- Critics of D.C. education policies question test score gains
- An education plan is mandatory for mayoral candidates
- The Little-Known Election That’s About to Cost the District $300,000
- Biggest influence on a child’s education may be the mother’s education
- Truancy High for Younger Students
Critics of D.C. education policies question test score gains
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
July 10, 2014
A group of education advocates is calling on the District to release more information about students’ performance on city tests, arguing that the limited data released in years past has overstated city schools’ progress.
Elaine Weiss of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education — a group that has been critical of education policies that have taken root in the District, such as charter schools and test-based accountability — wrote in an analysis to be released Thursday that “lack of transparency, combined with cherry-picking specific numbers” has enabled the city to “paint a false picture of progress,” particularly among poor and African American students.
The call for more detailed information comes as the Office of the State Superintendent of Education prepares to release scores on the 2014 city tests — known as the D.C. CAS — in August.
OSSE officials say they do plan to release additional test score data this year in an effort to be more transparent. But spokesman Briant Coleman said the agency “strongly disagrees” with Broader, Bolder’s report, which he said contained “numerous errors and inaccurate information.”
“We stand by the validity and reliability of the DC-CAS,” Coleman wrote in an e-mail. “We appreciate the work and progress our students continue to make.”
OSSE annually releases data showing the percentage of students who fall into each of four categories on the test: below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. In 2013, the percent of children considered proficient or above jumped four points, gains that Chancellor Kaya Henderson and Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) celebrated as historic.
Weiss argues that D.C. CAS proficiency rates are an ineffective way to assess student progress because the definition of “proficiency” is vague.
D.C. CAS tests are scored on a 99-point scale, and students are deemed proficient if they meet or exceed a “cut score” set by educators and test developers. Last year, D.C. teachers recommended setting a new and higher bar for proficiency to reflect higher expectations of students under the Common Core State Standards. OSSE quietly decided not to adopt the new bar — which would have resulted in lower proficiency rates — in order to maintain the comparability of scores over time.
Weiss said the city should release students’ underlying test scores, separated by race, poverty and disability status.
Those underlying scores show that during the past few years, the city has made less progress than leaders have claimed and that gaps between white and black children, and poor and low-income children, are growing across many grade levels, according to Weiss’s analysis.
OSSE officials said they plan to release underlying scores for each school and student subgroup for the first time this year.
The District made the largest gains in the country on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, supporting the gains that city leaders announced on the 2013 CAS. But Weiss — echoing D.C. Council members, D.C. activists and others — said the NAEP gains masked growing achievement gaps and were driven by demographic change as city schools enrolled more high-scoring white students.
Melissa Salmanowitz, a D.C. schools spokeswoman, said the school system is confident in the accuracy of D.C. CAS results that showed widespread gains.
“It’s incredibly disappointing that this group refuses to believe what is clear in the D.C. CAS data, that our students are making historic progress,” she said. “They’re using fuzzy math and distortions to create a narrative that simply is not true. Every indicator, from test scores to attendance to student satisfaction, shows how DCPS is moving in the right direction.”
An education plan is mandatory for mayoral candidates
The Washington Post
By Jonetta Rose Barras
July 10, 2014
So, what’s with all the talk about which mayoral candidates would or wouldn’t keep Kaya Henderson? With all due respect, that’s a personnel matter — not an education policy issue.
At-large D.C. Council member David Catania, running as an independent, has resisted pressure to make a definitive statement about whether he would retain the D.C. Public Schools chancellor if he wins the Nov. 4 general election. Democratic Party nominee Muriel Bowser and independent Carol Schwartz have both said they would keep Henderson.
Their pledges mostly seem meant as tranquilizers for potential supporters anxious about the future of education reform. Some individuals and organizations apparently believe that a change in DCPS’s administration would imperil the few improvements that have been made.
Stability can be a good thing. But election discussions by mayoral candidates about public education in the District can’t be allowed to devolve into a Henderson employment plan.
