- A Realistic Measure of DC Graduation
- Gap Between Best and Worst D.C. Schools Growing
- Ward 8’s Marvelous School, Dream Machine [Achievement Prep PCS is mentioned]
- 10 Nonprofits Win a Piece of $500,000 from Economic Club [KIPP DC, EL Haynes, and Maya Angelou PCS are mentioned]
- “Excessing” Notices for 333 DCPS Teachers
The Washington Post
By Editorial Board
May 6, 2012
Different ways of calculating graduation rates allow school districts to kid themselves and the public about how many students succeed in getting diplomas. Even though the new calculation of graduation rates for D.C. high school students shows depressingly low numbers, the move to get a clear-eyed diagnosis must be applauded. Only by laying bare the problem can it be solved.
Using a more rigorous method being mandated by the federal government, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education released figures last month showing that 58.6 percent of the 5,058 students in the city’s charter and traditional high schools graduated in 2011 within four years. The rate for the class of 2010 under the old formula was reported at 73 percent, a drop that shows just how much the failure to track ninth-graders throughout their high school years inflated and distorted the results. “With the new calculations,” D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said in a statement, “we have a clearer understanding of the work we will need to do, and the public has a more reliable way to hold us accountable.
Even as the numbers outline the sobering deficiencies of D.C. public education, there was encouraging news. The school system is moving in the right direction; The Post’s Bill Turque reported that if the old formula had been used to compute the 2011 rate, there would have been a seven-point increase over 2010. New efforts are being made to identify and counsel students at risk. Attention to simple details such as students’ schedules is paying dividends. Officials set the ambitious goal of a graduation rate of 75 percent by 2017.
Particularly noteworthy was the performance of the city’s public charter schools. They posted an overall graduation rate of about 80 percent, considerably higher than the school system’s overall rate of 53 percent (the system’s application high schools posted a rate of 86 percent, with Banneker showing an impressive 100 percent). Of the 10 schools with the worst graduation records, seven are run by the school system; the worst is Cardozo, with a graduation rate of 39.9 percent.
Critics were quick to suggest that charters have figured out how to get students at risk of dropping out to transfer to traditional schools. Charter officials dispute that, noting that less than 5 percent of children in public charters depart each year and most either leave the area or enroll in other charters. A better explanation is charters’ extra efforts in creating a culture where college and career are expectations for all students. Now that the scope of the District’s poor record on graduation is known, it’s all the more urgent that solutions be found.
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
May 6, 2012
The gap between the District's best- and worst-performing schools has been growing amid the most intense school reform in the city's history, according to a report commissioned by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.
The report calculates a "median growth percentile" for each school, which measures students' annual growth against similar students across the city. The American Institutes for Research found that, if two students have the same test scores in 2010, but one attends a wealthy, high-performing school and the other attends the opposite, the student at the wealthy school likely would have outpaced the latter student substantially in 2011, even though they were on equal footing the year before.
In Ward 3, the average student's growth-percentile score on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System reading exam over the past two years was 71, meaning that the average student scored better than 71 percent of D.C. students who achieved the same score. Meanwhile, the average student in Ward 7 was performing better than only 44 percent of students who they had been "tied" with.
In other words, the students in the city's poorest schools who were on equal footing with students in the city's top schools didn't stay that way for long.
It's not shocking that good schools produce good results for students. But the gap is still widening as recently as last year, although the D.C. Council and school leaders are throwing an unprecedented amount of resources at improving poorly performing schools.
"These children are being cheated of a quality education," Eve Brooks, a member of the Near Southeast/Southwest Community Benefits Coordinating Council, said about the low-income students who attend Amidon-Bowen Elementary School.
At Amidon-Bowen, only about 39 percent of students outpaced their counterparts across the city on math or reading, but the Southwest Waterfront school is hardly the worst.
Across the Anacostia River, only 23 percent of students at Drew Elementary achieved the same results on the math exam as students they were recently on par with. Just a mile down the road, 28.6 percent of students at Aiton Elementary School keep pace with their peers.
South of the Suitland Parkway, 24.6 percent of Johnson Middle School students achieved the same results as students who had been on similar footing throughout the city on the math test.
On the same test -- but on the other end of the middle-school spectrum -- 64 percent of Alice Deal Middle School students were doing as well or better than their peers within a year. At Key Elementary, 73 percent of students outperformed, putting Key at the top of the list.
Cate Swinburn, chief of data and accountability for D.C. Public Schools, reiterated in an email that the data refers to the past two years and does not dictate future trends. She did not comment on the expansion of the gap between the city's best and worst schools.
Jeff Noel, the director of data management for OSSE, said that because the report examined only 2009 through 2011, the school system could not be sure whether the rate at which the gap was growing was slowing down or speeding up.
But Noel said the disparity has "absolutely" been growing, for a simple reason: "The higher-performing schools are taking students from the same growth levels and taking them to proficiency."
