- D.C. Council to hold hearings on school boundaries
- DC students may find themselves stumped by Common Core tests next year
- Giving aid and comfort to great teachers
- Mental health services for Washington’s poorest kids is lacking, study says
- Where do DC homeless students go to school? These tween hackers can show you [BASIS DC PCS mentioned]
- D.C. students learn unusual lesson in contest [Cesar Chavez PCS mentioned]
D.C. Council to hold hearings on school boundaries
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
May 6, 2014
D.C. Council Education Committee Chairman David A. Catania (I-At Large) said he plans to hold hearings in June on the city’s controversial proposals to overhaul school boundaries and student-assignment policies, giving parents and others another public venue to air opinions and concerns.
Catania announced the plans during an oversight hearing for Abigail Smith, the deputy mayor for education, whose office produced the proposals. No hearing dates have been set, according to Catania’s staff.
The proposals range from tweaking the city’s current system to fundamentally changing the way students are assigned to schools, replacing matter-of-right neighborhood schools with lottery-based admissions.
The council has no direct control over boundary redrawings or changes to student-assignment proposals; those policies are, by law, up to the mayor alone. But that doesn’t mean that council members are completely without influence.
“Boundary adjustments are very political,” D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) said at Friday’s hearing. “It’s political among parents, it’s political among us council members. It’s just political.”
At community meetings over the past month, parents overwhelmingly rejected the notion of losing guaranteed access to the school down the block, according to feedback published by Smith.
But most of that feedback came from residents of relatively affluent Wards 3 and 4, where parents tend to be happy with their schools. There has been far less input from residents of more-impoverished wards 7 and 8, where many students opt out of their neighborhood schools in favor of out-of-boundary or charter schools.
Smith said the community advisory committee leading the boundary overhaul will consider that feedback before releasing a refined proposal in June for another round of community input.
The city needs to revisit its student-assignment policies and boundaries, she says, because decades of demographic change and charter-school growth have left some schools overcrowded and others half-empty, some schools thriving and others struggling.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) is expected to announce final changes in September. But they wouldn’t go into effect until fall 2015, which means that decisions about how and whether to proceed would really be up to whoever is elected mayor in November.
Catania, who is running for mayor, has rejected the proposals, vowing to adopt none of them if he wins. His opponent, Democratic nominee and Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser, initially said she was intrigued by “choice sets,” or mini-lotteries at the elementary level, but later clarified that she would not support any proposal that does away with neighborhood schools.
D.C. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) also said Friday that she would not support any plan to move toward lottery-based admissions.
“We’ll shuffle kids around, perhaps, but what we will have, I believe, is a dismantling of the schools that have become very good schools,” Cheh said. “We will shatter the confidence that parents have developed in these schools.”
Barry declined to comment specifically on the proposals, but pointed out that many students in his ward, east of the Anacostia River, are already leaving their neighborhoods in search of better schools.
“Let me be clear: I believe in choice,” Barry said. “I don’t think parents should be stuck” in low-performing schools.
DC students may find themselves stumped by Common Core tests next year
Greater Greater Education
By Natalie Wexler
May 5, 2014
Next year DC public school students will take a new standardized test that's supposed to test their critical thinking skills. But a number of questions on a publicly available practice test are confusing, unrealistically difficult, or just plain wrong.
A recent post on Greater Greater Education criticized the design of the Common Core-aligned test that DC will begin using next year, which is being designed by a consortium of states called PARCC. But judging from sample questions, there are problems with the test that are even more basic than its design.
Like the author of the recent post, I took the PARCC English Language Arts practice test for 10th-graders. I've been a writing tutor for a number of 10th- and 11th-graders in a high-poverty DCPS school, so I have some idea of students' literacy skills at that grade level.
The test consists of 23 questions, most of which have two parts that are based on a given text. I ran into problems with the very first question. The relevant passage, taken from a short story, read as follows:
I was going to tell you that I thought I heard some cranes early this morning, before the sun came up. I tried to find them, but I wasn't sure where their calls were coming from. They're so loud and resonant, so it's sometimes hard to tell.
Part A of the question asked for the meaning of the word "resonant" as used in this passage. The choices were:
A. intense
B. distant
C. familiar
D. annoying
I was stumped. None of these words matched the definition of resonant as I know it, which is more like "echoing." But, being a dutiful test-taker, I knew I had to choose A, B, C, or D.
Maybe this particular author was using the word in an idiosyncratic way? I tried to forget what I knew about the meaning of resonant and instead looked for what teachers call "context clues." From what I know, many DC 10th-graders would be in a similar position.
The passage said that the speaker wasn't sure where the cranes' calls were coming from, and the only word that seemed to square with that fact was "distant." So I chose B.
Wrong. The answer was A, "intense."