There was a similar distraction in 2010 regarding whether then-candidate Vincent C. Gray (D) would keep Michelle Rhee. Rhee left, and Gray promoted her deputy, Henderson, who retained several members of Rhee’s team and continued down the reform path paved by former mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and his chancellor.
Simply put: The reform agenda can be augmented or redesigned. But it’s unlikely to be derailed by the departure of one education official.
The mayor — and only the mayor — has command and control of the District’s education apparatus and agenda, according to the 2007 Education Reform Act. Without an executive who understands the complexities of the issues, knows what matters to parents and is willing to act boldly and aggressively, it won’t matter who is chancellor.
Thus far, Catania is the only candidate who has offered a full public education platform. As chairman of the council’s Committee on Education and Libraries, he has spent the past two years focusing on those areas. He’s introduced several significant legislative proposals to improve special education, halt social promotion, reduce truancy and increase resources for at-risk children, which could help close the achievement gap between poor students and others in the District, one of the widest in the country. Critics have accused him of micromanaging. Many parents with whom I have spoken don’t share that view.
A former at-large Republican council member, Schwartz should be well versed in public education. After all, she was a special education and elementary school teacher, a vice president of the now-defunct D.C. Board of Education and consultant to the U.S. Education Department — although that was more than 30 years ago. But she has a record — she helped to launch Benjamin Banneker Senior High School, advocated for a longer instructional day and school year and pushed for teacher evaluation, for example.
Schwartz only recently jumped into the race. She has yet to release a 21st-century education policy document, however. She told me one’s on the way.
Bowser’s position paper on education is a thin reed: She said she wants to invest in middle schools. She has pushed for replication of Alice Deal model across the city and got the council to approve $7 million for fiscal 2015 that would be used to plan a middle school in her home base of Ward 4. Additionally, she said she would deliver “real” technical education, provide additional resources to underperforming schools and expand early childhood education. (The latter two have already been done — the result of work by Catania and Gray.) Bowser also said she would encourage making neighborhood preference a factor in charter admissions — a controversial policy facing growing opposition from advocates for traditional public schools.
Last week, Henderson raised concerns about the location of a new charter across the street from a DCPS school. The academic foci of both schools would be science, technology, engineering and math. A strong supporter of school choice, Henderson told The Post’s Emma Brown, “I don’t think anybody signed up for this kind of uncontrolled expansion of schools without rhyme or reason.” She’s right.
Many parents and some education advocates for years have called for a moratorium on new charters, concerned about redundancy, a lack of coordination and waste of taxpayers’ dollars. The charter board wants to move full-steam ahead, as do others, including former mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), who last week endorsed Bowser and asserted that now is not the time to pause on reform. Maybe not. But we’ve been at this for more than seven years. It’s time for an honest assessment.
Equally important, it’s certainly time for Bowser, Schwartz and Catania to present to voters a clear and coherent global vision for public education, including whether they support a moratorium on new charters and how they intend to bring innovation and urgency to the reform movement. Then, they can talk about how Henderson — or anyone else — fits in that picture.
The Little-Known Election That’s About to Cost the District $300,000
The Washington City Paper
By Will Sommer
July 9, 2014
Are you pumped for election day this Tuesday? LL’s not talking about the mayoral primary—that was in April. Or the general election, which is still four months from now. Instead, District voters will go to the polls next week to cast ballots for a special election for Ward 8’s seat on the State Board of Education.
A special election to fill a position on the toothless State Board of Education isn’t anyone’s idea of a hot race. But even if District residents aren’t paying attention to it, they are paying for it. Holding the election will cost roughly $300,000, according to D.C. Board of Elections spokeswoman Tamara Watkins.
That might seem steep, but according to a draft budget prepared by the DCBOE, even running a small election costs a lot of money. Printing fees are expected to cost around $38,500, while voting systems cost $37,000. $43,730 will go to payments to poll staff, including $28,200 just for election day work.
