FOCUS DC News Wire 7/3/13

 

 

 

Gray administration officials said Tuesday that while they broadly agree with some provisions in D.C. Council member David Catania’s education proposals that aim to improve student achievement across the city, they object to major elements of the legislation.

 

Some of the most intense pushback, aired at the first of five public hearings on the proposals, came in response to Catania’s plan to create a local accountability system that could lead to traditional schools closing or transforming into charter-like “innovation schools” after failing to meet performance targets.

 

“The threat of closure can be an inspiration for innovation,” Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the council’s education committee, said at the hearing, arguing that too many schools are allowed to struggle for years without meaningful consequences.

 

“People feel the heat,” Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson replied. “Nobody is sitting around acting like we don’t have to move student achievement urgently.”

 

Henderson called innovation schools a “watered-down version” of charter schools that would not do enough to allow her to turn around struggling schools. Henderson, with the support of Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), is seeking the power to approve her own charters.

 

“I sit here at this table and people tell me that charters are eating my lunch,” Henderson said, referring to charter schools’ higher graduation rates and standardized-test results. If total freedom from union contracts and municipal regulations is helping charters succeed, she said, “why can’t I have the authority to do that too?”

 

Henderson also took issue with Catania’s proposals to stop social promotion of students and give principals more power over their own budgets, arguing that Catania’s goals are noble but his ideas — and his efforts to legislate a fix — are misguided.

 

Responding to the charge that his legislation oversteps the council’s proper role in shaping schools, Catania took a shot at Gray, who said last month in his first speech devoted to education that the District should “stay the course” on education policy.

 

“I reject the notion that parents should be patient while their government stays the course,” Catania said. “The status quo is not producing the results that we demand and the results that we need.”

 

Tuesday’s hearing featured Gray officials, all of whom gave the proposals mixed reviews: Henderson; Abigail Smith, deputy mayor for education; Emily Durso, interim state superintendent of education; Brian Hanlon, director of the Department of General Services; and John H. “Skip” McCoy, chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board.

 

They supported some of Catania’s efforts, including his push to make it easier for the charter school board to close underperforming schools and a provision to give low-income high school students free transportation.

 

Other measures generated support in principle but quibbles with particulars.

 

The council and the executive branch agree, for example, that the city needs a unified enrollment lottery for charters and traditional schools. Gray officials have argued that legislation is not necessary because they are already working to establish that lottery, and Catania said he would be willing to withdraw his bill if he can be convinced that it isn’t necessary to spur change.

 

Gray administration officials also said they supported Catania’s effort to design a transparent process for transferring surplus buildings from the traditional school system to charters. But individual provisions of the bill are unworkable, they said, including one requiring the city to pay to maintain empty buildings for three years if they draw no suitable bids from charters.

 

Catania invited Gray officials to draft alternative language.

 

There seemed to be little such middle ground on a proposal to strengthen the Office of the State Superintendent of Education by allowing the state superintendent to be fired only for cause and only with the approval of the elected State Board of Education.

 

Gray officials argued that the measure infringes on mayoral control of the schools, while Catania said the state superintendent needs to be independent to make politically unpopular decisions on everything from closing schools to investigating cheating.

 

The local accountability system faced some of the broadest opposition. Already the District must adhere to a different set of standards under its waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law, Durso said, arguing that a new local system would create a duplicative or potentially conflicting set of expectations for schools.

 

There also was debate about the impact a new local accountability system could have on millions of dollars in federal Title I funds. Durso said that those funds — meant to improve achievement among low-income students — cannot be used to meet local mandates and that the proposed legislation could imperil the funding.

 

Alexander Dreier, one of several lawyers Catania hired to draft the legislation, disagreed. He said he wasn’t aware of any provision of Title I law that would interfere with a local accountability system.

 

 

 

Washington Teachers’ Union members voted Monday evening to unseat their incumbent president in favor of a candidate who promised to more forcefully challenge school system management.

 

Veteran teacher and WTU activist Elizabeth Davis defeated Nathan Saunders with 55 percent of the vote in what both candidates said would be a game-changing election for the union, which is negotiating a new contract.

