- At Mayer Awards, Teachers Who Answered the Call [Capital City PCS is mentioned]
- New Charter School Will Raise the Bar on D.C. Education
- Jonetta Rose Barras: Education Reform Retrenchment, Part 2
- How is DCPS Paying for 'What's Possible'?
- Reforming D.C.'s Schools: The Henderson Doctrine
- Activist Targeting Schools, Backed By Big Bucks
At Mayer Awards, Teachers Who Answered the Call [Capital City PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
May 16, 2012
This is how a student of Arnita Meekins at D.C.’s Harriet Tubman Elementary described her gift as an educator: “My teacher thought I was smarter than I was. So I was.”
Meekins, who works in special education, was among this year’s 21 recipients of the Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Awards, sponsored by The Washington Post Educational Foundation to recognize teachers throughout the region for their initiative, creativity and professionalism. A group of area principals also received Distinguished Educational Leadership Awards. A full list is here.
The presentation ceremony for teachers at the Post Tuesday evening was filled with stories from students and colleagues of long hours, meticulous preparation and devotion. Nicholas Martino enlisted the school nurse and security guard to help transform Mountain View High in Stafford, Va. into Ellis Island so that his social studies class could gain a vivid understanding of the immigrant experience. Julian Hipkins III brings subjects like Hiroshima alive for his eleventh graders at Capital City Public Charter School in D.C.with first hand testimony from survivors.
Lydia Stewart found it unacceptable when a profoundly disabled student at Osbourn Park High School in Prince William County didn’t think he could attend his graduation ceremony. She worked with him to make sure he crossed the stage to receive his diploma — and thunderous applause from classmates who had never seen him walk before. At R.C. Haydon Elementary in Manassas, Va. third grade teacher Francie Vandivere made reading so popular that kids stayed for detention on the days she ran it so they could get more time with her.
Then there was “The Schleg,” as Andrea Schlegel is known to students at Heritage High School in Leesburg, Va. Not only did she inscribe pens with special good luck messages for her students taking tests, she had them blessed with holy water to cover any gaps in instruction she may have left in her social studies classes.
Like many of her honored colleagues, Tubman’s Meekins, a 26-year DCPS veteran, does a lot more than teach. She has been a resident mentor for new teachers, a coach with Washington, D.C. Special Olympics, and — with students in her classroom ranging in age from 5 to 8 — a presenter at workshops on differentiated instruction. Twice she has been rated Highly Effective under the IMPACT evaluation system. She was also winner of DCPS’ Rubenstein Award for Highly Effective Teaching in 2010-2011.
Speaking for this year’s honorees, Rockville High School’s Carrie Vieira said that teaching, rather than a career they chose, was a calling that found them.
“We can’t help ourselves but teach,” she said.
The Washington Examiner
By Barbara Hollingsworth
May 16, 2012
There's a new charter school opening in D.C. this fall, and if BASIS DC lives up to its flagship's national reputation, public education in the nation's capital will have a much higher bar to meet.
Thanks to the District's well-crafted charter school law, Washington is the only location on the East Coast where Arizona-based BASIS Schools Inc. is expanding its highly successful franchise. BASIS was founded in 1998 by former University of Arizona economics professor Michael Block and his wife, Olga, a former dean at Charles University in Prague, whom he met at a World Bank seminar.
When Olga moved to Arizona and enrolled her daughter Petra in one of Scottsdale's top middle schools, she was appalled by the curriculum's lack of rigor compared with the European education she was used to. Same thing when the family moved to Tucson the following year.
That's when the Blocks decided to start their own charter school "with European and Asian content levels and the environment and structure of an American classroom," Michael Block told The Washington Examiner. They initially had 56 students enrolled in rented space in a Hebrew school, but they needed 100 to break even financially. They reached that milestone in October of 1998.
Within five years, BASIS Tucson, which teaches grades five through 12, was listed as a successful charter school by the U.S. Department of Education. This year, US News & World Report named it the top charter school and the sixth-best high school in the nation. For reference, D.C.'s top-rated Banneker High School was ranked 700th.
Many public schools claim to have great teachers, a rigorous curriculum and a high level of accountability. BASIS Tucson has proved it with its 100 percent graduation and college acceptance rate. BASIS graduates have gone on to seven of the eight Ivies and a large number of other prestigious universities and national liberal arts colleges.
Block is confident these results can be replicated in D.C. "We're very serious," he said. "No one has ever gone to a school like this."
