- D.C. school-boundary overhaul triggers discussion about school quality
- More Alice Deals? There's a better deal
- Exclusive interview with Jami Dunham, CEO Paul Public Charter School [Paul PCS mentioned]
D.C. school-boundary overhaul triggers discussion about school quality
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
June 17, 2014
The tension between neighborhood schools and school choice was on full display Monday night at the District’s Savoy Elementary, where several dozen parents and community members showed up to weigh in on the city’s latest proposal to overhaul school boundaries and student-assignment policies.
Most of those in attendance live east of the Anacostia River, home to some of the most concentrated poverty and lowest-performing schools in the city. And many of them voiced the same concern: New boundaries alone won’t fix struggling schools, and they could end up making it harder for kids from east of the river to get into better options on the other side of town.
Many said they wanted to see a clear plan for investing in and improving schools before redrawing lines on a map. In other words, they said they don’t just want neighborhood schools that their children have a right to attend. They want good neighborhood schools that will offer their children the same quality of education they could get if they lived in tonier parts of Washington.
“We want to be able to go to our neighborhood schools, but until we feel we can do that, we need a choice,” said D.C. Council member Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7). Alexander said she would like to see the boundary overhaul put off until school quality improves enough that parents start volunteering to return to neighborhood schools.
Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith, who leads the citizen advisory committee that developed the proposal, anticipated the concerns about uneven school quality, which have come up repeatedly in recent months. She said in her introductory remarks Monday that the proposal is not meant to solve the problem of school quality on its own, but that revised boundaries and student-assignment policies are “an opportunity to support improving schools” by providing greater predictability for families.
The proposal also calls for ensuring parity in academic offerings across the city, although it lacks a specific recommendations for how and when that should be accomplished.
The city’s proposal does provide a pathway for students to get into schools outside their attendance zone. Elementary schools would set aside 10 percent of their seats of out-of-boundary kids, while middle and high schools would each set aside an additional 10 percent of seats for students entering at the sixth and ninth grades.
But most schools currently enroll much higher percentages of out-of-boundary students. One fear is that, if schools west of the river succeed in attracting more neighborhood families, there will be less space for children from other parts of the city.
Parents worry that “they’ll be forced to come back to neighborhood schools that really haven’t improved and in fact have gotten worse,” said Trayon White, the former Ward 8 representative on the D.C. State Board of Education.
The proposal gives priority to at-risk students in lotteries for out-of-boundary admission to about 20 of the city’s most affluent schools. At-risk students include those who are homeless or in foster care, whose families are eligible for cash assistance or food stamps, or who are overage and undercredited in high school.
While it’s a policy meant to promote diversity and offer extra help for the neediest kids, critics say, it raises concerns for families who are not among the city’s poorest, but also can’t afford to live in-boundary for the best schools. “Those of us in the middle are kind of stuck,” said Nkenge Garrett, who is sending her son to a charter school in the fall because she isn’t comfortable with her neighborhood school.
Some of the proposed boundary maps also drew opposition, including the new boundary for Eastern High. It would move west of the Anacostia River, and students east of the river would be reassigned to lower-performing Anacostia High. It’s a move that some parents have read as an effort to shut out poor and African American families in order to make Eastern more attractive to white, affluent families on Capitol Hill.
“The frustration and the anxiety only increases because they have another mechanism to keep our kids out,” said April Goggans, a Ward 8 parent.
Alexander, the Ward 7 council member, said she will push for children from east of the river to continue to have access to Eastern.
Wards 7 and 8 would see more students re-assigned to lower-performing schools than some other wards, according to the city’s impact analysis. That is true whether measuring performance by a school’s proficiency rates on the city’s standardized test (top graph) or by a school’s record of producing student growth on those tests (bottom graph).
More than half of students east of the river now attend charter schools, and some who attended Monday’s meeting said the boundary proposal doesn’t do enough to address that reality. The proposal recommends stronger planning between traditional and charter schools but stops short of making specific recommendations.
