- A Deserving School [Washington Latin and DC Bilingual PCS are mentioned]
- NCLB Waiver Bid Stalled by Ed Dept. Concerns
- Children Left Behind
A Deserving School [Washington Latin and DC Bilingual PCS are mentioned]
The Northwest Current
By Davis Kennedy
May 16, 2012
The Petworth advisory neighborhood commission recently backed the applications of two charter schools vying to take over
the shuttered Randolph Elementary School building at 5200 2nd St. NW. Of the two applicants, we’re more familiar with Washington Latin Public Charter School — and we very much like what we’ve heard.
Last year the fifth-through-12th-grade institution was designated a “Tier 1” school by the D.C. charter board because of its strong test results, with more than 80 percent of students testing “proficient” or “advanced” on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System reading test, and more than 75 percent logging those scores in math. The middle school students had the highest proficiency rating in reading of all the city’s charter middle schools in both 2010 and 2011; the upper school students ranked second among charters.
We recently highlighted the school’s relatively new college counselor, Crys Latham, and her success in ensuring that 40 out of 42 of next month’s graduates — the school’s first graduating class — will enroll in four-year colleges or universities in the fall. Students were accepted at 70 percent of the schools to which they applied, and they drew more than $1.5 million in scholarship offers.
The classically focused school, which draws students from all of the city’s eight wards, is housed in three facilities on 16th Street, but it will lose one of them in December 2013.
Thus far, we don’t know enough about the other applicant — DC Bilingual Public Charter School — to judge whether it would be as well-suited to the Randolph campus. But we are sufficiently comfortable with Latin to cheer for its success in finding a new home there. D.C. should do everything it can to encourage schools like Latin to stay here and grow, extending their inspiring reach to more and more students.
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
May 18, 2012
It turns out that the U.S. Department of Education has quite a few issues with the District’s application for relief from No Child Left Behind. The problems start with two chronic concerns: The city’s poor record of handling and accounting for federal grants, and its difficulties staying in compliance with special education laws. Both were inherited by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education when it was formed in 2007, but they remain obstacles.
“The Department is concerned about OSSE’s status as a high-risk grantee,” said the April 17 letter to D.C. State Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley from Acting U.S. Assistant Secretary Michael Yudin, which the District kept under wraps until Thursday evening. Yudin also cited what he called the District’s “sustained non-compliance with Individuals with Disabilities Act” (IDEA).
Federal officials want to hear more about how OSSE will hold the city’s 53 public charter schools accountable--especially low performers-- since they operate with considerable autonomy. Mahaley said OSSE’s issues were unique from other state education agencies because of the city’s heavy concentration of charter schools. She said that OSSE and the D.C. Public Charter School Board need to work out decisions on which agency is best suited to support academically struggling charters.
The Education Department is offering “flexibility” from NCLB’s focus on absolute test scores and its mandate for students to achieve 100 percent reading and math proficiency by 2014. States that propose their own tough accountability plans can get some regulatory relief. Without a waiver, however, nearly all of the District's 187 eligible public and public charter schools would be considered ”failing” in two years.
OSSE officials have proposed a system that emphasizes growth in test scores over annual results and an intensive effort to overhaul the lowest-performing schools in the city. It wants to give parents a more meaningful set of measurements to determine progress of students and schools, including rates of ninth grade completion, and high school and college graduation.
Mahaley said she was surprised by the Education Department’s references to grant and special education issues. She said OSSE’s last three quarterly reports to the federal agency have included no “open issues” surrounding grants, and that discussions were underway on the District’s removal from high-risk status. As for special education, she cited the District’s exit from the “Blackman” segment of the Blackman-Jones class-action lawsuit.
Mahaley said discussions with the department would continue and a revised application will be filed by May 30.
The Northwest Current
By Davis Kennedy
May 16, 2012
We were dismayed — as were school officials and parents across the city — to hear that the District came in dead last in a national test that measures eighth-graders’ command of science. Students attending the District’s public schools scored far below their neighbors in Virginia and Maryland, and 76 percent logged scores deemed “below basic.”
As some have already noted, the “Science 2011: National Assessment of Educational Progress at Grade 8” report compares the District to states, when a more equitable match-up would pit D.C. against schools in other cities. That’s a fair point, but it does not address the reality that District students fared poorly in absolute terms, not only in comparison with other jurisdictions.
We know what the problem is not, at least. In February, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an educational nonprofit, ranked the District’s science education standards, along with California’s, highest in the nation. The standards that the Fordham Institute evaluated have been around a while, too — since 2006, with some updates in 2010.
We’re not sure what the reason is behind the disconnect between the city’s standards and its performance, but we hope that D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and charter school officials are on the case. After all, the goal is not simply to get D.C. out of the basement in national rankings. The news is also of concern because it comes as Mayor Vincent Gray is attempting to position the city as an East Coast Silicon Valley, a tech hub that will attract innovators — and jobs — for decades to come.
If graduates of the District’s schools are unprepared for these jobs in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math), employers will look elsewhere, and the city will have failed to prepare another generation of students to succeed in its own economy.
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