BASIS teachers, recruited from all over the country, don't have to be certified, but they must be highly qualified in their subject areas. They must also demonstrate an ability to connect with students and manage a classroom. But the most exciting innovation is BASIS' rigorous prep-school-like curriculum for middle school students.
BASIS DC fifth-graders will study nine subjects daily, including Latin, ancient history and Saxon math, while reading Rudyard Kipling. By sixth grade, they will be studying biology, chemistry and physics in addition to pre-algebra, American history and J.R.R. Tolkien. At the end of 11th grade, they will already have the credits they need for college, and they will spend a year off-campus working on a senior project. "It deals with senioritis perfectly," Block noted.
Must-pass tests, similar to matriculation exams in the European system, ensure students master subjects before they advance to a higher grade. Block said the school has "nothing close to social promotion."
Instead of waiting for its still-under-renovation building in Penn Quarter to open in mid-July, BASIS DC has been holding intensive after-school and weekend tutoring sessions in four locations since February. Already, 40 percent of the school's 468 open-enrollment students are participating, and teachers are focusing especially on helping the 20 percent who have been identified as extremely low-performing in reading or math. Preliminary test results indicate students, who come from all wards in the city, have advanced more in five weeks of tutoring than in a whole year at DC Public Schools.
"We tell D.C. parents that it will be brutally hard," Block acknowledges. "But when they graduate, their children will be among the best-educated in the city."
BASIS DC still has about 30 slots available for the 2012-13 school year. That's when DCPS and the city's existing charter schools will find out what it's like to compete in the big leagues.
The Washington Examiner
By Jonetta Rose Barras
May 15, 2012
"We have to right-size this [school] district." That's the answer DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson has often given when asked about the future of traditional public schools. A euphemism for closing schools, 'right-size' has become her mantra.
In 2008, the cure for DCPS was closing schools. Now, the same prescription is being offered. Complicating matters, District officials want to transform charters into neighborhood schools. Education advocates said that combination could mean the end of DCPS.
There are 53 charters on 98 campuses, serving 41 percent of all public school students. Next year, four new charters will open.
"Without a change in course, in just a few years DC will essentially have a publicly funded private school system with a limited number of publicly operated schools," said Cathy Reilly, executive director of Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals and Educators.
Death of DCPS means diminution of education choice.
I advocated mayoral control of the schools in 2007, believing it would energize DCPS while providing better and more academic options. I also endorsed the first round of closings; Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Chancellor Michelle Rhee said savings would be reinvested into resource-starved schools, many in Ward 5, 7 and 8.
Those same promises are being made in advance of the next round of closings. That's not surprising. After all, in 2008, Henderson was Rhee's deputy.
Melissa Salmanowitz, DCPS' spokeswoman, said the 2008 promises were kept: Each affected school received "an art, music and a physical education teacher." Schools also were provided instructional coaches, social workers and school psychologists.
Ironically, DCPS recently released a list of school-based personnel who could be terminated this year because their positions were eliminated or there isn't sufficient funding; it included 14 music teachers, 22 math or science instructors, and 24 physical education teachers.
Jeff Smith, with the nonprofit education advocacy group DC Voice, said many communities and families affected by the 2008 closings are "still in transition." He argued more closings won't save money because funds will shift to charters.
In a March 17, 2009 memo, the 21st Century School Fund, Urban Institute and Brookings Institution concluded, among other things, the closings "accelerated the decline in enrollment in DCPS," which conservatively cost the system as much as $4.7 million in revenues. Further, "the outward migration of students from DCPS to charters was more than twice as high for students from closed schools as for students from non-closed schools."
But many students didn't find charter nirvana in 2008. They aren't likely to find it today: 15 charter schools have received evaluations of 34 percent or below -- the lowest tier -- according to the charter board. The majority -- 11 -- of poor performers are in Wards 5, 7 and 8 -- the same communities expected to be hit in the next round of closings.
That means District children from those areas will go from one bad education experience to another bad education experience.
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
May 15, 2012
DCPS has a reputation among its stakeholders for a lack of transparency in budget and financial matters. Here’s a little window onto why.
On April 11, Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced “Proving What’s Possible,” a new $10 million grant program designed to spur innovative ways of boosting student achievement. Officials are especially interested in funding schools that want to extend the academic day, leverage technology to improve learning, or upgrade staff.
All praiseworthy objectives. But what caught my eye was the $10 million. In a budget season when local and federal funds are in decline, and school librarians are an endangered species, how was this being financed?