Ward 8’s Marvelous School, Dream Machine [Achievement Prep PCS is mentioned]
Afro-American Newspapers
By Staff
May 2, 2012
Achievement Preparatory Academy (Achievement Prep), a public charter school serving 210 scholars east of the Anacostia River, is among the highest performing public schools in the city, according to 2011 DC Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS) scores.
“Over eighty percent of our students come from low-income homes, 100 percent are African American and they are outperforming students citywide and even in upper Northwest D.C.,” said founder and Head of School Shantelle Wright. “All children, regardless of the color of their skin or the zip code where they live, can excel when provided with a high standards, high accountability setting,” she said. “We’re seeing outstanding results in our scholars because we operate Achievement Prep in a high-expectation, no-excuses culture. We challenge our scholars to dream big, and it works.” However, many of Achievement Prep’s neighbors are unaware of this high-performing school located right in their own backyard. As a result, the free, open-enrollment public school still has openings for 50 fourth and fifth grade students in the fall.
To spark new relationships with families and celebrate the East of the River Community, Achievement Prep is hosting its inaugural Achievement Prep Community Day, noon to 3 p.m., May 5 in Oxon Run Park, [corner of Wheeler Road and Valley Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20032]. The free event is open to all and will feature free food from Hill Country BBQ, music, games and activities for children including a moon bounce and face painting, prizes and give-aways, free patient care from the
Children’s Hospital Mobile Unit, and other local social service resources.
According to a recent study, “Quality Schools: Every Child, Every School, Every Neighborhood,” commissioned by District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray, of the 60,000 kindergarten through 12th grade public school students living in DC, only one-third are receiving a high-quality education. This means that D.C. faces a shortage of 39,000 high-quality seats.
According to the study, this dearth is most acutely concentrated in ten specific neighborhood clusters, many of which are east of the Anacostia River. The absolute greatest need rests in “Cluster 39”—the Congress Heights, Bellevue, Washington Highlands and Bolling Air Force Base neighborhoods of Ward 8 – which is home to 5,969 public school children but lacks high-quality options for 5,532 of them.
Nestled in that very cluster is Achievement Prep. Wright said she and the board of trustees want the community to know what makes the school special, starting with the facts:
• On the 2011 DC-CAS, Achievement Prep students were more than twice as likely to be proficient in reading and math as other DC public school students.
• Achievement Prep is effectively closing the “achievement gap” for its scholars within one to two years. In 2011, its current 8th graders, 100 percent of whom were proficient or advanced on the DC-CAS, scored better on the DC-CAS than those at Deal, a more affluent and highly regarded DCPS middle school in Tenleytown in Ward 3.
“My dream is to be some sort of doctor,” said Jeanae Reid, an Achievement Prep sixth grader, “but I’m not ruling out becoming a lawyer.” According to her father, Demetrius Reid, Jeanae was simply getting by at her previous school but at Achievement Prep, she is “working a lot harder and achieving more. She has more of a desire to learn. She was always an adequate reader but now, they really push reading and she’s reading three to four novels a month.”
Before someone at his church mentioned Achievement Prep last year, Mr. Reid had never heard of the school, which opened its doors in 2008. But when he and his wife stepped inside, they were blown away by the “platinum” teachers, staff and parents. “I said to Jeanae, ‘you’re going to be there until the eighth grade. I don’t care where we move in the District, you’re going to Achievement Prep.’”
Dreams are a major focus at the fourth through eighth grade middle school, both in terms of college and career aspirations but also via its Be The DREAM character and leadership program in which scholars develop and practice the school’s DREAM values—Determination, Respect, Enthusiasm, Accountability and Mastery.
Be the DREAM is just one facet of the culture created by Head of School Wright. Her conviction that all children can learn is backed by a model program and teaching staff that are achieving results. Achievement Prep has both a longer school day and year to provide more instruction; this allows for double periods of math and reading and small group tutoring opportunities. Achievement Prep also focuses heavily on combating the ‘fourth grade slump,’ the critical point where many low-income children begin to fall farther behind their more affluent peers in reading.
Vernita Liverpool, a parent of two boys enrolled at Achievement Prep, said she was skeptical at first. “Because of our location, the school doesn’t have the best look.
But you can’t judge a book by its cover. I love this school. You just have to come inside and see everything they offer and everything they do.” Her son Jibril is a fourth grader who loves that “they have excellent academics and the whole school is smart so they teach me well.” Jibril is dreaming big, too. “My dream is to be a professional basketball player. Or I might be a sports announcer because I know a lot of facts,” he said.
Wright said Achievement Prep’s mission to create a school that changes the life trajectories for children in Southeast DC has attracted the best and brightest teachers, all of whom gather at the school-wide meeting that concludes each day to chant to their scholars: “When you go home tonight, know that you are smart, know that you are brilliant, know that we love you, we think about you all the time, we plan for you all the time, and know that you never, ever cease to amaze us.”