I suppose you could make an argument that "intense" makes sense here as a definition of resonant, but it's not obvious what it would be. Why would intensity make it hard to identify the source of a sound?
That was the most egregious example I found of a badly written test question. But I found a number of other instances where the correct answers were far from clear.
Arbitrary distinctions
The next set of questions, for example, concerned a descriptive passage about a firefly hunt. The passage described the fireflies as "sketching their uncertain lines of light down close to the surface of the water."
One question asked what was implied by the phrase "uncertain lines of light." I chose: "The lines made by the fireflies are difficult to trace."
Wrong. The correct answer? "The lines made by the fireflies are a trick played upon the eye."
Well, maybe. But there was nothing in the passage to indicate that one answer was any better than the other. Do we really want to make the results of high-stakes tests depend on such arbitrary distinctions?
Another literature-based set of questions was relatively clear, although not exactly easy. But one basic problem was that, right at the beginning, the author used the word "machine" to mean bicycle. If you put your cursor over the word "machine," which was underlined, and clicked, that rather unlikely definition popped up. But if you didn't happen to do that, it would be pretty hard to understand the passage.
Reading Supreme Court opinions
I did a lot better on a section where all the questions were based on excerpts from a majority and a dissenting opinion in a Supreme Court case about the First Amendment. But then again, I have a law degree, and, having spent a year as a law clerk to a Supreme Court Justice, I have a lot of experience interpreting Supreme Court opinions.
I suspect the average DC 10th-grader will have a much harder time with that section than I did. It's not that the questions call for extensive background knowledge in constitutional jurisprudence. In fact, they call for reading a text closely and making inferences based on that text, just as Common Core-aligned tests are supposed to.
But if a test-taker confronts a lot of unfamiliar concepts and vocabulary words, she's unlikely to understand the text well enough to make any inferences. In just the first few paragraphs of the majority opinion, she'll confront the words "nascent," "undifferentiated," and "apprehension." Based on my experience, few DC high school students are familiar with these words. Nor are they familiar with what the Supreme Court does or what the First Amendment is.
I certainly hope that someday DC 10th-graders will be able to understand texts like these well enough to use them to demonstrate their analytical abilities, and I hope that day comes as soon as possible. But only those who have no idea what's going on in DC's public high schools can believe it will come by next year. Most likely, students will either guess at the answers or just give up.
Many DC students, especially those in high school, are performing far below grade level. Even if their teachers manage to bring up their performance substantially, questions like these won't be able to measure that improvement because they'll still be pitched at too high a level.
Real test questions are secret
Of course, students won't actually be getting these practice questions when they take the tests next year. Nor did they get these questions this spring, when many of them participated in field tests. But because the real questions are closely guarded secrets, the practice questions are all we have to go on.
Recently the principal of a New York City elementary school complained that she wasn't allowed to reveal "the content of passages or the questions that were asked" on the Common Core-aligned tests given at her school—although she did say the tests were "confusing, developmentally inappropriate, and not well aligned with Common Core standards."
Those weren't PARCC tests, but PARCC has an even more draconian rule about its field tests. According to its website, teachers aren't even allowed to see the test questions: "Items may not be viewed by anyone other than the students who are participating in the Field Test."
That may be why, in all the furor over the Common Core, we haven't heard complaints about mistakes or lack of clarity in the questions.
I'm not opposed to the Common Core, nor am I opposed to testing. But the success of any initiative depends on its implementation. And from what we can tell, so far PARCC's implementation leaves a lot to be desired.
No doubt it's hard to design a good multiple choice test, especially one that is trying to assess higher-order thinking skills. But at least some of the problems with the practice questions could easily be fixed. Given that PARCC has received at least $170 million to design these assessments, you would think they could have done a better job.
(The PARCC practice test I took also had 3 essay questions, which were pretty challenging. Scoring those will raise a whole other set of difficulties.)
Let's hope that the results of the PARCC field tests will bring these problems to light, and that PARCC will manage to fix them before students take the real tests a year from now. Perhaps it would help if other members of the public tried taking the practice tests for other grade levels to see if they suffer from similar defects. If you're able to do that, please let us know your impressions in the comments.
These tests are important. DCPS will use the results to evaluate teachers, and we'll all be relying on them to determine if efforts to improve education are working. Not to mention that students who take them may suffer a good deal of stress, even though the tests won't affect their grades.
We need to be sure that these are tests of what students are actually learning, not just guessing games.
Giving aid and comfort to great teachers
The Washington Post
By Jay Matthews
May 4, 2014
My high school U.S. history teacher, Al Ladendorff, turned his classroom into a laboratory for critical thinking. He even asked us to tell him where the textbook was wrong. My wife Linda’s English and history teacher, Bill Goodfellow, required each student to write a research paper every year, some of them thousands of words long.