On April 12, I e-mailed Henderson’s spokeswoman, Melissa Salmanowitz: “We need a much better understanding of where the $10 million is coming from,” I wrote.
Six days pass. On April 18, I get this response. The sources are:
· $2 million in reductions to the Office of Human Capital.
· $3M from the after school program.
· $5M from what Salmanowitz called “interventions which have not shown successful outcomes in schools.”
“DCPS made the deliberate choice to eliminate unsuccessful programs so that principals would have the chance to try new interventions with specific outcomes,” she wrote.
I responded: “This is a good start, but I need to know more specifically about the interventions that have been dropped and reductions to Jason’s [Human Capital chief Jason Kamras’]office.”
On April 20, in a previously scheduled meeting with Kamras, I asked for details about the cuts. He declined to comment and directed me back to Salmanowitz.
Then...nothing.
In an email on May 9 and a phone call on May 10, I reiterated my interest in a line item accounting of the $10 million. In fairness to Salmanowitz, I really don’t think she was hiding anything. She couldn’t find out.
So, on May 15, that’s where we are. I could file a Freedom of Information Act request. I have a file folder full of those. The turnaround time is anywhere from three to six months.
I’m hoping this post might compel them to release the detail I’ve been seeking for more than a month.
DCist
By Martin Austermuhle
May 15, 2012
Ever since Kaya Henderson took over as chancellor of D.C.'s public schools, she's quietly gone about continuing in the footsteps of Michelle Rhee, her former boss. But unlike Rhee, she has studiously avoided the media—and said very little about the work that Rhee did.
Until now. Over the weekend, Henderson gave WAMU's Kavitha Cardoza what we're going to call her philosophy on running the city's schools—and a not-so-veiled critique at how Rhee went about it.
"We at least try to share with people before we make huge decisions about the 'what' and the 'why'" she says. "So I think people have a clearer rationale as to what we're doing."
She also says media outlets aren't as interested in the nitty-gritty details of education reform.
"You cannot reform your school district in the spotlight of the national press," says Henderson. "You have to sit down with the people who are on the ground holding hands to do the messy difficult work together. And that is not headline grabbing."
Of course, not everyone is happy about the way Henderson has gone about the job she inherited from Rhee. The Examiner Jonetta Rose Barras says that she's been too timid in doing the hard work of making D.C.'s public schools better:
She already has one of the largest budgets in DCPS history. Federal law allows her to restructure any school that has failed consistently to meet annual academic progress; that means she can demand the resignation of every administrator and teacher at such schools.
She can redesign the curriculum for any specific school. By law, she can declare an emergency, permitting her to bypass certain union rules. She can re-create a summer school model during the normal academic year, extending the instructional day to provide assistance to underperforming students. She can provide incentives like computers or basic in-home libraries to parents who commit to more active participation in their children's school.
Henderson has more than enough tools. Does she have the willpower and courage to push through reforms? Or will she continue to blame the problem on too many schools?
There's probably a good middle ground between what Rhee did and what Henderson is doing. While the former created the political space for education reform to take hold in D.C., the latter is now ensuring that it gains broader acceptance and that it can't be reversed the next time a new chancellor is chosen.
One thing that's for sure: we don't expect a follow-up to Waiting for Superman starring Henderson.
By Staff
CNBC
May 15, 2012
During her tumultuous three years at the head of the Washington D.C. public schools, Michelle Rhee set off a lot of fireworks.
She's still doing it - on a national stage.
Rhee has emerged as the leader of an unlikely coalition of politicians, philanthropists, financiers and entrepreneurs who believe the nation's $500 billion-a-year public education system needs a massive overhaul. She has vowed to raise $1 billion for her national advocacy group, StudentsFirst, and forever break the hold of teachers unions on education policy.
StudentsFirst has its own political action committee (PAC), its own SuperPAC, and a staff of 75, including a cadre of seasoned lobbyists Rhee sends from state to state as political battles heat up. She has flooded the airwaves with TV and radio ads in a half dozen states weighing new policies on charter schools, teacher assessment and other hot-button issues.
To her supporters, Rhee is a once-in-a-generation leader who has the smarts and the star power to make a difference on one of the nation's most intractable public policy issues.
But critics say Rhee risks destroying the very public schools she aims to save by forging alliances with political conservatives, evangelical groups and business interests that favor turning a large chunk of public education over to the private sector. She won't disclose her donors, but public records indicate that they include billionaire financiers and wealthy foundations.
