- New D.C. charter schools are an opportunity, not a threat
- Kevin Chavous in right about location of Harmony PCS [Harmony PCS mentioned]
- How D.C. got to be an education hot spot [D.C. Prep PCS, Thurgood Marshall PCS, Two Rivers PCS, Washington Latin PCS, Achievement Prep PCS, Rocketship PCS, AppleTree Early Learning PCS, and KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
- District’s lawsuit against Options charter school delayed [Options PCS mentioned]
- D.C. bill would ban school suspensions for city’s pre-K students [AppleTree Early Learning PCS mentioned]
New D.C. charter schools are an opportunity, not a threat
The Washington Post
By Kevin Chavous
July 13, 2014
While I respect D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s eager embrace of reform at the D.C. Public Schools, she is off the mark when she says that continuing the city’s approach to public charter schools could give rise to a “cannibalistic environment,” where “somebody gets eaten” [“ Site of D.C. charter fuels debate over coordination ,” Metro, July 6].
District charters educate 44 percent of D.C. public school students, have better educational outcomes than traditional public schools and have led to improvements in DCPS. Charters’ on-time high-school graduation rates are 21 percentage points higher than those of DCPS. And charter students, a higher share of whom are economically disadvantaged than DCPS peers, outperform the latter on standardized tests.
Competition from charters motivated the D.C. Council to make DCPS accountable to the mayor, leading to reforms that improved test scores and graduation rates.
That a proven high-quality charter school plans to open near Langley Elementary is an opportunity, not a threat. Parents will decide which schools work best for their children, whether it’s a traditional DCPS school or a charter.
Kevin Chavous in right about location of Harmony PCS [Harmony PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
July 14, 2014
When former D.C. Councilman Kevin Chavous writes about school choice it is best to listen since his opinions are always on target. This is true today regarding his letter to the editor of the Washington Post regarding the location of Harmony Public Charter School across the street from DCPS's Langley Elementary. From the piece:
"That a proven high-quality charter school plans to open near Langley Elementary is an opportunity, not a threat. Parents will decide which schools work best for their children, whether it’s a traditional DCPS school or a charter."
He goes on to explain that the type of competition for student offered by Harmony is exactly what led to mayoral control of the traditional schools and the improvements to this system that have followed in academics, safety, and facilities.
I would only add one other thought. The addition of Harmony will create a STEM campus in Northeast D.C. Principals and teachers at Harmony, Langley and McKinley middle and high schools will be able to discuss ideas, learn from best practices, and share methods of pedagogy. Who would have ever imagined this kind of education environment being found in Northeast D.C.? The real winners, as Mr. Chavous asserts, are the parents. They will vote with their feet as to the best learning environment for their children.
Why would we want it any other way?
The original Washington Post article and the Chancellor’s reaction brought up another concern. We should be welcoming high performing charters to our town. If this is the way we act when a new group is approved to start a school in the nation’s capital then others may be reluctant to come. This is not the best situation for our children.
How D.C. got to be an education hot spot [D.C. Prep PCS, Thurgood Marshall PCS, Two Rivers PCS, Washington Latin PCS, Achievement Prep PCS, Rocketship PCS, AppleTree Early Learning PCS, and KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Richard Whitmire
July 11, 2014
The news this month that D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson dispatched her principals to recruit students in house-to-house canvassing sounds like a declaration of war with the charter schools. What if they bump up against charter principals doing the same thing — clipboard duels at 20 yards?
Given the district vs. charter fights we’ve seen in cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles, it’s easy to assume that the District is headed in the same direction. Now that charter school enrollment is up to about half the city’s public school enrollment, this would seem like a logical time for war to break out.
Relax. It’s one more sign that the District has evolved into one of the most creative charter-district relationships in the country. And that’s a good thing.
The fight in New York City is partly rooted in ideology. The new mayor, Bill de Blasio (D), is an unabashed progressive who believes that all resources should be focused on “common” schools — despite the unimpressive track record they have in educating low-income minority kids. In other cities with bitter charter-district conflicts, it’s a matter of market share: Superintendents and teachers unions view every child in a charter as a revenue loss.