Our high schools were ordinary, but they had a few extraordinary teachers, as many high schools have. Smart administrators let Ladendorff and Goodfellow take their students to unusual heights. Unfortunately, the teachers’ methods did not catch on, probably because the forces that ruled American education at the time were not pushing for deeper analysis and more research by students.
A half century later, we still need those reforms. Most history courses demand little beyond memorization of some names, dates and concepts. Teachers rarely ask students to critique textbooks’ failure to probe neglected topics such as trade law and Supreme Court appointments, as Ladendorff did.
As for writing research papers, private-school students do that, but such work is not required in most public schools, even in some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Washington area, except for schools that have the International Baccalaureate program.
These days, the largest force for change in our schools is the movement to install the Common Core State Standards in 45 states and the District. The national standards attempt to inject more complexity into reading assignments and require more in-depth research assignments. They encourage more coherence and focus on key subjects in math, since comparisons with more successful teaching abroad show that American math instruction tends to be too broad and too shallow.
Many people don’t like the Common Core. As is always the case with reforms devised by human beings, some parts of the standards are vague and confusing. In the past, new standards have not produced great jumps in achievement. Some political conservatives see the Common Core as a federal attack on local school decision-making, even though the standards were conceived and developed by state governors.
But the Common Core, particularly its focus on depth, provides encouragement and political shelter to modern-day Al Ladendorffs and Bill Goodfellows who want to challenge their students in unaccustomed ways. Individual teachers who make such leaps often meet resistance from parents, students and colleagues. Why are you making my child question established authorities? Why do I have to write so many papers?
With the Common Core in place, creative teachers have answers for those who think they are going too far: I would like to be more lenient with these students, but the new standards won’t let me. I have to get them ready for a state exam very different from the ones they have had before.
Nationwide changes in school practice can be erratic and slow, but they can make a difference, often for the better in the hands of good teachers. Consider the movement to get more students to take algebra sooner so they can use it in their high school science classes and take higher-order math in high school.
Linda and I were introduced to algebra earlier because the Soviets had orbited the Sputnik satellite two years before we started high school and policy leaders decided it was time for more math and science. A $32 million College Board research project in the 1990s reinforced that notion by showing most students benefited by having Algebra I no later than ninth grade. Math teachers’ ambitious ideas had more traction than they had before because of that policy change.
The usual arguments in favor of the Common Core standards don’t include giving aid and comfort to the Ladendorffs and Goodfellows in our schools. But I think they deserve the support. It is one more good reason to give the changes a try.
Mental health services for Washington’s poorest kids is lacking, study says
The Washington Post
By Robert Samuels
May 6, 2014
At least 5,000 of the District’s poorest children are not receiving necessary mental health treatment, according to a study released Tuesday by an advocacy group that describes the city as in the throes of “a children’s mental health crisis.”
Even when parents seek out treatment for the children, the report stated, families must navigate a complex and inadequate social services system, often resulting in delayed and low-quality treatment. A lack of providers has led to lengthy waits for families who need immediate care. The region’s best providers have settled elsewhere in the area, where they can make more money, according to the second annual report by the Children’s Law Center, which attempts to assess how well the District is caring for the city’s 96,000 children insured by Medicaid.
The study noted that nationally, 12.6 percent of such children are thought to have mental health issues, according to a widely accepted estimate from the Urban Institute. In the District, however, only 6.8 percent of children — some 7,000 — were treated for mental health conditions.
Based on the national estimate, the District would have more than 5,000 children who need help but are not receiving it. And those estimates are conservative, said Judith Sandalow, the law center’s executive director.
“Between the number of children living in poverty and the level of trauma that comes with the violence some of these children witness, the number [of children in need] is probably much higher,” Sandalow said.
Sandalow said the report was created to get officials to acknowledge “that we have a children’s mental health crisis and we need to act.” The report itemizes a host of mental health needs, summing up the city as a place that is making improvements but still sorely lacking.
National studies have shown that children who aren’t treated for mental health issues are more likely to drop out of school, get involved in crime and commit suicide.
The city doesn’t identify how much it spends on children’s mental health in its budget, but funding for mental health services in the District has been described as “negligible,” according to a 2013 report from the city’s Department of Health Care Finance.
That department received $2.7 billion last year. The current budget proposal ups its allocation by 6 percent, partially to address the need for better mental health care for children.
City officials, who have not yet received the full report, said the department is actively trying to connect children and families with mental health services. “Our goal it to make sure that mental health treatment is available to every child and family that needs it,” Phyllis Jones, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Behavioral Health, wrote in a statement.
