FOCUS DC News Wire 7/17/13

 

 

Republican House leaders gathered at a high-performing D.C. public charter school Tuesday to promote their vision for a new federal education law to replace No Child Left Behind. The GOP bill, known as the Student Access Act, would sharply shrink the federal role in K-12 public schools and mark a departure from the George W. Bush-era law that expanded federal authority in local school matters. The bill could go before the full House as soon as this week.

 

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) visited the Two Rivers Public Charter School in Northeast Washington on Tuesday to tout the bill, which would give far more accountability oversight to states and promote expansion of such charter schools. Kline, chairman of the House education panel and author of the bill, was greeted by a group of fifth-graders in yellow, green and blue T-shirts dancing to Latin rhythms.

 

The congressmen stepped into a writing workshop for second-graders, where they asked about school assignments, birthdays and sports. Haneef Abdul-Hakim, 7, shared a story from his notebook with Cantor while Kline bent down on one knee to chat with another student. Kline said Two Rivers is a success story that shows what can be done with less federal intervention.

 

At a roundtable discussion with parents and school leaders, Jane Tobler, mother of two Two Rivers elementary students, explained the relief she felt when her children were selected during the school’s lottery. School officials said that only 32 spots were open this year for the elementary school’s program, and they received 1,840 applications.

 

“I did feel like winning the lottery,” Tobler said. “It’s so stressful, if you are not bound for any of the schools . . . you won’t know what are you going to do.” Kline said his bill will make the lottery process easier for those trying to enroll. “We can have more parents and children winning the lottery,” he said.

 

The 520-page bill was passed last month by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on a party line vote of 23 to 16. House Republicans have taken a clear turn away from Bush’s philosophy that states receiving billions of dollars each year in federal aid should be accountable to Washington.

 

In the Senate, Democrats passed their own education bill in the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that would maintain much of the federal education oversight. The question is whether House Republicans and Senate Democrats can find consensus and pass a single bill, something many observers say seems unlikely in the current Congress. Cantor said Republicans have been working diligently to find compromise.

 

“We intend to bring support from both sides,” Cantor said.

 

No Child Left Behind sets conditions and requirements for every public school receiving federal funds to educate poor students and those with special needs. The law defines academic progress and stipulates sanctions for schools that don’t meet that progress. It also dictates specific improvement strategies that the states must adopt for their weakest schools. It passed Congress in 2001 with bipartisan support; key sponsors included now-House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who died in 2009.

 

There is evidence that shows U.S. students have steadily improved in math and reading since 2004, when No Child Left Behind began taking effect, and that the achievement gap between racial groups has narrowed. The proposed legislation would retain the No Child Left Behind requirements that schools test students annually in math and reading from grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. But states would be able to set their own academic standards, decide whether schools are meeting them and determine what to do about underperforming schools. The plan gives districts more freedom in spending federal funds.

 

It also would promote the expansion of charter schools, an element that drew some support from Democrats when it was introduced as a stand-alone bill in the last Congress two years ago. That bill never became law. Kline has said his proposal would “cut through the dizzying maze of mandates, reporting requirements and strict funding rules that make it difficult, if not impossible, for states and districts to improve performance and narrow achievement gaps.”

 

Kline’s bill also would freeze education spending at sequester rates instead of restoring federal dollars to pre-sequester levels. Cantor has offered an amendment that calls for Title 1 funds, which schools use to help educate poor students, to follow students if they transfer to other public schools, including charter schools. The money currently flows to schools with high poverty rates, not to individual students.

 

Opponents say Kline’s bill would weaken the accountability of schools serving low-income, minority and special-education students. Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: They want to erase the most unpopular aspect of No Child Left Behind, the requirement that students become proficient in math and reading by 2014, or their schools face escalating penalties.

