- D.C. charter school leader wins national recognition [Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS, DC International and KIPP PCS mentioned]
- All D.C. students to ride Metro buses for free
- The CREDO Study on Charter School Performance
- D.C. to overhaul ninth grade, separating out students who failed
- At Retooled Summer Schools, Creativity, Not Just Catch Up
D.C. charter school leader wins national recognition [Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS, DC International and KIPP PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
July 1, 2013
Linda Moore was grieving the death of her mother, recovering from knee surgery and wondering what to do with the rest of her life. It was the summer of 1996, and Congress had recently passed a law paving the way for public charter schools in the nation’s capital. Moore, who had spent years working in and around education, was intrigued.
She dedicated herself to opening the kind of school she thought could changes kids’ lives — and she named it after her mother, Elsie Whitlow Stokes, who had been a first-grade teacher in Arkansas. “I grew up in awe of my mother,” Moore said. “She was the best teacher I’d ever seen.”
Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School opened in 1998 with 35 students in a D.C. church basement. Fifteen years later, it has become one of the city’s most sought-after and diverse charter schools, offering French- and Spanish-language immersion programs to 350 students in preschool through sixth grade. “It’s this little school on this little hill where magic is happening,” said Beverlie Lord, the mother of two Stokes students. “It’s an awesome place.”
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is scheduled to induct Moore into its national hall of fame Monday, a recognition reserved for three people each year who have made outstanding contributions to the charter movement and its students.
Moore said she was surprised to be selected. In the District and across the country, there is a push to improve urban education by replicating successful schools, and there is a corresponding affinity — among many policy types and philanthropists — for large and growing charter school networks, such as KIPP and Rocketship Education.
Stokes, in contrast, is one stand-alone school. And its leader has no intention of replicating her work elsewhere, partly because it’s difficult to do successfully and partly because Moore believes in the power of the individual school, crafted by people who want something unique for their communities.
“I do not believe that the founders of the initial charter schools wanted to do more of the same, again and again and again,” Moore said. “In creating charter schools, they saw it as an opportunity to try out individual approaches to education.”
In addition to offering language immersion programs, Stokes is one of a few schools that prepares three meals a day in an on-site kitchen. There’s a garden out back, outdoor play space, and artists and musicians teaching drawing and steel guitar. Parents have for years clamored for the school to grow upward into the middle grades, Moore said, and now it will. Stokes is one of five language
immersion charter schools that have banded together to form D.C. International, a sixth-through-12th-grade school where students will be able to continue their foreign language training.
D.C. International, which won final approval from the D.C. Public Charter School Board last month, is slated to open in fall 2014. “Our parents are thrilled,” Moore said. For Stokes’s first 10 years at the charter, she worked six days a week and at least 10 hours each day. Now she’s down to a regular 8 a.m.-to-5 p.m. schedule, five days a week, and she’s looking forward to cutting back gradually.
But Moore plans to stay involved with the school for as long as she’s able. “I cannot imagine not being engaged in this school in some way,” she said. “It’s become my family.”
All D.C. students to ride Metro buses for free
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
June 28, 2013
All D.C. students will be able to ride Metro buses for free starting in the fall, the D.C. Council decided this week as part of a broader plan to spend a windfall of $50 million in unexpected revenue.
The council also made new investments in school technology, school-based mental health and adult literacy. In addition, more infants and toddlers will have access to early childhood education, and D.C. Public Schools will get money to upgrade its student information system. The extra dollars will also flow to non-education initiatives, including to aid senior citizens and promote the arts and moviemaking in the District.
The council improved the list of spending initiatives Wednesday only after an alternative plan, offered by council member David Catania (I-At Large), was narrowly defeated. Catania sought to spend most of the extra money on schools by increasing the per-pupil allocation for poor children, a move he said would help close the city’s wide achievement gap. He introduced a budget amendment would have sent schools an additional $32 million, or $558 for every child who qualifies for free or reduced-price meals.
The proposal touched off nearly an hour of debate. Supporters argued that the council should grab the opportunity to make a difference for the city’s neediest kids, but some opponents questioned whether funneling more money to schools would improve achievement.
Others argued that while it makes sense to increase funding for poor children, the council needs an opportunity for full deliberation before making such a substantial change to the school funding formula.
“Let’s get the number right, and let’s have a better process to do this,” said Chairman Phil Mendelson (D). Mendelson said other council members had been discussing favored spending initiatives for weeks in anticipation of the extra dollars, but there was “not even a whisper” of Catania’s proposal.