By law, every child on Medicaid is entitled to screening and treatment for behavioral health issues. In the District, four “managed care organizations” coordinate treatment and services, functioning much like an HMO. They help to arrange payment through nonprofit groups and other agencies that provide therapy, rehabilitation and other services.
The report acknowledged that the District has made some strides in streamlining bureaucracy in this area, by making it easier for therapists and social workers to get credentialed and paying providers more. The District is also adopting a screening tool for pediatricians, who might be unaware of the best ways to fulfill their legal obligation to check up on patients mental health.
Problems remain. There is no Web site or call center listing all of the available providers. Although providers are supposed to book appointments within a week, the average wait time is 22 days.
The city’s consumer services report in 2013 found that about 30 percent of responders found their experience below adequate.
The city also graded service providers on a five-star rating system. Of the 10 agencies that serve children, the highest score any agency got was a three — and only one agency met that standard.
“For a long time, D.C. has been an unpleasant place for mental health providers to work,” Sandalow said, adding, “payments used to be late, and we weren’t paying enough. And that’s slowly being fixed.”
Where do DC homeless students go to school? These tween hackers can show you [BASIS DC PCS mentioned]
Greater Greater Education
By Sandra Moscoso
May 6, 2014
The story of 8-year-old Relisha Rudd's disappearance has inspired a group of young students to create an interactive map showing where homeless students in DC go to school.
Students from Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan, a preK-through-6th-grade DCPS campus, and BASIS DC, a charter school serving 5th-9th grades, collaborated on the project.
The team of student civic hackers had previously produced a map of
DC's grocery stores and the "food deserts" in the spaces between them. They then decided they wanted to come up with a project that focused on issues in DC schools.
The students were surprised to read in the Washington Post that at the DCPS school Relisha Rudd attended, Payne Elementary, 55 students out of about 260 are homeless. They wondered how many other DC schools serve homeless students. (Payne is my own in-boundary school, and one of the tween hackers is my son.)
To find out, they contacted the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) to request school-by-school data.
OSSE shared the data, and the State Superintendent himself, Jesus Aguirre, had encouraging words for the student hackers.
"Thanks for focusing on such an important issue," he wrote. "We can't wait to see what you build!"
Here's what they built: a map that shows homeless student enrollment by school, for both DCPS and charter schools. (The data released by OSSE, which is for school year 2012-13, shows Payne Elementary as having 31 homeless students out of 235 total.)
The map is a sobering reminder of the extent of homelessness in the District, and it shows that no community is entirely immune. According to the data, even relatively affluent Deal Middle School had 14 homeless students, and Wilson High School had 23.
D.C. students learn unusual lesson in contest [Cesar Chavez PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Ann Cameron Siegal
May 5, 2014
Imagine: You are all set for a big competition about the U.S. Constitution when suddenly the other members of your team fail to show up.
Yikes! What would you do?
Andre Hunter and Jamal Jenkins, eighth-graders at Cesar Chavez Parkside Middle School, each faced that unexpected challenge during the We the People competition recently.
We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution is a nationwide program that helps students understand the history and principles of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. While doing research, participants learn how our system of government was formed, who helped in shaping our democratic republic, why they made the decisions they made and how those decisions affect our lives today.
Andre and Jamal were on separate teams as they did research. They visited the Capitol, Supreme Court and National Archives (the permanent home of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution).
The teams practiced their presentations in front of classmates at the charter school, which has a special focus on public policy, before competing with four other District middle schools.
The We the People competition is set up like a congressional hearing, where members of Congress ask experts to answer questions about issues that affect proposed laws. Students’ topics include: What were the Founders’ basic ideas about government? How does the Constitution protect our basic rights? What are the responsibilities of citizens?
Teams prepare answers to assigned questions. At the competition, a panel of adult judges picks one of those questions for a team to discuss. The judges then ask follow-up questions to see whether team members really understand the constitutional principles they studied.
However, at the District finals in February, when team members left Andre and Jamal to each compete alone, Andre remembers saying to himself, “I’m going to go because I’m already committed to it.” Jamal added: “It’s an honor to participate. I was nervous, but I had to try.”
While neither young man won the competition, each came away with something more valuable: confidence in his ability to meet unexpected challenges. They received compliments from the judges on their courage to continue solo. And they learned lessons that will serve them throughout life.
Jamal said he learned that it’s important to speak clearly and in complete sentences, without using “like” or “um” all the time. Andre said he learned how important it is to have good resources based on facts rather than opinions. “Too many Internet sites are just opinion,” he said.
Both would like to take part in the We the People program when they attend Parkside High School next year. Parkside High teams made it to this year’s national competition two weeks ago at George Mason University in Fairfax. A team from Portland, Oregon, won the event.
“Sometimes you have a challenge you have to go after,” Jamal said. “You have to put your best foot forward and keep going.”