- Washington Latin Charter Expected to Move into Old D.C. School Building [FOCUS, DC Bilingual PCS, Washington Yu Ying PCS, Washington Latin PCS, Richard Wright PCS, Eagle Academy PCS, Washington Math Science and Technology PCS, Mundo Verde PCS, and Booker T. Washington are mentioned]
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Are DC Schools Good Enough?
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Standardized Tests Of Tomorrow Behind Schedule, According To Insider Survey
Washington Latin Charter Expected to Move into Old D.C. School Building [FOCUS, DC Bilingual PCS, Washington Yu Ying PCS, Washington Latin PCS, Richard Wright PCS, Eagle Academy PCS, Washington Math Science and Technology PCS, Mundo Verde PCS, and Booker T. Washington are mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
July 17, 2012
Washington Latin Public Charter School, a standout in the city’s independent public education sector, would move into a shuttered D.C. public school building in Petworth under a deal city officials proposed this week.
The recommended 25-year lease on the old Rudolph Elementary School was announced by the Department of General Services and Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright.
“From a public resource perspective as well as from a financial perspective, it makes no sense for us to hold onto buildings that DCPS has stated they have no use for,” Wright said Tuesday.
The lease, which requires D.C. Council approval, would give Washington Latin a coveted commodity in the charter sector: a long-term home. Charter schools are growing quickly — their students account for 41 percent of citywide public enrollment — but they often struggle to find suitable and affordable space.
“We are excited,” said Martita Fleming, director of operations for Washington Latin, which has about 600 students in grades 5 through 12. “It’s just going to be a great step forward for our program to have a permanent home in one location.”
The school opened in 2006 in a church and then moved to its current arrangement: three different properties along 16th Street Northwest in Ward 4. Older students sometimes walk three blocks to get from one class to the next.
They will get to learn under one roof at the old Rudolph site, on Second Street NW, as early as the 2013-14 school year. But first, that building — which was closed because of low enrollment in 2008 under then-Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee — will need millions of dollars in renovations.
Typically, a charter school receives a year’s free rent for each $1 million it invests in renovation, up to a maximum of 15 years, city officials said. Terms of Washington Latin’s lease are still to be worked out.
While a number of old D.C. public school buildings now house charter schools, others have been turned over to commercial developers or other city agencies — a source of frustration for charter advocates. The Department of General Services controls eight surplus public school buildings, including Rudolph, to which charter schools have the “right of first offer” under D.C. law.
City officials solicited bids for four of the buildings in April, and eight charter schools submitted proposals. Only Washington Latin was successful. The other seven applications were rejected, and the other three buildings — Young, J.F. Cook and Langston, all in Ward 5 — remain unassigned for now.
“It’s always a victory when any building gets awarded to a charter school in this town,” said Robert Cane, executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, a pro-charter group. “As for the other three, we’re really disappointed,” he said.
The unsuccessful applicants included DC Bilingual and Washington Yu Ying, which had both applied for the Rudolph site; Richard Wright, Eagle Academy and Washington Math Science Technology, which had applied for Young; and Mundo Verde and Booker T. Washington for a combined project at J.F. Cook and Langston.
Wright said the seven proposals failed for a range of reasons, including poor academic performance, inadequate financial capacity and incomplete paperwork. He said applicants will be able to hear critiques from city officials and submit revised proposals when solicitation for bids on the three buildings begins again in the next few weeks.
Greater Greater Washington
By David Alpert
July 17, 2012
Many younger residents moved to the District in the last 10-plus years, thanks to a resurgent demand for urban living and policies that encouraged residential growth. For many at or nearing the age of having children, one question above all determines whether they will remain in DC or decamp to suburbs: are the schools good enough for my child?
I have heard from many people who very much want to remain in DC, even in the more walkable and urban neighborhoods, but won't do so if that means sacrificing their children's future. Private schools are becoming more and more expensive relative to most people's incomes and inflation.
Still, few good parents who have a choice in the matter will keep a child in school if the educational outcome is actually bad. Is it?
The answer is very different depending on where you live
The District essentially has 2 educational challenges. Just as transit thinks about choice riders (people who could drive but might choose to take transit if they perceive it's better) and non-choice riders (people dependent on the train or bus, like the poor, elderly and disabled), so are there 2 types of families in DC: those who could move to Maryland or Virginia counties with high-quality schools or send their kids to private school, and those who can't or won't.
The non-choice residents comprise the kids who are really being left behind by poor education. Some can get into charter schools, but there aren't enough highly-performing charter schools to serve everyone. There is no question that we need to provide a better education to break the cycles of poverty and crime and help kids go on to college, a prerequisite for most well-paying jobs in today's society.
Meanwhile, DC wants to create a school system good enough to keep the many residents who might otherwise leave the District entirely. This builds the tax base to pay for the services that help the non-choice residents, builds support for public education, and improves neighborhoods by keeping them multi-generational.
