- Investigation Finds Cheating at D.C. Schools [Perry Street Prep Public Charter School is mentioned]
- D.C. Keeps Ignoring Its Test Erasure Scandal
- D.C. Charters Face Uncertain Future
- Tiger Laying a Foundation for Success [Cesar Chavez Public Charter School is mentioned]
- Deborah Kenny: Why Charter Schools Work
Investigation Finds Cheating at D.C. Schools [Perry Street Prep Public Charter School is mentioned]
The Washington Times
By Tom Howell Jr.
June 22, 2012
Standardized test scores from three D.C. classrooms were invalidated because teachers helped students choose the right answers or flouted security protocols in April 2011.
The problems at two traditional public schools and one public charter school make up a tiny percentage among more than 5,000 city classrooms who took the annual D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams last year amid formal scrutiny into possible cheating at city schools in prior years, according to the Office of the State Superintendent of Schools.
A pair of teachers from the D.C. Public Schools involved — one each from Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School and Langdon Educational Campus — will almost certainly be fired for assisting students on the test, DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson said.
“These people will no longer teach in D.C. Public Schools,” she told reporters on a conference call.
Two students at Perry Street Prep Public Charter School, formerly known as Hyde Leadership PCS, reported that a teacher let them know if they had answered a question incorrectly, according to results of the OSSE-led investigation conducted by an independent firm, Alvarez and Marsal LLC, that cost the city $400,000.
State Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley acknowledged an intense focus on testing integrity in the wake of a March 2011 investigation by USA Today that raised questions about a high number of wrong-to-right erasures on the annual tests from 2008 to 2010, particularly at Noyes Education Campus in Northeast, during the tenure of former DCPS Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.
The accusations are being investigated by the D.C. Office of the Inspector General with assistance from the U.S. Department of Education.
“We, like everyone else, would like for it to conclude as quickly as possible so we all know what happened or didn’t,” Ms. Mahaley said.
Ms. Henderson said she and other officials at DCPS have been interviewed by the inspector general's office, but she does not know how much longer the inquiry will take because there is a “firewall” between the agency and the investigation.
The 2011 test was administered to about 35,000 students in grades 3-8 and grade 10 in 262 schools across the District. Officials noted that out of 5,089 classrooms tested, only three — less than 0.1 percent — sustained “critical violations” defined as test tampering or academic fraud.
Ms. Henderson said she hopes the notion there is a culture of underhanded testing tactics in D.C. Public Schools “is finally put to rest.”
“This idea of widespread cheating — we just don’t have any evidence for it,” she said.
Reporters at a press event at OSSE’s headquarters noted that flagging for wrong-to-right erasures appears to have dropped precipitately in the last four years, even as the number of schools under scrutiny increases.
“Honestly, I have to say it might be due to some of the media attention that was placed on this,” Ms. Mahaley said, also attributing it to improved training of teachers and test proctors.
The OSSE-commissioned investigation into 2011 testing flagged 70 schools — 60 traditional public schools and 10 public charter schools — based on three forms of criteria. Investigators looked for wrong-to-right erasures, student improvement that was more drastic than normal and intra-classroom scores that did not fit the typical “bell curve.”
Ultimately, only three classrooms presented problems that rose above administrative errors, failure to report certain types of incidents or cell phone use that did not amount to test fraud.
Ms. Mahaley described the mother of a student at MLK Elementary School as a “huge hero” for raising a red flag when her son came home with test results “that she didn’t think were possible for her child.”
The boy explained that a teacher had provided answers and “coaching.”
“She reported that,” Ms. Mahaley said of the mother, “and that led to an investigation.”
At the charter school, a teacher and a proctor in the affected 3rd grade classroom left at the end of the 2010-2011 school year, although a school official said she did not know if their departure was related to the investigation.
Holly Cherico, the school’s marketing director, said it was “upsetting” to learn of the incident and they apologize to parents and students. The school has amped up its test security and training, she said.