“If we’re going to have any real discussion about options at the neighborhood level, there’s got to be real, meaningful … discussion between D.C. Public Schools and the D.C. Public Charter School Board,” said longtime Ward 8 civic activist Phil Pannell.
The meeting was the first of three this week to gather community feedback; the other two meetings are Tuesday evening at Dunbar High and Thursday evening at Takoma Education Campus. Both begin at 6 p.m. The advisory committee plans to revise its proposal before submitting a final recommendation to Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) in August, and Gray plans to announce new boundaries in September.
It’s not clear how much of Gray’s plan will stick because implementation will be up to whoever succeed him in November. All three mayoral candidates have called the latest iteration an improvement over the first round of boundary proposals, which were released in April and floated the idea of replacing neighborhood schools with lottery admissions. But the candidates have yet to say what pieces of the boundary overhaul they would and wouldn’t adopt.
D.C. Council member David Grosso has offered the most specific reaction so far, saying in a statement on Monday that he supports the basic direction of the proposal — a core system of neighborhood schools with pathways for choice — but was disappointed in the lack of recommendations for stronger planning with charter schools.
Grosso also pushed back against the notion that the boundary overhaul can be put on hold until some future point when schools are stronger across the city. “Unfortunately, revisions to the DCPS school boundaries are timely and cannot wait,” he said.
More Alice Deals? There's a better deal
The Hill
By Robert Lehrman
June 17, 2014
"I don't like to read," he said, the first time I tutored him.
He did like one TV show, though — "Walker, Texas Ranger." Why not look at Chuck Norris's website? Okay! But I had to spell Chuck for him. Then, Norris. Soon it became clear.
It wasn't that Antoine — not his real name — didn't like to read. At 13, he didn't know how.
You won't find inspiration in Antoine's story. Later, he committed a terrible crime. He will spend a decade in prison. But that came after a six-year odyssey where, determined to catch up, he worked obsessively with tutors: me, my family, and my friends. He didn't just finish high school. He graduated 14th in his class.
Those six years — despite and because of its devastating aftermath — is what makes the debate about America's "failing schools" so exasperating to me — and especially this summer in Washington.
The concern over why we've fallen behind other countries seems reasonable. How can U.S. students test behind those from 33 countries? Behind Croatia!
But that's not because all American schools fail. It mostly reflects the dismal results by Hispanic/Latino and African-American students — especially African-Americans, whose results in that test would have put them 54th. White kids (15th) and Asian-Americans (4th) do fine. Overall, American white kids finish ahead of Germany and Australia. Not a disaster.
African-American scores are, though. And in Washington, with the biggest white/black achievement gap of any city in the country, you'd think we could find solutions.
We don't. Case in point: the education "platform" from Muriel Bowser, Democrat, and overwhelming favorite to be next mayor.
Most of Bowser's education ideas — her opponent's are no better — involve the usual suspects, impossible to evaluate without detail she doesn't provide: remodeling, charter schools, innovative leaders and additional "resources" for underperforming schools.
But then, there's this: "Alice Deal for All." Every student, Bowser says, should have a school like Alice Deal Middle School.
Alice Deal?
It's good. My kids went there — and to Woodrow Wilson, the high school it feeds. Eighty-eight percent of Deal students score Proficient or Advanced in Reading. At Antoine's? Twenty-one percent.
Deal's scores don't come just from great teachers, though. Deal is in the wealthy, largely white part of DC. Forty-nine percent of its students are white and Asian. Just 21 percent get free or subsidized lunch — the shorthand indicator for family income. Antoine's school? It's one percent white. Ninety-nine percent get the lunches.
Translation. Every D.C. kid could go to a school like Deal or Wilson — if at each school half the kids were white or Asian — and well off. That is fiction disguised as policy.
But Deal-envy explains some of the fierce battling over the new school boundaries proposal District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) unveiled this week. Oh, if only my kid could go to Deal!
Here, both parents and the city miss the point.
The question isn't only where kids go. It's what kids get. And here, DCPS has sent the wrong message.