Rhee says she has only one goal: to make sure all children get a great education.
"We are about fighting for kids," Rhee said. "And whoever is standing in the way ... we are willing to go up against those folks because we can't maintain the status quo."
Few would argue that the status quo is working. In urban school districts nationwide, on average just one in four 10-year-olds is proficient in reading, and one in four 13-year-olds is at grade level in math. Many big-city districts have dropout rates of 50 percent.
Rhee argues the problem isn't a lack of funding: Average spending per student has more than doubled since the early 1970s, even after accounting for inflation, to about $10,500 a year. Yet test scores have improved only modestly.
Schools don't need more money, Rhee says; they need to be held accountable for how they spend it.
Rhee wants all teachers to be evaluated in large measure by how much they can boost their students' scores on standardized tests. Scores are fed into a formula that rates how much "value" a teacher has added to each student over the year. Rhee says teachers who consistently don't add value should be fired; those who do well should be rewarded with six-figure salaries.
She has also successfully pushed legislation in several states, including Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Tennessee, to abolish seniority systems that protect veteran teachers and put rookies first in line for layoffs without regard to job performance.
Also high on Rhee's agenda: giving parents more choices. She calls for expanding charter schools, which are publicly funded but often run by private companies. She wants to let parents seize control of failing public schools and push out most of the staff. She also supports tax-funded vouchers, which can be used to pay private and parochial school tuition, for families living in neighborhoods with poor public schools.
Teachers unions have pushed back hard against many of these policies, with clout gained from years of lobbying and writing checks to candidates. Since 2008, the unions have spent more than $150 million on state politics.
Rhee, a lifelong Democrat, has supported politicians of both parties, but she has worked especially closely with conservative Republican governors who have cut funding for public education and pushed to weaken teachers unions. The politician who has received by far the most support from her organization is a socially conservative Republican legislator in Michigan.
"We are a bipartisan organization," said Nancy Zuckerbrod, a spokeswoman for StudentsFirst. "The party affiliation of the adults is not what matters to us."
Rhee has set up StudentsFirst as a network of interlocking lobbying groups, advocacy organizations and political action committees. By law, she does not have to disclose her donors, and she refuses to discuss her fundraising.
But an adviser to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirms that he provided financial backing for Rhee's recent push into Connecticut politics.
The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, funded by John Arnold, a hedge-fund manager and major Democratic donor, has pledged $20 million over five years. Other backers: the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, funded by heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, which gave $1 million, according to foundation records.
Rhee and her team are "education innovators dedicated to improving student achievement in a transformational way," said Meredith Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Arnold Foundation.
In New Jersey, the state affiliate of StudentsFirst can count on nearly unlimited support from hedge-fund managers David Tepper and Alan Fournier, the executive director said. Tepper and Fournier are also substantial donors to the PAC backing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Both men declined to comment.
"There is no budget," said the state director, Derrell Bradford. "They are willing to spend whatever it takes."
On a smaller scale, Charter Schools USA, one of the largest for-profit charter school management companies in the nation, gave Rhee's group $5,000 last year after honoring her as a "New American Hero," a spokeswoman for the outfit said.
And StudentsFirst has received more than $1 million in small contributions of less than $100 each from parents and other grassroots supporters, the staff said.
While Rhee is not required to disclose her spending, Reuters tracked more than $2 million in advocacy expenditures over the past nine months alone. Among the line items: $790,000 on advertising and lobbying in Connecticut; $6,700 to wine and dine lawmakers in Missouri; and $120,000 in donations to candidates and political caucuses in Tennessee.
In Michigan, StudentsFirst spent $955,000 last fall to push an education package that included evaluating teachers primarily by student test scores and restricting union bargaining rights (so issues like the new evaluation system would not be subject to negotiation). Rhee's top ally in that campaign was State Representative Paul Scott, a social and fiscal conservative seen as a rising star in the Republican party.
Furious, the teachers' union organized and funded a drive to recall Scott. Wealthy business and evangelical interests and StudentsFirst fought back in a failed bid to keep him in office. Rhee's group alone spent at least $210,000 on that campaign, state records show.
UNLIKELY CRUSADER
A 42-year-old mother of two, Rhee seems an unlikely leader of the crusade to overhaul public education in America.
She spent just three years as a teacher, in Baltimore in the 1990s, and then founded a nonprofit to recruit top teachers to urban schools. A decade later she was tapped by Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty to run its schools.