 

 

RECENT DEBATE about the future of school reform in the District has focused on a series of legislative proposals being championed by the chairman of the D.C. Council’s education committee. Getting less attention, but having perhaps as much potential to impact education, is the change in leadership of the union that represents D.C. school teachers. It’s not a good sign that the new leadership won on a platform that painted the incumbent as too compliant with reform initiatives being pushed by Chancellor Kaya Henderson.

 

Washington Teachers Union President Nathan Saunders was defeated in a July 1 runoff election by a veteran teacher and union activist who promised to push more effectively against school system management. Elizabeth Davis, who received 459 votes to the 380 cast for Mr. Saunders, takes over Aug. 1 as head of the American Federation of Teachers affiliate, which represents about 4,000 public school teachers.

 

There’s some irony in Mr. Saunders’s defeat. He won election in 2010 by fiercely criticizing then-incumbent president George Parker for too easily going along with reforms — notably changes in how teachers are assigned and evaluated — instituted by former chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. Once in office, though, Mr. Saunders forged a cooperative working relationship with Ms. Henderson, and the two were reportedly close to finalizing a new contract proposal that Mr. Saunders called “groundbreaking,” with provisions for a longer school day and school year. What helped influence his thinking, Mr. Saunders said, was the 43 percent of public school students in charter schools and the growing numbers clamoring to get in. “No kids in [traditional] public schools means no teachers,” he told us. Mr. Saunders’s cooperation became a liability in his bid for another term, calling to mind Mr. Parker’s verdict about his own defeat in 2010: “I think any union president that is pushing and getting in front of reform, you take a risk.”

 

Ms. Davis rejected that notion. “I am not playing to the stereotype of what unions are supposed to be about. . . . I won’t have us boxed in as anti-reform,” she told us, stressing that reform needs to be done right and teacher input is important. She wouldn’t comment about contract talks, saying she needs to read the pending contract language. She expressed some skepticism about the effectiveness of a longer school day in boosting student achievement and opposition to Ms. Henderson’s push to get chartering authority for system schools; she also supports a cap on charter schools. Most troubling is her belief that teachers at charter schools should be unionized, a move that would threaten the flexibility that has allowed these independent schools to create new ways of getting disadvantaged students to achieve.

 

This was an election decided by a small percentage of those eligible to vote and an even smaller proportion of those who are purported to be represented. The question that now confronts Ms. Davis and the new leadership team is whether to stick with what makes for an effective campaign — what Mr. Saunders called the “fire and brimstone stuff that looks good, sounds good” — but fails to bring about improvements in the city’s schools.

 

 

 

I had the great opportunity to sit down for a talk with Brian Jones, who in February of this year ended his three year chairmanship of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. I requested him to reflect on his term.

 

“I’m extremely proud of it,” Mr. Jones commented without hesitation. “However, it was not just a reflection on me. We had a complement of six individuals with a clear and firm consensus on where we wanted to go, and we executed on our vision of charter quality and accountability. We raised the bar on charter school performance in DC, something the recent CREDO Report just confirmed. Today, we are outperforming most charter school systems across the country and we are outperforming DCPS. Strong authorizing matters when it comes to charter school performance. And the PCSB has executed accordingly.”

 

Mr. Jones continued, “We did this while maintaining our commitment to both accountability and the autonomy of schools. We did this – and the Board will continue to do it in my absence – in the face of having to make some extremely difficult decisions.”

 

“The addition of Scott Pearson,” Mr. Jones offered, “has unequivocally elevated the game of an already excellent staff. The PCSB staff has long done good work, but today the PCSB is a charter school authorizer that takes a back seat to no other authorizer in the United States."

I mentioned to Mr. Jones that it seems as if there was a conscious mission of the board to replace Performance Management Framework Tier three schools and lower performing Tier two schools with Tier one institutions. “That was, of course, our goal – every student should have the option of an excellent school," he responded. "We can never be satisfied with mediocrity. ”

 

I wanted to know if Mr. Jones had plans to continue in some fashion his involvement with D.C. charter schools. He answered affirmatively. “Yes, I will continue to be active in the charter school movement here in DC and nationally. I have accepted an offer to join the board of D.C. Prep and have also joined the board of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools,” Mr. Jones explained.