Take remodeling. Of course some D.C. schools need it. The recently remodeled Deal and Wilson both look terrific: bright bathrooms, a great artificial turf football field, sophisticated theaters and graceful exteriors.
The cost? $225 million for both — including $34 million for an Olympic-size pool.
Sorry, neighbors who love going over to swim laps. That pool's message is this: Washington's priority is the schools for kids who will do well wherever they go — not for struggling kids who can go no place else. No wonder parents want their kids at Deal.
What would really work for those most in need? The kids for whom no classroom activity has worked? Prime among those: the 18 percent of D.C.'s 46,000 school students who test "Below Basic"? That means fourth-graders who don't know whether we measure the weight of apples in pounds or feet.
Here's where Antoine comes in. For seven years he'd been in lots of special programs. Only when he started working one-on-one did he show what he could do.
Instead of frantically redrawing boundaries to figure out where to send kids who need help most — why not create an intense, 10 hours a week tutoring program for the 8,000 "Below Basic" kids — and send the tutors to them?
Tutoring works. Don't rely on my anecdotal evidence. Look at the scholarship, like that by Johns Hopkins University Professor Robert Balfanz. There's a lot more.
Too costly? There are tutoring programs in D.C., but small, uneven and uncoordinated. A serious pilot program could run $40 million a year. But expanding volunteer programs and a federal partnership would drive the cost way down. And we can trim the remodeling. Yes, yes, you can't just shift money from capital to operating budgets. As one of my friends put it, "Administrators'll say, capital projects are amortized. They're multigenerational."
Tutoring programs are multigenerational, too. Governments make choices between capital and operating projects every year. It's why a National Security Agency headquarters gets built, and food stamps cut. With almost $2 billion just in next year's D.C. education operating budget, and federal help, the money's there.
Antoine's made a friend in prison — a kind of tutor. "He's slowly started teaching me things," he writes. "That's how I started reading Malcolm Gladwell." He wants more Malcolm Gladwell books.
I send them. It's small consolation that he who couldn't read 10 years ago reads Malcolm Gladwell in a prison cell. Maybe his new tutor will include something I should have worked on more: values. Tutors should aim beyond reading and math; the research shows they can.
Building a $34-million dollar pool in the rich part of town when seventh-graders elsewhere can't spell Chuck — and fourth-graders think we measure weight in feet? That was wrong.
To create more Alice Deals? That's a pipe dream. We need to create more educated kids. Tutoring, done well, can offer that. That's the deal D.C. needs.
Exclusive interview with Jami Dunham, CEO Paul Public Charter School [Paul PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
June 18, 2014
I had the recent fortunate opportunity to interview Jami Dunham, the chief executive officer of Paul Public Charter School. Paul has an extremely interesting story to tell. It is the only traditional school to have converted to charter status, which it did in 2000. At the time it was led by principal and founder Cecile Middleton, who instilled in Paul Middle School, then grades six through eight, a vision of sending students to Washington, D.C.’s highest performing high schools. Ms. Middleton, a fierce educator, became frustrated with the disarray and red tape that characterized DCPS at that time and with the new charter school law knew that she could provide something better. It took a couple of determined attempts and the help of Public Charter School Board executive director Nelson Smith and the PCSB’s Charlotte Cureton to achieve her goal. The focus on raising the academic performance of its students has continued unabated to this day.
As evidence, Ms. Dunham was proud to point out that Paul has been a D.C. Public Charter School Board Performance Management Framework Tier 1 school for each of the three years that this measure has been reported. In fact, the leadership team is pleased with what they have been able to accomplish with a student population in which 71 percent of its 670 members in grades six through ten qualify for free or reduced lunch and an 88 percent African American population. Most students come from homes in Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8.