As chancellor, Rhee caused an immediate furor by closing two dozen schools, firing hundreds of teachers and principals, and putting a laser focus on standardized test scores. The scores rose, but officials are now investigating allegations that some of the most dramatic gains may have come from cheating. At first, Rhee called the allegations an insult; later she said she supported an investigation.
Rhee resigned in the fall of 2010 after Fenty was voted out of office, in large part because the teachers unions were so angry with Rhee that they worked feverishly to defeat him.
Rhee now splits her time between Nashville, Tennessee, where her daughters attend public school, and Sacramento, California, where her new husband, former NBA star Kevin Johnson, is the mayor.
She also spends plenty of time on the road. In the past year she has given 150 speeches in venues from Wall Street to charter schools. Her contract for a speech at Kent State University last fall called for a $35,000 fee paid to Rhee Enterprises LLC. Her staff says she also makes many speeches for free.
"She has brought a celebrity status to the movement," said Kevin Chavous, a former city councilman in Washington, D.C.
Rhee's allies in the reform movement don't object to her ambition, but some worry that if cheating is proved in the capital, she will be discredited - and the entire reform movement along with her.
Rhee has also stirred concern among education activists with her links to conservative, anti-union Republicans - notably governors Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, and Mitch Daniels of Indiana. Democrats who have been working on their own to advance many of Rhee's ideas complain that they're finding it harder to win over members of their party because Rhee has made the entire reform platform look like a far-right agenda.
Last fall, for instance, Rhee made two appearances in Pennsylvania at events organized by a conservative PAC that supports a free-market approach to education, in which every family, no matter how wealthy, would receive a tax-funded voucher to pay tuition at private or parochial schools.
The Pennsylvania PAC shares the name "Students First" with Rhea's group but is not affiliated with her organization.
The Pennsylvania PAC has received millions from a trio of hedge-fund managers and the American Federation for Children, a pro-voucher group funded by Betsy and Dick DeVos, who are among the nation's biggest donors to Republican and evangelical causes.
Rhee lent her celebrity status to the two events to press for a bill that would give vouchers to low-income families. The bill is still pending and the chairman of the Pennsylvania PAC, Reverend Joe Watkins, says he "absolutely" sees it as a stepping stone to universal vouchers.
Rhee says she does not support vouchers for everyone and would restrict them to households with annual incomes up to $57,600 for a family of four.
"VALUE-ADDED" FORMULAS
Nearly lost in the frenzy of education lobbying is a crucial question: Will the proposed fixes make schools better?
There is little concrete evidence either way.
Some charter schools vastly outperform traditional public schools; many also do far worse. Rhee says any school that consistently does poorly should be shut down, whether it's a charter or a neighborhood school.
But many public school teachers fear that the best charters are skimming off the best students, leaving them with the least motivated and hardest-to-reach kids - and amplifying the gaps in test scores. Statistics from states as diverse as Florida, Colorado and Connecticut show charters serve far fewer poor, disabled and non-English-speaking students than traditional public schools.
Charters are also often non-union, so their expansion could threaten the power of teachers unions. In Connecticut, unions spent $1.2 million in just the past few months fighting a bill, backed by Rhee, that included charter expansion.
Above all, many teachers object to the focus on student test scores.
Several studies have shown that "value-added" formulas often produce wild swings from year to year, so a teacher judged highly effective this year might be might be rated quite poorly the next. Plus, teachers complain that the standardized tests don't measure critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and other skills they work to nurture.
"They want to apply a business model to this, but we're not making widgets," said James Eager, a high school science teacher in North Haven, Connecticut.
Rhee acknowledges the value-added formulas aren't perfect, but says they're the only objective way to assess and compare teacher performance. "That's the best measure we have," Rhee said.
She says teachers should feel good about another of her goals: big bonuses for the best teachers.
Many unions oppose merit pay, saying it injects competition where there should be collaboration. It's not clear that it's effective, either. A recent three-year study by Vanderbilt University found that teachers offered a $15,000 bonus for raising test scores did no better than a control group.
"I would not be surprised if five years from now," after many of the reformers' proposals have been adopted, "everyone says, 'Well, that didn't work. Let's try something new,'" said Diane Ravitch, who served as assistant secretary of education in the George H.W. Bush administration.
Rhee, undaunted, is finishing plans for a fall election drive. "We've still got a long way to go," she said.
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