The D.C. model is different. Here, a liberal charter school law and generous per-student payments allowed for quick growth — too quick, actually. But Scott Pearson, who oversees D.C. charters, has done an impressive job of shutting down bad charters and building up high-performing charters.
While the District has an impressive number of schools belonging to the national charter organization KIPP, what’s notable is the number of homegrown programs that rank in the top tier of D.C. charter schools: D.C. Prep, Thurgood Marshall, Two Rivers, Washington Latin, Achievement Prep and others.
Achievement Prep, in Ward 8, warrants special mention. Founder Shantelle Wright has built a school that outperforms other schools in the ward by as much as 40 points on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams. Henderson expressed an interest in Wright absorbing a failing Ward 8 district school — yet another sign that Henderson sees the district-charter relationship as more than just competition.
Schooling in Ward 8 is about to get more interesting. In 2015, San Jose-based Rocketship Education will open a school there that will collaborate with the high-performing AppleTree Early Learning. AppleTree will handle preschool and Rocketship will handle kindergarten through fifth grade. That twinning, suggested by Pearson, is yet another reason D.C. schools are drawing national attention.
The buildup of good charters played out at the same time that the reforms in public school begun by former superintendent Michelle Rhee and continued by Henderson were kicking in. Those two forces playing off one another made D.C. Public Schools the fastest-improving urban district on recent federal tests.
The D.C. district-charter balance resembles the Franklin-McKinley School District in San Jose, where Superintendent John Porter is building a thoughtful weave of charters and traditional schools.
When Porter allowed Rocketship charters to build a new school around the corner from the district’s Robert F. Kennedy Elementary, the initial reaction at Kennedy was one of dismay. Would parents abandon the school? Instead, Kennedy responded by building an impressive science-themed school in partnership with San Jose’s Tech Museum. As more charters have opened, district schools have responded by, you guessed it, going to the neighborhoods to recruit students charter-style. It’s working as planned.
Where will the District’s charter-district relationship end up? It could evolve into what we see in Houston’s Spring Branch schools, where top charters got invited into district schools as full partners, not just co-located schools. This is inspiration by cooperation rather than competition.
My suggestion: Henderson and Pearson should take a road trip to Spring Branch. Soon.
In San Antonio, local foundations intent on improving schools assembled a collection of charters — some aimed at low-income Latino parents, others to target middle-class parents. For those accustomed to charters serving only high-need neighborhoods, that sounds odd. But it makes sense. Winning the support of soccer moms means cementing political support for better schools.
Currently, D.C. Public Schools has a monopoly on public schools serving the affluent Ward 3, which explains the interest in securing a spot in the high-performing Woodrow Wilson High School zone. But what if charters that appeal to middle-class parents, such as Basis or Great Hearts, opened in Georgetown? That would shake things up in DCPS and the private-school world, where lofty tuitions get forked over for educations no better than what tuition-free charters offer.
We can’t pretend that everything is copacetic between D.C. district and charter schools. DCPS has more than 20 unused school buildings it has yet to release. And Wright, despite her sterling success, has yet to find a permanent home. How can that be allowed to stand? But if you think of that as strife, you need to check in on the intense combat in New York and Los Angeles. No comparison.
So, if you get stopped on the street by clipboard-bearing D.C. principals, offer encouragement and welcome them to one of the nation’s education hot spots. Sounds weird, right? But it’s true.
District’s lawsuit against Options charter school delayed [Options PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Matt Zapotosky
July 11, 2014
A Superior Court Judge on Friday briefly delayed D.C.’s lawsuit against Options Public Charter School and its former leaders, writing that he was swayed to put the case on hold by the prospect that the case could impact similar ongoing criminal proceedings.
Judge Craig Iscoe ordered the parties in the lawsuit to hold off for at least 90 days in exchanging documents and other information, though he declined to postpone the case indefinitely while a parallel criminal investigation unfolds. He wrote that other processes not related to so-called “discovery” could move forward. The city is suing Options and its ex-leaders, alleging that they engaged in a self-dealing scheme and diverted more than $3 million from the Northeast Washington school for at-risk teens to companies they founded.