 

We then moved on to Mayor Gray’s proposal to permit DCPS in addition to the PCSB authorize charter schools. I wanted his opinion on this matter. “For me, it’s not necessarily a bad thing," Mr. Jones revealed. "The devil is in the details. It is important that any chartering authority for DCPS not be used in a way that would favor DCPS charters over those authorized by PCSB. Remember, that if this goes into place the authority will transfer to the next Mayor and Chancellor. We do not want to go back to the time when charters were authorized by a body that provided schools with minimal support and oversight. A new authorizer should not upset the balance between autonomy and accountability that we have successfully established here.”

 

I then asked Mr. Jones what he thought about schools chartered by DCPS having an admission preference for neighborhood children. “I’m not opposed to this suggestion,” Mr. Jones asserted. “Remember that the charter school Neighborhood Preference Task Force that I chaired recommended that charter schools be given the option to offer an admission preference to those living in the communities where they are located. I do strongly believe, however, that a neighborhood preference should be voluntary for charter schools and that charter leaders be given the opportunity to have some input into the details of the plan.”

 

Another subject I wanted to hear from Mr. Jones about was the legislation proposed by the chairman of the D.C. Council’s education committee, David Catania, to create a common lottery and common application form for charters and the traditional schools. Mr. Jones stated he was all for the common lottery and application. “The admissions application process is a daunting task for parents,” Mr. Jones commented. “It was difficult for me as a parent when I was exploring options for my son. Scott and the staff have done excellent work – with the superb assistance of Abigail Smith (prior to her appointment as Deputy Mayor for Education) – on the common lottery and they are working on the common application. But I’d not want to see charter schools be forced to participate. At the end of the day, school choice is an important value for parents and their children but in order to make meaningful choices, families need good information. The board has done a good job disseminating information about our schools through things like the PMF report cards which are now printed in Spanish, the MyDC Charters smart phone application, and the charter school expo."

 

Another suggestion by the Mayor is that student feeder arrangements be made between traditional elementary schools and charter middle schools and vice versa. Mr. Jones reacted strongly to this subject. “Such arrangements certainly make sense, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record I again default to the fundamental autonomy inherent in charter schools. The devil in any of these proposals is in the details. If a charter school chooses to participate in such an arrangement then that is terrific. Schools could benefit from a stable source of enrollment and families could benefit from a stable transition from school to school. But it’s a solution that may not fit within every school’s mission. I just hope all involved in the debate work to ensure that charter autonomy is preserved.”

 

I then brought up the topic of the Mayor’s and Mr. Catania’s proposals to increase the administrative fees to charters from a half percent of total revenue to one percent and whether this was something he advocated. “Yes,” Mr. Jones replied, “It is something the board has been thinking about for quite some time. Most charter school authorizers collect higher fees than we do here. I think the value proposition to the schools is strong – the PCSB does important work supporting the charter schools here, and a greater reliance on financial support from our schools may have the beneficial effect of enhancing the independence and autonomy of the sector.”

 

In conclusion, I asked Mr. Jones to look into the future of D.C.’s charter school movement. He surmized, “I see our market share surpassing fifty percent within the next few years. With the increased population, the PCSB will of course need to double down on its commitment to raising the quality bar. But also with that growth will come a greater burden to take responsibility for educating special education students and those with severe disciplinary issues. I think Chancellor Henderson has a good point that DCPS cannot simply be the repository for these populations. Charters need to think about the rates at which they suspend and expel students. And many of our schools are still grappling with howto effectively take on some of the most challenged special education students.”

 

“Fortunately,” Mr. Jones relayed, “we have a board and staff that is already thinking about these issues and anticipating the needs of schools and students across the city. As it always has, the PCSB will work through all of these questions and emerge with an even stronger charter school sector for the District.”