Catania began circulating drafts of his plan Tuesday, the day after city officials announced the extra revenue. Initially he sought $744 per child, but that number had shrunk by Wednesday as he made room for other spending priorities favored by colleagues. Mendelson said the changing number was a sign that the proposal needed more thought.
The proposal failed on a 7 to 6 vote. Voting in favor of Catania’s proposal were mayoral candidate Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7).
Catania criticized his colleagues and Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) for moving too slowly, saying that states such as Texas, for example, have increased per-pupil funding for poor students. “So congratulations — we are now behind Texas,” he said.
Wednesday’s debate was only the beginning of what is likely to be an extended public debate about school funding in the District.
Catania has introduced a bill calling for an unspecified increase in funding for poor children starting in fall 2014. A hearing on that bill is scheduled for next week. Meanwhile Gray administration officials have commissioned a study, due in the fall, on how the formula should be tweaked.
Here’s a rundown of education initiatives in the spending plan the council passed Wednesday, previously reported by my colleague Mike DeBonis:
• $11 million for increase access to early childhood education, including a day care subsidy increase;
• $2 million to expand school-based mental health services;
• $3.1 million to offer a 100 percent Metrobus subsidy for students;
• $797,000 to expand the Metro subsidy for students from 18 to 21 years old who are still attending high school;
• $4 million to expand adult literacy and career and technology education programs;
• $4 million for a Schools Technology Fund, to be distributed to D.C. Public Schools and charter schools on a per-pupil basis;
• $2.8 million to fund the upgrade of the DCPS student information computer system; and
• $1 million to improve the Shaed Elementary School field.
The CREDO Study on Charter School Performance
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
June 28, 2013
The 2013 Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) Study on charter schools contains several encouraging observations regarding the national movement. The overall conclusion is that the performance of these alternative schools has improved since the last time the investigation was performed in 2009. This has occurred while enrollment in charters has increased over 80 percent since the baseline year to 2.3 million students.
The most important finding has to do with the population of students charters are helping. "Within the black and Hispanic student groups, the analysis showed that students with multiple challenges -- blacks and Hispanics in poverty or Hispanics who were English language learners -- gained a substantial learning advantage in charter schools compared to their twins in TPS" [Traditional Public Schools]. The second major observation made by the researchers is that the increase in charter school academic performance was generally not obtained by good schools getting better but by poor charters being closed and high quality facilities taking their place.
Another positive observation by the researchers is that the longer a student is enrolled in a charter school the greater his or her academic progress. The study found that once a pupil spends four years at a charter school 50 learning days in reading and 43 days of learning in math per year are gained compared to traditional schools.
As with the previous CREDO study the majority of students who attend charters do not show higher academic results in reading and math compared to the traditional schools. However, as has been pointed out by others, this is not the case in the District of Columbia. Here the findings are astonishing. Attending a charter school in the nation's capital results in the average student obtaining an extra 72 days of learning in reading per year and an additional 101 days of education a term in math. These results are second only to Rhode Island among the 50 states.
This is fantastic news. Congratulations to all of those in my town who have worked so hard to improve the public education for our children.
D.C. to overhaul ninth grade, separating out students who failed
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
June 30, 2013
D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson plans to overhaul the city’s approach to ninth-grade education, separating out students who have already failed the first year of high school from impressionable incoming freshmen.
School officials hope the move will insulate new ninth-graders from the influence of older classmates who have begun to disengage from school. They aim to nurture teens who are making the transition from middle to high school while also providing meaningful alternatives to students who are repeating ninth grade for the second or third time.
“Once you’re a third-time ninth-grader, the odds of you being able to succeed . . . the odds are low,” Henderson told the D.C. Council last week. “The same old, same old is not going to get these young people to where they need to be.”
Nine D.C. high schools will open in the fall with “ninth-grade academies,” small schools-within-a-school dedicated to providing extra support for first-time freshmen. Students who have already failed ninth grade will not be allowed to enroll in the academies.
Officials say they are still hammering out plans for those “repeater” students, raising concerns among some advocates that the school system doesn’t know how to effectively educate such students and is perhaps setting them up for additional failure.
Cathy Reilly, executive director of the Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals and Educators, said officials must craft a comprehensive strategy for changing the trajectory of its failing students.