D.C. Keeps Ignoring Its Test Erasure Scandal
The Washington Post
By Jay Matthews
June 22, 2012
The biggest cheating scandal in the D.C. schools began March 28, 2011, with this headline in USA Today: “When test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?” The newspaper revealed that over three years, more than 103 D.C. schools had unusual wrong-to-right erasure rates on annual tests, a possible sign of tampering. Administrators and teachers at some of those schools got big cash bonuses for their students’ improved scores. [Full disclose: My wife Linda conceived and edited the USA Today series that exposed the scope of the D.C. erasures.]
D.C. school leaders have now released the results of the second independent investigation of the scandal. (We are still waiting for a third probe by the D.C. Inspector General.) Once again we are not told who made those erasures, or why, on the annual D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests. Instead we learn that one teacher at King Elementary School and another at the Langdon Education Campus will likely be dismissed for helping students with their answers on the 2011 test, similar to last year’s finding of illicit help to students at three other schools.
What about all those erasures? D.C. schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson seems uninterested in the question. “I am pleased that this investigation is complete and that the vast majority of our schools were cleared of any wrongdoing,” she said.
I have been a reporter for 45 years. I have seen many cover-ups. This looks like one to me, and to many educators I have spoken to. D.C. officials have never investigated in any depth the wrong-to-right erasures that the District’s testing company began reporting in 2008.
I asked Henderson if, as a veteran classroom teacher, she could provide any innocent explanation for children in some classrooms changing on average 10 wrong answers to right ones. She said a child might have skipped over a page in the test, gotten her answers out of sequence, and gone back later to fix them. I am having trouble finding anyone else who accepts that theory.
When a reporter asked why the new probe by the consulting firm of Alvarez & Marsal ignored evidence of wrong-to-right erasures before 2010, Cate Swinburn, chief of data and accountability for the D.C. schools, said it would have been difficult to gather information that far back. But it is D.C. officials who wrote the rules so a wider probe could not take place.
Alvarez & Marsal made no mention of asking students about erasures. They interviewed 80 students across the District, apparently only two or three at any one school. They asked students, with a school staff member present, if they had cheated on any tests or knew who did, which is not the issue.
No students were questioned in an initial investigation by the Caveon consulting company. It seems to me that if any investigators had taken seriously the possibility that principals or test coordinators had changed answers after the students handed in their answer sheets, the most likely explanation to the educators I have consulted, it would have helped to determine whether students with many changes on their sheets remembered making them. Instead, principals remain blameless. The only dismissals have been of teachers who apparently did nothing to the answer sheets.
Generally, students make few if any changes on D.C. exam sheets. There is little incentive for them to check their work. Their scores can affect how teachers and principals are rated but do not affect their own report cards. Swinburn suggested that wrong-to-right erasures might have been caused by students first marking tentative answers, then going back to rethink them as teachers often recommend. That also is unlikely to happen with the frequency shown by the erasure reports, other D.C. educators tell me.
The failure to do the kind of thorough inquiry that revealed massive test tampering by principals and teachers in Atlanta after high numbers of erasures will leave many people here in doubt. The latest investigation, which cost $400,000, has done the children of D.C. no good at all.
D.C. Charters Face Uncertain Future
DC Charter Schools Examiner
By Mark Lerner
June 25, 2012
Another school year has ended and many students are excited as they prepare for college. For numerous kids enrolled in charter schools in the nation's capital they will be the first in their families to have the chance of obaining an education past high school.
But for those of us involved in the trenches of advancing these alternative schools this will not be a peaceful summer. We worry about a facility allotment that was not fully funded by the D.C. government at the same time that the Public Charter School Board increased the administrative fee we pay them. We see no end in site to the revenue inequities between our system and DCPS. We see little if any movement toward a public policy that guarantees access to permanent facilities.
Interim D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has indicated he will move public education oversight from a committee of the whole back to having its own chairman. The change promises more meddling in the affairs of charters. We just left off with the council considering a neighborhood preference for admissions.
