options may not be able to afford to do that.
Linda Tompkins, a former Options PTA board member, said that most Options students do not have parents who can advocate for their needs and rights. Most are raised by grandparents, aunts and uncles, foster parents, or a single parent with no time to learn about federal special education law.
Under that law, public schools, including charters, must inform a student's parents or caregivers of their right to private placement during an annual review of the student's Individual Education Plans (IEP).
But earlier this year OSSE found that Options had failed to review the IEPs of more than 100 of its 241 special education students for over 3 years, according to an education official familiar with the situation. As a result, the school would not have informed the parents or caregivers of their rights to a private placement.
One disadvantage of keeping Options open only one year longer is that it makes it hard to hire and retain teachers. In January Kern complained at a DC Council hearing of an exodus of teachers. Now that it's clear the school will close at the end of the next school year, it will be difficult to hire experienced replacements.
Catania Trashes Bowser’s Education Record at Parents Meeting [Cesar Chavez PCS mentioned]
Washington CityPaper
By Will Sommer
April 28, 2014
Facing a so-far sleepy general election race, mayoral hopeful David Catania headed back to school Sunday.
After meeting with supporters to launch a "Public School Parents for Catania" effort and delaying a press conference for 20 minutes so a lone TV cameraman could show up, Catania touted his achievements running the D.C. Council's education committee to a crowd of about two dozen outside Capitol Hill's Cesar Chavez Public Charter School.
In his speech, Catania talked up his slate of education bills. In comparison, Catania said, rival Muriel Bowser can't tout much in terms of education-related legislative efforts.
"She's made promises year after year that education would be her top priority, and she has yet to produce a single proposal on the subject," Catania said.
Bowser campaign manager Bo Shuff didn't respond to LL's request for comment. Bowser isn't expected to face Catania in any debates until September.
Public School Parents for Catania co-chair Alice Speck said she decided to back Catania after hosting other mayoral candidates in her house. "One candidate clearly rose above the rest in presenting a comprehensive understanding of the current state of our school system from top to bottom," Speck said.
The group, which the campaign is backing with branded yard signs, bumper stickers, and T-shirts (complete with a cartoon schoolhouse on the shoulder) aims to sign up 1,000 parents whose children are in D.C. public schools before the November election. By then, Catania hopes his rival will have faced more pressure on her own education positions.
"We both have records," Catania said. "I have a record of keeping promises. I have a record of delivering. She will then, sooner or later, be asked to defend her record."
Watch D.C.’s School Demographics Change Over the Past Decade
Washington CityPaper
By Aaron Wiener
May 1, 2014
D.C.'s public school landscape could soon change in a big way. The city is in the process of overhauling its school assignment boundaries and policies, and its proposals so far include radical measures like a citywide lottery for high school students that would upend the longstanding role that geography plays in the city's schools.
But really, the school landscape has already been changing significantly. Over the past decade, charter schools have poached a sizable proportion of the city's traditional public school population. After years of decline, enrollment at city elementary schools has begun to rise. An increasing number of white parents are sending their kids to the city's public schools. And public schools in the eastern part of the city have closed as charters have proliferated.
A new study by the Urban Institute converts the data on D.C.'s changing schools picture into a series of nifty interactives, maps, and charts that demonstrate just how different things are now compared to a decade ago. "The overall story is that big changes in D.C. are reflected in big changes in schools," says Austin Nichols, the lead researcher on the project, who himself went to D.C. public schools and serves on the boundary review committee.
But there's a whole lot more nuance than that. Exhibit A is this interactive map showing the changing enrollment at traditional public and charter schools across the city. Note how the sea of blue slowly turns red in the eastern two-thirds of the city:
For all the focus on neighborhood schools, the fact is that in some parts of the city, a high percentage or even a majority of public school students attend schools outside of their home ward—due to expansive boundaries, convoluted feeder patterns, and students opting for specialized, charter, or out-of-boundary schools. In Ward 2, which doesn't have any matter-of-right neighborhood high schools, only 34 percent of public school students went to schools in the ward in 2012, down from 56 percent in 2003. Ward 4 (see map above) has the highest total number of students attending out-of-ward schools: 3,091 Ward 4 residents go to school in Ward 1 (largely charter schools), and 1,505 go to school in Ward 3. Ward 3, whose schools have the best reputation, sends the fewest students to other wards.
Here, from a related blog post from the Urban Institute, is a breakdown of where Ward 4 students go to school:
Part of the change in the city is simply demographic. All across the city, birth rates are higher now than a decade ago, largely because the city's population is bigger. But in certain neighborhoods, it's much higher. Take a look at the number of births in the Columbia Heights/Petworth area in 2003, broken down by the education level of the mother. Green means no bachelor's degree, light blue means bachelor's degree, dark blue means a higher degree, and dark gray means no information:
See link to view graphs.