In response, teachers and scholars together chant, “Know there is no one better than you! No matter the color of their skin, no matter how much money they have, what kind of car they drive or how big their house is. There is no one better than you! If you want something, put your mind to it, go get it. Period.”
Wright, who is often the first person scholars see on the way in and the last person they see on the way out, says that “when everyone—scholars and teachers alike—hears the same message 9.5 hours every day, they can’t help but believe it.”
And they do. Scholars are dreaming of being meteorologists, lawyers and doctors. “My dream is to help make the world a better place by having equal rights for all. It should not matter your gender or the color of your skin to have equal rights,” said Jeanae Reid, the Achievement Prep sixth grader who dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer.
10 Nonprofits Win a Piece of $500,000 from Economic Club [KIPP DC, EL Haynes, and Maya Angelou PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Post
By JD Harrison
May 6, 2012
Some of the District’s youth-serving community organizations are slated to receive a significant financial boost from some of the city’s top business executives.
In honor of its 25th anniversary, the Economic Club of Washington D.C. will award $50,000 grants to each of 10 local nonprofits that strive to prepare underserved youths for success in school, work and life. The winners were selected from a group of 138 organizations nominated by club members.
Lyles Carr, senior vice president of the McCormick Group and chairman of the task force created to select the winners, said that supporting the region’s future workers was an initiative in which all Economic Club members, many of them executives at firms spanning a wide array of fields and expertise, could take an active role.
“Our group as a whole can’t claim specialty in heath care or housing or technology, but as a collection of businesspeople and professionals, what we do know about is education and the workforce,” Carr said. “The workforce is our lifeblood, and with these grants, we are looking to its future.”
Grant winners include college-prep services such as those offered by KIPP D.C., E.L. Haynes Public Charter School and Build D.C., as well as organizations that offer job training and work opportunities such as the Urban Alliance, Alexandria Seaport Foundation and Year Up National Capital Region.
Jubilee JumpStart/Jubilee Housing and Brainfood, both of which promote healthy living, will also receive $50,000 grants, as will the Latin America Youth Center and the Maya Angelou Schools, the latter of which offers an alternative education program to low-income students who have failed in traditional school settings.
“We looked for organizations that have ambitious or innovative approaches to these issues, ones that can set an example for policy leaders, business leaders and other organizations,” Carr said. “Beyond that, we wanted groups that were particularly interested in those that were helping catch the youths that have otherwise fallen through the cracks. Our local economy simply can’t afford to lose people who over time could be productive members of the community.”
The grants will be doled out at an anniversary dinner celebration early next month, at which Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett is to speak along with club President David Rubenstein.
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
May 4, 2012
This year, at least, they didn’t do it on National Teacher Appreciation Week.
DCPS announced late Friday afternoon that it has sent annual “excess notices” to 333 teachers. It means that changes in budget, enrollment or academic programs at their schools have effectively eliminated their jobs. The excessed educators have until August 15 to find other spots in the school system. School officials said they expect at least 60 percent to be retained.
Last year 384 teachers were excessed; in 2010, 373.
“It’s never easy to hear that you will not be able to continue in your current position for next school year,” Chancellor Henderson said in a statement. “But the excessing process is essential as it helps us ensure that all of our staff are located where they are needed for the coming school year.”
Like most government agencies, DCPS tries to drop unpleasant news late on Friday, to minimize news coverage. As in 2011, it chose the first Friday in May to swing the excessing axe. This year, however, Teacher Appreciation Week doesn’t begin until Monday.
Excessing changed in the Michelle Rhee era. Prior to 2010, it was done by seniority, and teachers who lost positions were guaranteed other jobs. It meant that in some cases principals were stuck with teachers they didn’t want. But the 2010 collective bargaining agreement negotiated by Rhee introduced “mutual consent,” meaning that principals have to be on board with any addition of excessed teachers to their staff. Excessing became “performance-based,” using a mix of evaluations, unique skills and contributions to the school community. Seniority is still in the formula, but only at the margins.
“This is a new work environment for these teachers,” said Washington Teachers’ Union president Nathan Saunders. “My challenge is to mitigate the damage and I’m attempting to do that.”
Under the contract, excessed employees with good evaluations who don’t find spots have three options: a $25,000 buyout; a “grace year,” during which they will be placed at a DCPS school, or with 20 years service, early retirement at full benefits.
Interestingly, Friday’s announcement didn’t mention that third option, which has been the subject of some contention between DCPS and WTU. DCPS initially said last year that the money wasn’t available, despite a retirement fund so flush that there was no actuarial need for annual contributions in 2010. Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi’s office said that was nonsense. His spokesman said DCPS never submitted the necessary legislation to the D.C. Council to have the provision funded through the D.C. Retirement Board.
Saunders said the early retirement issue has been worked out and the option will be available.
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