NEWS
- BASIS to open private school for D.C. metro families [BASIS DC PCS mentioned]
- D.C. schools food vendor at center of fraud lawsuit poised for new contract
- Save the tests
BASIS to open private school for D.C. metro families [BASIS DC PCS mentioned]
Watchdog.org
By Moriah Costa
June 25, 2015
One of the nation’s most prominent network of charter schools is opening a private school in McLean, Virginia.
BASIS is known for its tough curriculum and high-academic standards. U.S. News and World Report ranked one of its schools in Scottsdale, Arizona as the number two high school in America.
The education provider has a network of 16 charter schools in Arizona, Texas and D.C. and two other private schools in Brooklyn and Silicon Valley.
The school’s founders, Michael and Olga Block, chose McLean because of its proximity to Washington, D.C. and its population of high-income, educated families who value education, they told the Washington Post.
Fairfax County is already home to many of the top public and private schools in the nation. In addition, the school will have to compete with elite private schools in nearby D.C. The county does not have any charter schools, although a group of teachers has been trying to create one for years.
BASIS does not plan to provide any financial assistance for the $25,000 a year tuition, according to the Washington Post.
The private school is scheduled to open in the fall of 2015 and will serve 400 student in Pre-k through 10th grade and will focus on science, technology, engineering, and math. Sean Aiken, the current head of school at BASIS D.C., will lead the McLean campus.
D.C. schools food vendor at center of fraud lawsuit poised for new contract
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
June 28, 2015
Weeks after the largest food vendor for the District’s public school system agreed to pay $19 million to settle a lawsuit alleging mismanagement and fraudulent conduct, the D.C. Council appears poised to approve a $32 million contract with the same company to continue providing food services to schools next year.
The settlement with Chartwells and Thompson Hospitality resolved a whistleblower lawsuit that alleged a joint venture between the companies overcharged the city and botched the school meals program, with food often arriving at schools late, spoiled or in short supply. The lawsuit led to an investigation and a complaint from the D.C. attorney general’s office, and some D.C. residents are frustrated that the city would continue its relationship with such a vendor.
“I don’t get it. It’s a shock,” said Emily Gustafsson-Wright, a D.C. Public Schools parent who has advocated for healthy food in schools. “Why would you go down the same path? I think we should have higher standards.”
Chartwells-Thompson did not concede any wrongdoing in the settlement, which was instigated by a former director of food services for D.C. Public Schools. Officials from Chartwells, which is a subsidiary of Compass Group USA, said the agreement reflects a desire to resolve the issues and move forward.
But after the agreement was announced, D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) called for the District auditor to investigate the food service contract and offer an opinion as to whether the company’s conduct should preclude it from winning future contracts. The city’s inspector general also launched an audit of the school system’s food service contracts and an evaluation of food quality and satisfaction with the food program.
The current year’s contract expires Tuesday. Next year’s contract has been submitted to the council for review, and no one has moved to challenge it.
D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), chairman of the Education Committee, said he is concerned that voting against the contract could jeopardize the city’s summer food program, already underway, which feeds students when school is out. “It would put the city in a really bad spot,” he said.
He plans to hold an oversight hearing in mid-September, shortly after the council reconvenes after a two-month recess. “I want to continue to dig into this,” he said. Some parents want that hearing sooner, but Grosso said he hopes to have more input from pending investigations by the fall.
The whistleblower lawsuit was brought by Jeffrey Mills, executive director of the school system’s Office of Food and Nutritional Services from 2010 until he was fired in early 2013. Last year, Mills settled a separate lawsuit with the school system for $450,000 that alleged he was terminated for raising concerns about the system’s mismanagement of the contract.
The school system first contracted with Chartwells in 2008, seeking to save money and improve quality. But food costs went up. An independent audit in 2012 found that the food program lost more than $10 million per year since the contract began — and many schools complained of problems with the supply and quality of food.
According to the attorney general’s complaint, Chartwells knowingly submitted false invoices that the school system paid and used “self-dealing purchasing arrangements” that inflated costs for the District.
In 2012, Chartwells’s parent company, Compass Group USA, paid $18 million to settle allegations that the company overcharged more than three dozen school districts in New York.
Despite ongoing concerns, the District awarded Chartwells another contract in 2012.
School district officials have said they plan to continue working with Chartwells because there is not enough time to change vendors before next school year and because most of the concerns related to the first contract have been addressed.
Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson reported reductions in food losses from $20 million in fiscal 2012 to $5 million in fiscal 2014, according to a December letter to Cheh that was provided to The Washington Post.
The contract expires in 2017, but the D.C. Council reviews contracts annually and has an opportunity to challenge them. Continuing contracts typically are given “passive approval,” which means they are automatically approved after a review period unless someone intervenes.
The $32 million contract for next school year — about $1 million more than the current year’s contract — would pay for Chartwells to provide food services to 97 schools in the District. Two other vendors, D.C. Central Kitchen and Revolution Foods, provide services to a smaller number of schools.
D.C. Public Schools has made efforts in recent years to enhance the appeal of cafeteria food through a school food ambassador program, student taste tests and international food days. But school lunches remain a popular gripe among students. In oversight hearings this year, multiple students testified about poor food quality.
“The lunches may be healthier, but no one seems to want to eat them,” said Lena Jones, a senior at Woodrow Wilson High School. “Why? Because the food is not prepared well enough, and although the school may announce what’s for lunch, kids still cannot tell what it is. They ask questions like, ‘This is chicken?’ ”
Save the tests
The Washington Post
Editorial Board
June 27, 2015
WHAT MIGHT seem like good news for Montgomery County students is more likely to hurt schools than to help them: The county is rethinking high school final exams and may eliminate them altogether. Though we’re sympathetic to the plight of exam-weary teenagers, scrapping finals is not the way to ensure better teaching and learning in Montgomery.
This year, Maryland schools adopted new exams developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). These tests, aligned with the Common Core State Standards, are valuable tools for gauging student achievement. But they also cut weeks out of instructional time, prompting criticism that students spend too many hours taking tests and too few actively learning in the classroom. In response to these concerns, school board officials are considering proposals to cut down on exams. The plan to eliminate twice-yearly finals and replace them with smaller assessments throughout marking periods has emerged as the front-runner.
Certainly, schools should examine how they can allay exam exhaustion for over-tested students. As Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Lillian M. Lowery has suggested, there’s a good chance many of the tests piled on top of the state-mandated PARCC exams and Maryland High School Assessments are redundant. These assessments should go on the chopping block in favor of alternative modes of evaluation. But high school final exams play an important role not just in holding schools accountable for teaching failures but also in preparing students for the next academic step: To succeed in college, students must study a broad body of material and understand both the big picture and the fine details. Those are exactly the kinds of skills final exams help students hone, and that’s why they’re necessary.
Students enrolled in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses already do not take additional final exams. And PARCC exams test only a few subjects, such as algebra and English, while the standardized Maryland assessment exams required by the state cover just biology and government. That leaves plenty of classes where, without finals, students would have no cumulative assessment at the year’s close. That shouldn’t happen. And even in PARCC-tested courses, until school officials have determined that, like an AP or IB test, a PARCC exam covers the same material with the same specificity as a final exam would — and that mastering this material requires the same level of studying — that class’s test should also stay.
Final exams may seem painful in the moment, but in the long run they are profitable to both schools and students. In a county where students have been failing algebra exams at high rates for years, the answer is not to remove the tests: it is to equip students to handle them. Getting rid of finals would be a shortsighted move that will not do Montgomery County high schools any favors.
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