That’s in line with what the District has paid for other recent special elections, including $317,000 for a 2012 Council race in Ward 5. 2013’s city-wide at-large special election cost $832,788—give or take $30,000 that had to be spent on a mailing after the elections board botched a postcard about the race.
Even for a city that’s already seen three special elections since 2011, though, the special Ward 8 vote stands out for its wastefulness. The election could have piggybacked on the general election and been on the ballot with all the other races being decided in November, a cost-saving move that would only keep the seat open for four more months.
Ward 8 residents wouldn’t exactly lose out if they didn’t have a place on the board until then, either. The State Board of Education has had only scraps of power since 2007, when then-Mayor Adrian Fenty’s school reform legislation dismantled the more powerful school board, created the SBOE in its place, and transferred school control to the executive branch. Earlier this week, Ward 6 SBOE member Monica Warren-Jones announced that she wouldn’t run for re-election, mentioning the board’s lack of power as one reason.
Which means the District is about to blow six figures on a race that could have been handled by just printing another entry on November ballots, all for a position that’s somewhere around Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in importance. Blame it on a body that’s seen its own share of special elections lately: the D.C. Council.
Not even the Board of Elections, which LL would expect to be the biggest proponents of extraneous elections, wanted a vote this summer. After then-Ward 8 SBOE member Trayon White resigned from his position in March to take a job in the District’s Department of Parks and Recreation, the Board of Elections sent a letter to Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry asking him to consider legislation that would move the special election past the required 114-day election deadline and onto the November ballot. If the Council really wanted to fill White’s seat quickly, the letter said, the special election could be conducted by mail.
Despite the request, though, the Council didn’t do anything. Barry, who endorsed White in 2012 but has stayed out of the latest race, didn’t attempt to move the vote or push for mail-in ballots.
Instead, Barry’s office sent other councilmembers notice of a bill to move the election, but never introduced the legislation, according to spokeswoman Latoya Foster. She says the decision came after Barry talked with constituents worried about leaving the seat open.
“They came to the conclusion that it was wrong to not have a representative on the school board for that extended period of time,” Foster says.
Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, whose government operations committee oversees the elections board, says he deferred to Barry since the election would be in his ward.
That’s not good enough for SBOE candidate and longtime Ward 8 activist Philip Pannell, who’s earned an endorsement from the Washington Post. Pannell wanted a mail-in vote with limited open voting stations, which he says would have cost the city half as much as Tuesday’s vote.
“All of the voters could have been treated to dinner and drinks at Morton’s of Chicago,” Pannell tells LL.
Even some of the candidates in the race don’t seem to be particularly interested in it. The field started with six candidates in April, thanks in part to the rare opportunity to hold office in a ward that’s usually starved of political opportunities for people not named Marion Barry. But after challenges to signatures on ballot-qualifying petitions and candidate withdrawals by the likes of Shadow Rep. Nate Bennett-Fleming, now just two hopefuls will be on the ballot next week: Pannell and teacher Tierra Jolly.
“It is very depressing,” Pannell says. “I would like to think that I’m just so charismatic that my candidacy would cause people to stampede to the polls.”
Ward 8 has been proving Pannell right. As of Monday, only 55 people had cast ballots at early voting stations that have been open since June 30. Despite the appetite for intrigue in the ward’s political class—the Ward 8 Democratic organization periodically roils with leadership struggles, and the group’s straw poll provided mayoral candidate Muriel Bowser with a surprise win in January—there’s been little heat for the SBOE race. Pannell and Jolly haven’t participated in any forums or debates.
“When you say if we have any policy differences, I don’t know, because I’ve only been in the same space with her twice in my life,” Pannell says.
Which isn’t to say the Board of Elections isn’t trying to drum up interest. Ward 8 has been papered with notices in an attempt to drum up interest in the little-watched race, an attempt that, between yard signs, mailings, and advertisements, added $12,000 to the race’s price tag.