If you live in certain DC neighborhoods, the answer to "are the schools good enough?" is generally, yes. At least, many people think so. This year's out-of-boundary lottery, which fills spots in schools not already full of kids living nearby, had almost no spots in elementary schools in Upper Northwest like Murch and Janney, Oyster-Adams in Woodley Park and Adams Morgan, Ross in Dupont Circle, Watkins on Capitol Hill, and numerous others.
For a time, many parents felt that elementary schools might be "good enough" but were more concerned about junior high (which is a tough time for almost any kid, regardless of school quality), and many DC-area private schools have far larger classes from middle school up. In Ward 3, at least, Deal Middle School and Wilson High School are now pretty much full, and incoming classes of younger kids are filling up with in-boundary kids, leaving no room for others from elsewhere in the city.
In less fancy neighborhoods, it's a different story. Many schools, especially in poorer neighborhoods, are simply not giving kids the skills they need. DC's current practice is to close these schools and perhaps replace them with a charter school.
Some charter schools have worked wonders for some struggling kids; other charters don't really turn out to add much value. Charters play a valuable role, especially to test out innovations like a longer school day, which DCPS can later incorporate into its own schools as appropriate. We'll discuss this in a future part.
Meanwhile, do you think a DCPS school might be good enough for your current or future child?
The Huffington Post
By Joy Resmovits
July 17, 2012
When asked about the problems associated with standardized testing -- cheating, overtesting, blunt measures of student achievement -- U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan often points to a duo of "next-generation assessments" funded by federal money.
But a new survey, which consulting group Whiteboard Advisors plans to publish this week, suggests that "education insiders" aren't so sure that the one of the new tests will resolve all of the issues with standardized testing. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed reported that they believe the Smarter, Balanced Assessment Coalition, one of the two state-based consortia developing the tests, is on the wrong track.
"Smarter Balanced seems to have started with a misdiagnosis of the testing program to begin with, and then gone from there," one respondent wrote.
These new tests are funded by $330 million in stimulus money through the federal Race to the Top competition and are intended to measure critical thinking, particularly the critical skills emphasized by the Common Core State Standards, the set of educational standards most states have agreed to adopt. The tests, by SBAC and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, will both be administered mostly on computers and will feature more open-ended questions than the traditional "fill in the bubble" exams to which students have grown accustomed. But only SBAC is a "computer adaptive test," which means that it conforms to a student's performance during testing (if a student does poorly, the questions will get easier).
Test developers will also provide states with "curriculum maps" that suggest lesson plans based on tested material. One of the biggest departures is that the exams will be spread over the school year and will be similar across states.
"Both are mediocre at best," one survey respondent wrote. "Neither has staying power."
The tests are also supposed to be implemented by 2014. But according to the survey, respondents are doubtful, with 45 percent of them saying that they don't think the tests will be ready by then.
"They are 1 year behind," one respondent wrote. "The capacity is not there in states and districts for the delivery of online assessments."
And the problems aren't entirely the fault of the consortia, according to 45 percent of the participants, who signaled that the inability of school districts to get the new tests up and running would be "the biggest threat to implementation." One-fifth saw technology infrastructure as a major hindrance, as not all schools have sufficient computers to allow students to take the test simultaneously.
The consortia are more positive. "Smarter Balanced is working collaboratively with member states, educators, and experts in the field to develop a next-generation assessment system aligned to the Common Core," Eddie Arnold, Smarter Balanced's communications chief, said in a statement. "With a pilot test set for early 2013, these assessments are on track for implementation in the 2014-15 school year.”
Eighty-five percent of respondents signaled that PARCC is on the "right track," but 45 percent also expected PARCC delays. "Oklahoma looks forward to both the pilot test this academic year and the field test of the assessment in the 2013-2014 academic year," Janet C. Barresi, Oklahoma's education chief and a PARCC steering committee member, said in a statement. "This will help to assure the on-time delivery of this important assessment.”
Whiteboard Advisors, a consulting firm that specializes in school policy, sends surveys about once a month to 50 to 75 anonymous political and policy "insiders," including current and former senior staff from the U.S. Department of Education, White House, Congress and think tanks. Whiteboard only recently began making portions of its surveys public.
Beyond the tests, the insiders believe that the Common Core itself faces a rocky path. School districts "are very unprepared" for the new standards, according to 80 percent of respondents, and only one-quarter believe teachers have "very strong" support for the Common Core. On the other hand, commercial vendors, three-quarters of "insiders" say, have strong or very strong support for the Common Core.
Teachers have expressed similar skepticism in interviews.
Paul Bruno, a California science teacher, isn't sure the new tests will be as different as they're touted to be. "People who do the best on tests that measure critical thinking are those who know the most," Bruno said. "There's really not this abstract critical thinking ability to test."
As they did last month, 100 percent of insiders surveyed flunked Congress on education issues. And they also continue to think that a rewrite of the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act, which is now five years overdue, won't happen before 2014.
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