It appears to me that these problems will not be solved until the traditional school model disappears. Perhaps we should have a summit over the break on how to move the rest of the student population into charters. We already teach 41 percent and have grown in each of the 16 years that we have been at this project. Let's once and for all reduce the three sector approach to two.
Tiger Laying a Foundation for Success [Cesar Chavez Public Charter School is mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Kevin Dunleavy
June 23, 2012
Woods' organization helps educate students at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School
Everyone remembers where they were on Sept. 11. For Tiger Woods, it was St. Louis. He was preparing for a World Golf Championship tournament at Bellerive Country Club. But the day of the attacks, the tournament was canceled, as well as flights nationwide.
Making the long drive home to Orlando, Fla., Woods had an epiphany. If he had perished in the attacks, what would he have left behind?
"Basically it would be nothing," Woods recalled two years ago.
With that, he began shifting the focus of the Tiger Woods Foundation from educating youngsters on how to play golf to how to get along in life. In 2010, Woods established learning centers at both campuses of Cesar Chavez Public Charter School in the District similar to ones he had opened in his hometown of Los Angeles. Two years later, 25 needy children in the District are benefitting from Earl Woods Scholarships.
One of them is Darryl Robinson, who recently completed his freshman year at Georgetown. Robinson was struggling with an introductory chemistry class but got through with help from his Tiger Woods Foundation mentor, Jake Styacich, who had been through the program.
"I felt unprepared for the Georgetown lifestyle," Robinson said. "[In high school] I wasn't pushed hard enough to the point where I couldn't understand the basic level of chemistry that was expected of every student in my course."
At Chavez's Parkside campus, which Robinson attended, the learning center focuses on science and engineering. At the Capitol Hill campus, students learn communications and video production. The foundation provides afterschool and summer programs to supplement what is taught during regular school hours.
This week, when the AT&T National golf tournament returns to Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, fans who attend will be helping their community as proceeds go to the Tiger Woods Foundation. Since it was established in 2007, the AT&T National has raised $14 million, tournament director Greg McLaughlin said.
Make no mistake, the squeaky-clean image of the superstar who returned tournament golf to the D.C. area in 2007 has been severely damaged by a sex scandal, divorce and bad behavior on and off the course. But he still is his sport's top drawing card. He has enormous power to do positive work, regardless of his performance on the course. Earlier this year, the foundation raised $100,000 via a simple Facebook appeal.
"They really don't need me winning golf tournaments. They don't need me participating on the golf course, period," Woods said a month ago. "This is about education. This is about kids making something of themselves and then obviously giving back and becoming mentors themselves."
The tournament starts its second run in the D.C. area this week, but there is uncertainty about its long-term future. Congressional is committed to host through 2017, but the club and/or Woods can opt out after 2014.
Considering that only 51 percent of members approved of hosting the tournament when the vote was last taken in 2008 -- which was before Woods became embroiled in scandal -- it is likely the marriage between Woods and Congressional will end soon.
Among the options are to move the tournament to another course in the area or to return to Philadelphia, where the event was well-received in 2010-11 when Congressional was undergoing renovation and hosting the U.S. Open. Last year, Woods opened a learning center in Philadelphia.
Wherever the tournament ends up, what Woods has established at Cesar Chavez likely will benefit the community for generations.
"Of the kids in our program, 92 percent are first-generation college students," said McLaughlin, who also is CEO of the foundation. "We have kids going to Georgetown, Harvard, UCLA, [Cal] Berkeley. Two of our graduates this past May are going to medical school. It's been quite rewarding for us.”
Deborah Kenny: Why Charter Schools Work
The Wall Street Journal
By Deborah Kenny
June 24, 2012
Twenty years ago, the country's first charter school opened in Minnesota. This is a momentous anniversary not just for the two million families who now send their children to public charter schools, but for all Americans. The charter movement is not only about opening charter schools—its goal has always been to fundamentally transform public education in this country.