“They have signs all over the place, and I’ve never seen that even for regular elections,” says Jacque Patterson, a former Ward 8 Democrats president who was won over to Jolly’s side after seeing her aggressive door-knocking campaign.
The race’s humble status hasn’t stopped it from bearing the characteristics of more portentous District elections. Like Pannell’s Post endorsement—which Pannell supporter Sandra Seegars worries could amount to the “kiss of death” in Ward 8—and also tussles from the candidates over who’s truly an outsider to the ward.
Pannell points to Jolly’s work as a corps member for Teach for America as a sign that she’s being backed by the group’s supporters; it’s controversial in D.C. because of former schools boss Michelle Rhee’s association with it. (Jolly now teaches at Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville, Md.) Jolly, a 31-year-old native Washingtonian, counters that Pannell—who moved to the ward in the early 1980s—shouldn’t be accusing anyone of being a newcomer.
“Calling me an outsider is bananas, especially coming from someone who didn’t move here until the year I was born,” Jolly says.
Whoever wins on Tuesday, it’s clear who will have lost in the $300,000 special election: the District’s taxpayers. Then again, Pannell says, leaving the SBOE seat open through the November election might have raised an even more difficult problem.
“If you have a public elected position that can be vacant for nearly a year, it calls into question whether you really need it or not,” he says.
Biggest influence on a child’s education may be the mother’s education
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
July 9, 2014
It’s long been known that a mother’s education status has a sizable influence on her children’s academic lives. But a report released Wednesday enumerates many of the ways a mother’s education plays out in the next generation’s economic, social and health outcomes as well.
Here are some of the disparities for the one in eight children in the U.S. who are born to a mother with no high school diploma, compared to the one in three whose mothers have a college diploma.
● 84 percent live in low-income families, compared to 13 percent
● 48 percent have a mother who is not securely employed, compared to 11 percent
● 16 percent read proficiently in the eighth grade, compared to 49 percent
● 40 percent do not graduate on time, compared to 2 percent
● 27 percent are obese, compared to 13 percent
The results of the report were released at a panel discussion Wednesday to promote so-called dual-generation policies that seek to educate and train parents alongside their children.
Social programs tend to focus on parents, or children, but not both, said Donald J. Hernandez, a sociologist at Hunter College and co-author of the report.
The panelists discussed how paid family leave, early childhood education, high school recovery programs, workforce training and other family support systems could work together to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty.
Gail Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, said that higher education should be part of the discussion. She said more than half of community college students have children and two-thirds work full time, yet “we never think about child care as a basic function of college.”
Truancy High for Younger Students
The Washington Informer
By Dorothy Rowley
July 9, 2014
One year following a heated meeting at Anne Beers Elementary School in Southeast where city leaders, parents and community activists struggled to come to terms with the schools’ rapidly increasing student absenteeism, and subsequent truancy rates, little has been done to rein in the numbers.
The problem has gotten worse, with more elementary-age students than ever having racked up excessive numbers of unexcused days from school, according to a January report from the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) system.
In 2013, for example, 269 pre-kindergarten students had more than 20 days of unexcused absences. During the same year, of the 3,408 pre-kindergarten students enrolled, at District public schools, 1,518 had 1 to 5 days of unexcused absences.
“But you have to be careful with the numbers, because they’re not always what they seem,” said Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund in Northwest. “There are a lot of low-income households, especially in Wards 5, 7 and 8, where conditions like asthma and a host of other childhood illnesses come into play,” said Filardo, 60.
“Four year olds might wake up not feeling well, so the parent is not going to send them to school. Same thing for a three year old who’s not feeling that good,” said Filardo, who added that while many elementary school-age absences center on illnesses, housing issues often dictate school attendance.
“There are a lot of underprivileged families in the school system who have been evicted and, as a result are homeless,” said Filardo. “So they end up living from house-to-house with relatives or in long-term stays at homeless shelters.”