Their conduct also is the subject of a federal criminal investigation, according to people familiar with the probe.
The delay in the civil case came at the request of Jeremy L. Williams, the former chief financial officer at the D.C. Public Charter School Board. The city has accused him of joining in the financial wrongdoing he was supposed to stop, alleging he took $150,000 to help former Options managers evade oversight.
Troy W. Poole, Williams’s attorney, declined to comment on the allegations against his client, but said of Iscoe’s ruling: “I believe that this is the court’s way of telling the District of Columbia that they need to seriously consider settling this matter. The District has received about 95 percent of the relief sought in their amended complaint, which means there’s essentially nothing left to litigate.”
The city had sought to remove Options leaders from operating the school, stop the flow of money to their private companies, and put the school into receivership, all of which the judge granted.
The brief stay is unlikely to have a significant impact on the civil case, though the reasons it was requested and granted are interesting. Iscoe noted the criminal probe into those involved with Options weighed “heavily” in favor of a delay, as forcing former Options executives to give under oath depositions in the civil case could put them “in a position to choose between defending the civil action or protecting their interests in the criminal proceeding.”
The judge noted that a lawyer for an Options executive who was not named in the civil case said at a May 13 hearing that someone from the U.S. Attorney’s Office had said “indictments would be returned in the next few weeks.” That executive — Charles Vincent, the former executive director of the school — has been interviewed by federal prosecutors, according to court documents.
As of Friday afternoon, there had been no indictments related to the case.
D.C. bill would ban school suspensions for city’s pre-K students [AppleTree Early Learning PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
July 13, 2014
The District’s traditional and charter schools would be prohibited from expelling or suspending pre-kindergartners in most circumstances under new legislation that D.C. Council member David Grosso plans to introduce Monday, part of a broader push to reduce punishments that keep students out of class.
The move comes in response to a recent city report on school discipline that showed that 3- and 4-year-olds received out-of-school suspensions 181 times during the 2012-2013 school year.
“That’s ridiculous,” said Grosso (I-At Large), who said that he can’t fathom why a school would need to suspend such young children and that nobody has yet been able to explain to him why that would be necessary. “The whole school-to-prison pipeline, it all starts right there in the younger years.”
The city discipline report, from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, found that 10,000 of the District’s 80,000 students were suspended at least once during the 2012-2013 school year.
The report also found that minority students are disproportionately affected. Black students in the District were almost six times as likely to be suspended or expelled as white students. Students with disabilities and poor and homeless children also were more likely to be disciplined.
“D.C. is disproportionately suspending the kids who most need to be in a supportive, structured school environment,” said Eduardo Ferrer of D.C. Lawyers for Youth, an organization that advocates for juvenile justice reforms. “So, basically, schools are excluding kids who have experienced various levels of trauma instead of acting as a protective factor from trauma.”
The local disparities mirror national trends: Across the country, poor and minority students are far more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white and affluent peers, and there are clear links between those disciplinary events and increased chances of dropping out and entering the judicial system.
It’s an issue that has drawn increasing national attention. Two years ago, the Obama administration established a federal initiative to address the connection between students’ offenses and judicial involvement. In January, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the first national school discipline guidelines, urging schools to find more constructive ways than suspension and expulsion to deal with minor infractions.
“The need to rethink and redesign school discipline practices is frankly long overdue,” Duncan said at the time.
D.C. activists have been raising alarms for years about the city’s high suspension rates, but OSSE’s recent report was the city’s first attempt to create a comprehensive portrait of disciplinary incidents in both traditional and charter schools.
Activists called the report an important step toward understanding the disparate impact of suspensions and expulsions but said that it still provides only a partial picture, because disciplinary incidents are not reported uniformly: The federal government requires all schools to report discipline stemming from incidents involving drugs, alcohol, weapons or violence, but there is no such federal requirement for reporting less-serious infractions.