Almost as soon as I met Ms. Dunham she handed me a graph. The data on the page is important since the Democratic candidate for Mayor Muriel Bowser has touted Alice Deal Middle School for all as a means of improving the city’s educational offerings for kids preparing to enter the ninth grade. Deal has about 20 percent of its population that qualifies for free or reduced lunch, and about 30 percent African American pupils. The diagram compares reading and math performance between the two institutions. In reading, Paul has a 49 percent proficiency rate among black students almost identical to Deal’s 51 percent. In math, for African American kids, Paul’s proficiency rate is slightly higher at around the 80 percent range. In fact, whether you are referring to Free and Reduced qualifying students in reading and math or the proficiency rates in these subjects for English Language Learners Paul meets or exceeds Deal’s results. It is as if Ms. Bowser should change her campaign slogan to “Paul for All.”
Ms. Dunham became head of the school five years ago. In a way it was only fitting that she landed in this position since her mother had attended Paul. Her main goal has been to maintain both the high level of academic rigor and the strong sense of community which is a feeling permeating throughout the school and includes both the children and adults. Ms. Dunham credits the caring individuals have for one another as one of the major factors leading to the school’s success. She listed some others for me.
“We have benefited from some advantages other charters did not have when they first started,” the Paul CEO explained. "We had a building so we were not distracted by a search for a permanent site. We have two gymnasiums, an auditorium, a field, separate band room, and parking, which have allowed us to provide a comprehensive educational experience to our students from the first day of operation.”
Because Paul does not have a themed curriculum as many charter schools do, I asked Ms. Dunham how her board of directors would describe Paul’s focus. She answered as soon as the words came out of my mouth. “The board would immediately point to our “Triple A Program. The A’s stand for academics, arts, and athletics.”
Ms. Dunham related that Paul is a liberal arts school centered on the humanities. It offers classes in both Spanish and French, with plans to add Mandarin in the future. One unique feature of Paul, the proud CEO detailed, is that it has an arts integrated curriculum. “The philosophy at our school,” Ms. Dunham stated, “is that high stakes testing necessitate a deliberate connection to the arts.” Paul’s art program includes visual arts, dance, theatre arts, concert band, and vocal music.
We spent a few minutes discussing the importance of athletics at Paul PCS. Ms. Dunham expressed how crucial sports, teams, and clubs are to middle school students, especially boys. “It gets and keeps them engaged in school," the CEO emphatically stated. “We understand that it may not be algebra that keeps them coming back day after day and we are alright with this, for now. We want to just make sure they keep coming back.” Ms. Dunham described how being able to participate in sports is a driver for some kids to do well in academics. “We do not allow a student who has below a 2.5 grade point average to participate in the athletic program at Paul,” Ms. Dunham remarked.
The third A of course stands for academics. Paul is proud of their Tier 1 PMF ranking and everything they do in this area is deliberate. “When we were contemplating opening a high school,” the Paul CEO recalled, “we established and continue to run a ninth grade academy named after Cecil Middleton to increase the likelihood that students would be successful at this transition. We engaged Charter Board Partners in preparation of this move to improve board governance, align the board’s committee structure, and to attract board members that could take us to the next level.”
It is clear that Paul has a consistent and persistent urgency about what they do. “Students are assigned classes by teacher and by activity,” Ms. Dunham informed me. "Since approximately 60 percent of our pupils enter Paul PCS being years below grade level academically we utilize interventional courses and tutors to bring them up to where they need to be. Students are tested four times a year in reading and math and we develop re-teach plans around data.”
Character education is also an important component of the educational plan at Paul. The program develops children to be motivated, educated, responsible, independent thinkers. Part of the goal to grow kids as individuals is to allow them to gain experience traveling to other countries. “Our eventual target is to have every student travel abroad at least once during their time with us,” detailed the school’s chief executive officer. “Right now we send our students to other localities during semesters abroad and over summer vacations. For example, 23 young men and women will have had the opportunity to visit Japan this July.”
Ms. Dunham stressed the need to provide the proper environment to keep students in school, especially African American boys. “So many members of this population sadly end up incarcerated, committing suicide, or being murdered. The aim of Paul is to have an impact on the entire community by doing nothing less than readying our students to compete in the global economy.”