Critics claim that charter schools are successful only because they cherry-pick students, because they have smaller class sizes, or because motivated parents apply for charter lotteries and non-motivated parents do not. And even if charters are successful, they argue, there is no way to scale that success to reform a large district.
None of that is true. Charters succeed because of their two defining characteristics—accountability and freedom. In exchange for being held accountable for student achievement results, charter schools are generally free from bureaucratic and union rules that prevent principals from hiring, firing or evaluating their own teams.
Freedom without accountability is irresponsible. Like all professionals, educators need to be accountable for the results of their work. Yet accountability without freedom is unfair: How can teachers or principals be held responsible for results if they don't control decisions about curriculum or teaching methods? Accountability and freedom do not guarantee that a school will provide an excellent education, but they are prerequisites.
A decade ago, I founded Harlem Village Academies, a charter network now consisting of five schools that will soon grow to serve 2,000 students in Harlem. Everything we do is enabled by the charter conditions of freedom and accountability.
Accountability attracts the best teachers into the profession. Smart, driven people want to work in a place that holds them accountable, where they'll work alongside educators who share their values—first among them, a belief that all children can learn at a high level. It's exciting to work with talented colleagues who believe enough in their own abilities that they are willing to be held accountable for student learning outcomes.
We give our teachers an enormous amount of autonomy, and that ignites their passion. They feel happier because they no longer have to endure the demoralizing impact of working with people who are lazy, who gossip and complain, or who don't believe in the potential of the children. Autonomy inspires teachers to be more creative and feel more committed. As one of our reading teachers, Michelle Scuillo, put it: "My old school made me tired and depleted. I understood why so many smart people leave teaching. I have to admit that I stopped putting my best effort into my lessons. I was ready to change professions, which was devastating for me, because in my heart I wanted to be a teacher."
Working at our school, she told me, "blew my mind. I'm the same person and it's the same population—even some of the same exact students I used to teach in my old school. Here the culture allows you to be yourself. I feel respected and heard. I'm motivated to make my lessons better." It's a message I've heard from hundreds of talented teachers who were about to leave the profession before they discovered our school or similar charters.
Talented teachers don't want to be told exactly what to do and how to do it. So our schools get clear on objectives and get out of the way, allowing teachers to come up with their own ideas and to select whichever practices they think are best.
"Here I am given the opportunity to innovate with projects I never could have done in a bureaucracy," said one of our art teachers, Mary Ann Paredes. "In my old school I had a feeling of stagnation and lost my intellectual rigor. Here I've been invited to explore and learn in a way that is making me more effective. Because the trust level is so high here, it's easy to be open to admit my frustration and ask for help."
The road isn't always smooth. Steve Sebelski, a middle-school math teacher, came to us with several years of experience at a traditional public school. In his first year with us, he struggled with everything from student behavior to lesson planning, confiding in me that he knew his performance was "mediocre at best."
Our principal had observed Steve struggling but had also gotten to know him during faculty retreats and meetings, and saw that he embraced our values of accountability and hard work. The principal took Steve out for dinner and offered encouragement and practical pointers. "I'll remember that conversation for perhaps the rest of my life," Steve later recalled. He went on to become a top performer. Not only did 100% of his eighth-graders score proficient on the state math test, but 100% of those eighth-graders also passed the Algebra Regents exam, which is usually taken by students in high school.
The next year, after working with colleagues to analyze his students' achievement data, Steve identified a dozen eighth-graders whose grades showed they were at risk of failure. The teachers moved quickly. "We came up with a plan and we knew it would be okay to run with it, because our plan was consistent with our values. We didn't have to make a proposal and wait a week to get approval. We didn't have to run it up the flagpole. We had ideas to help the students, and we just did it." Not one student failed that year.
Every school in this country can and must be filled with teachers like Steve and Michelle. When the union and political forces that are protecting the status quo finally come around to doing what's best for children, they will find that it is also what's best for the majority of teachers. Then we will see the best and brightest minds competing for the privilege of working in the teaching profession—a profession that will finally be elevated to its rightful place as the noblest in our nation.