Take for example, Relisha Rudd, the 8-year-old girl who has been missing since March 1. For two years, her family lived at the D.C. General Family Shelter in Southeast, before a school counselor alerted authorities that the little girl hadn’t been to school in weeks.
Relisha’s chronic absenteeism has since sparked debate about the high rates of absenteeism, with or without parental consent.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray has asked Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith to review city programs connected to Relisha's case and to recommend improvements.
Another case that involved students that had not attended school in weeks, revolved around Banita Jacks, convicted of murdering her four daughters in 2009.
That case, which also led to accusations against the public schools system, resulted in the firings of several social workers for failing to follow-up on complaints that might have saved the children.
Meanwhile, chronic absenteeism leads to truancy, which leads to poor classroom performance and low graduation rates.
Last year, 32 percent of students missed 10 or more days, and 19 percent missed 20 or more days. Overall, absenteeism with or without parental consent reportedly led to 40 percent of students having missed at least 18 days in 2012-13, compared to 20 percent who missed 35 days during the same school year.
Although the school system is required to report any student who has missed 10 days without an excuse – only 40 percent of cases received attention last year.
“While the data is alarming we have come a long way from where we used to be,” Chancellor Kaya Henderson, 43, said in an interview. She blamed the breach in absenteeism reporting on budget constraints and government bureaucracy.
“The truth of the matter is that to get to 100 percent, I have to employ lots of people whose focus on their jobs would be paperwork,” Henderson said.
David Catania (I-At Large), chair of the D.C. Council’s Committee on Education, noted early on that in many instances, chronically-absent students often live in homeless shelters or their families receive some kind of public assistance.
Catania, a candidate in this fall’s mayoral election, has been at odds with Democratic opponent Muriel Bowser (D-Ward4) over who will best steer DCPS going forward, while Henderson’s been under pressure to develop initiatives to deter both absenteeism and truancy so that 75 percent of all students graduate on time over the next three years.
Catania, 46, said through his spokesperson Brendan Kief-Williams, that ensuring parents understand the seriousness of their children missing school remains paramount.
Catania said that as parents are being made aware of the importance and their obligation for getting their children to school, his staff has started to see improvement at the elementary grade level.
“From the ‘South Capitol Street Act’ that required mandatory interventions when students begin to miss days, to the ‘Attendance Accountability Act’ that required earlier and more consistent parental notification when student absences continue to add up, Mr. Catania believes strongly that the more class time a student misses the greater the chance that they fall behind,” said Kief-Williams. “The council man has put more money into schools to support more attendance counselors and behavioral health professionals, and is a strident supporter of programs that connect families with teachers and administrators in a positive and supportive manner.”
Vicky Wright-Smith, whose daughter attends McKinley Technology Education Campus in Northeast, said she’d been under the impression it’s largely been teenagers who have been consistently absent from school.
“I wasn’t aware that so many young children are missing school,” Wright-Smith said. “However, if they are absent to that extent, it’s a parent issue because they are the ones responsible for getting their children up and ready for school.”
She also said that school boundaries might add to chronic absenteeism as well.
“Generally, children have access to schools in their boundaries, unless they attend schools out of their neighborhoods,” said Wright-Smith. “And most of that is because schools in their communities have been closed. They end up attending schools they don’t like – and that could be a real problem with absenteeism.”
Filardo agreed, but explained that absenteeism also has to do with students’ ability to get to school.
She said school boundaries can impact students’ travel time.
“There are students who are traveling well over a half mile to school, with the average distance of travel in Wards 7 and 8 being a mile and a half,” said Filardo.
“They’ve got to figure out their bus routes on routes that were not designed for getting children to school, and because of this, there’s been some really difficult travel situations in Wards 5, 7 and 8 where so many of the neighborhood schools have been closed,” Filardo said. “As a result, the children are kind of going all over the place just to get to school, which results in absences on all grade levels.”