Grosso’s bill would require all schools to provide OSSE with an annual report detailing which students were suspended, along with the length of and reason for each suspension. That information is meant to help the agency identify the connection between disciplinary incidents and students’ long-term prospects, including their chances of dropping out.
“We need to do a better job of understanding the causes of students disconnecting so we can intervene,” said Jeff Noel, OSSE’s director of data, assessment and research.
Based on available data, OSSE found that middle school students are suspended at far higher rates than other students. And although charter schools expel students at far higher rates than traditional schools, students in traditional schools are suspended more frequently than students in charter schools.
Delonte Williams, 20, graduated from the school system’s Luke C. Moore High last year. He said that before transferring to that school, he was suspended for three months for allegedly throwing a stick at a teacher, an infraction he said he didn’t commit and an experience that he says nearly derailed his graduation.
He has been working with the nonprofit Critical Exposure program to advocate for alternatives to suspension, such as restorative justice programs that encourage students to talk through incidents with one another and to find meaningful ways to atone for their wrongdoings.
“Once you get suspended, you just start being nonchalant, because you already have that overhead, like, he’s a problem child,” Williams said. “It’s just a cycle.”
Ceasing suspension of pre-kindergartners is one of several recommendations that OSSE made to begin reducing disciplinary incidents citywide. The agency argues that 3- and 4-year-olds aren’t able to fully connect their misbehavior with the punishment, and that children are often disciplined for behavior that is developmentally appropriate for their age.
“In D.C., pre-K students have been punished for temper tantrums, classroom disruption, repeated vulgarity, and bathroom mishaps,” according to OSSE’s report.
The District’s traditional public school system issued a new policy this year that prohibits suspension of early childhood students. The school system encourages schools to look at alternatives to suspensions for low-level infractions and wants to make sure students are treated equally.
“DCPS wants to ensure that every child is treated fairly and has access to a quality education in a safe and welcoming school environment,” said D.C. Public Schools spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz. “We work closely with school leaders to support their behavior work. Currently, we are working with school leaders to build out and expand school climate plans to ensure equity on all levels.”
It is not clear how Grosso’s bill to ban suspensions and expulsions of the city’s youngest children will be received by charter schools, which have the latitude to develop their own rules and discipline structures, and which vigorously defend their autonomy from most local rules. The bill would allow suspensions and expulsions of the city’s youngest students under limited conditions, including if they cause someone “serious bodily harm” or possess drugs, alcohol or a weapon.
AppleTree Early Learning, a network of seven charter schools, suspended pre-kindergartners 81 times in 2012-2013, according to OSSE data, accounting for nearly half the pre-K suspensions citywide.
Jack McCarthy, AppleTree’s executive director, said OSSE’s data includes students who were sent home early, often because they had done something to create a safety concern such as biting another child or other violence.
McCarthy said he could not take a position on banning suspensions of young children, but he said he is open to talking with OSSE about crafting new policies.
Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said prohibiting early childhood suspensions is an “idea worth further discussion” but said that discussion must include school leaders who can explain why they have sometimes needed to suspend or expel a very young child.
Some schools have encountered young students who are violent, posing a safety issue, while others use suspension to send a message to the parent of a child who is habitually tardy, Pearson said.
“A lot of families choose charter schools because they appreciate that it’s an orderly environment, an environment that permits learning to take place because antisocial behavior is addressed more quickly,” Pearson said.
The charter board began publishing school-by-school suspension and expulsion figures two years ago with the philosophy that transparency, rather than new regulations, was the best way to encourage schools to make changes. The board also began reaching out to schools to push them to make changes when there are disparities among different student groups.
Since 2012, the overall charter expulsion rate has dropped by half and the suspension rate by 25 percent, according to board officials. Pearson said that while charter schools need more city-funded mental health professionals to help students handle their underlying problems, the board continues to think that transparency with data, together with targeted intervention for schools with clear problems, is a better way to bring about change than new rules or laws.
“Our approach is working, and working in a way that is respectful of the diversity of our different schools,” Pearson said.