“They are a huge contingent of who’s in the high schools, the kids who are failing,” Reilly said. “You don’t want those kids to feel that they’re not part of the school. You don’t want them to feel like castoffs.”
School system officials said that some repeaters could go to after-school “twilight academies” dedicated to helping students catch up to their peers, while others could enroll in evening credit-recovery programs while taking some classes during the day.
And many might be headed for alternative schools. Henderson says she will be more aggressive about removing overage, credit-short students from neighborhood schools and assigning them to programs, such as the city’s two STAY schools for adult learners, that can provide a different and perhaps more successful path to graduation.
Although a limited experiment at Dunbar High School appears to have done well for incoming freshmen, D.C. officials could not say how Dunbar repeaters did in that school’s alternative program.
The target
D.C. officials are targeting the ninth grade because that is when things tend to fall apart for many of the city’s traditional public school students, who are promoted through elementary and middle school despite lacking grade-level skills in math and reading.
In ninth grade, for the first time in their school careers, students must pass certain classes — Algebra and English — to advance. Among those who struggle, truancy spikes. And failure becomes common: Only about six in 10 first-time freshmen are promoted to the 10th grade, leaving classrooms clogged with students who have been retained multiple times.
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At Retooled Summer Schools, Creativity, Not Just Catch Up
The New York Times
By Motoko Rich
June 30, 2013
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Just a few years ago, school districts around the country were slashing summer classes as the economic downturn eviscerated their budgets. Now, despite continuing budgetary challenges, districts are re-envisioning summer school as something more than a compulsory exercise where students who need to make up lost credits fight to stay awake inside humid classrooms.
According to the National Summer Learning Association, a nonprofit group, 25 of the country’s largest school districts — including Charlotte, N.C.; Cincinnati; Oakland, Calif.; Pittsburgh; and Providence, R.I. — have developed summer school programs that move beyond the traditional remedial model. The New York City public schools offer several summer programs that mingle enrichment with academics, including an intensive arts institute and a vocational program combining course work and paid internships.
Here in Jacksonville, the academic year ended three weeks ago, but Roshelle Campbell drove into the parking lot of Sallye B. Mathis Elementary School on a recent scorching morning to drop off her son, Gregory Carodine, for a full day of classes.
Gregory is one of more than 300 students spending six weeks of his summer vacation at Mathis — not because he failed an exam or a class, but because educators in the Duval County Public Schools fret that too many children are at risk of falling behind during the summer.
“He has always been so smart,” Ms. Campbell, a security guard, said of Gregory, 6, who will start first grade in the fall. “I felt like education is really important, and I really don’t want him to lose that during the summer time.”
Even in districts with severe fiscal woes, like Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Francisco, education officials have enlisted the support of philanthropic organizations that believe keeping children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, in school during the summer may help level the playing field for poor and more affluent students.
“I know that there are students that attend public schools who are in Europe right now, and there are kids who are participating in a soccer camp,” said Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the Duval County Public Schools, which has quadrupled the number of voluntary summer slots it offers in the past five years. “I think that’s healthy. But I think what we should be talking about as a country is, do all of our children have access and opportunities to do that so they are not sitting at home, waking up at 11 in the morning, eating doughnuts and watching cartoons? That’s a reality for some of our kids.”
Instead, educators are increasingly viewing summer as a time to bolster the material that children, including both strong performers and struggling students, learn throughout the regular school year. Along with reading, math and science instruction, the districts are packing the summer schedule with activities like art and music; classes in forensic science and marine biology; sailing, fencing and karate lessons; and field trips to museums and theaters.
Research has shown that students regress during the summer, losing an average of about one month of instruction per year, with the so-called summer slide disproportionately affecting low-income children. The lack of high-quality summer programs can also hurt working families whose children have few options during the long months off.
Enhanced summer school “should be part of public education until we recognize that the traditional school calendar doesn’t fit the way Americans live anymore,” said Harris M. Cooper, a professor of education at Duke University who has studied summer learning loss. “Adding 20 days to the school year and having multiple short breaks rather than the one long break actually fits better with the way families live and the way kids learn.”
In an effort to evaluate what kinds of programs produce better academic results, the Wallace Foundation, a private charitable organization, has committed $50 million to study summer schooling in Jacksonville and several other urban districts, including in Boston, Dallas, Pittsburgh and Rochester, N.Y. Beginning this summer, researchers from the RAND Corporation are following about 5,700 students in those cities who will enter fourth grade this fall.
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