 

“It was a referendum on many fronts,” said Saunders, who received 380 votes to Davis’s 459. “They want more aggressive change than what I was dishing out.”

 

Davis’s running mate, Candi Peterson, was also victorious Monday in her bid to serve as the union’s general vice president, a position she held under Saunders until they had a falling out in 2011 and Peterson was forced out. Peterson, a social worker, writes a blog that has been fiercely critical of Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and her predecessor, Michelle A. Rhee.

 

It is not clear when Davis and Peterson will take over: They say immediately, citing union bylaws, but the WTU elections committee has said it won’t happen until Aug. 1.

 

In recent weeks, Saunders said he was close to finalizing a contract that would include salary increases and provisions that would allow for longer school days and a longer school year. Henderson supports those provisions.

 

Saunders said negotiations over that contract will fall to Davis, who said she would not comment on how she plans to proceed until she sees the pending contract language.

 

Davis said one of her first priorities will be to reverse Saunders’s agreement to change the terms of early retirement for teachers who lose their jobs because of budget cuts or school closures. That agreement with the school system, signed in December, shortchanges veteran teachers, Davis said.

 

“I hope that Chancellor Henderson will understand that the relationship with the union will have to change in some respects,” she said.

 

Henderson said in a statement that Saunders had been a “valued partner” and “great advocate for both teachers and students.” She offered congratulations to Davis and said she looked forward to working closely together.

 

Saunders was elected in 2010 after accusing then-WTU President George Parker of being too cozy with management. In office, Saunders sought to strike a cooperative relationship with Henderson, an approach he said was necessary to stay relevant and push for teachers’ interests at a time of nonunionized charter schools’ quick growth.

 

Davis, a longtime WTU activist, said Saunders ignored teachers who wanted a stronger voice pushing back against some of Henderson’s decisions, including her closure of 15 schools and her use of “reconstitution,” in which all teachers at a school must reapply for their jobs.

 

“We do not plan to be a roadblock to school reform or play to the stereotype of a union that blocks improvements, but we do not plan to be silent” on such issues, Davis said.

 

Davis added that teachers want more input in running the union and a stronger voice in shaping issues that affect teaching and learning, including curriculum, instruction and school climate.

 

“Teachers want the WTU to be less controlled by one person and more engaged with the full range of issues impacting teachers, students and schools,” she said. “We campaigned on a platform that said the union can be much better.”

 

 

 

Yesterday, I spent some time at the National Alliance for Public School's National Charter Schools Conference. I caught a fine presentation by Martha Cutts, Washington Latin PCS's Head of School, and Kaye Savage, CEO of Excel Academy PCS entitled "Leveraging Partnerships to Achieve Breakthrough Performance." Both leaders described working with outside organizations that brought extremely valuable enrichment to both their students and staffs.

 

But the highlight of my visit to the D.C. Convention Center was a talk by Fernando Zulueta, the President of Academia, a Florida charter school support organization. He looked at student test scores in his state and found a strong correlation between the percentage of students on free or reduced paid lunch and academic performance. As you might have guessed traditional public schools that had a low percentage of free and reduced lunch students ranked high in student standardized test scores while those with a high proportion of these pupils scored low. The impact on poverty was quite dramatic, with Mr. Zulueta finding generally a two point drop in test results for every increase in percentage of low income students.

 

The head of Academia looked at the same relationship between test scores and poverty for charter schools. Interestingly, for the elementary schools the pattern was similar to the traditional public schools. But for the charter high schools the story was much different. The graph now became much flatter with not as great standardized scores recorded by affluent pupils and not as low results found among poor students. In other words, just as the most recent CREDO Study found, Florida charters are having the greatest impact in improving academic performance on those at the lower end of the economic scale.

 

Mr. Zulueta then decided to see what the pattern was for the U.S. News and World Report top high schools. He investigated the 1,000 top ranked schools in 2012 and 2013. The results startled him. For this group of educational institutions the number of schools in 2012 that served 50 percent or more of free and reduced price lunch qualifying students was two percent. I believe the actual number was 16 schools. When he reviewed the data for the current year the proportion of schools serving kids in poverty was even worse. Only 1 percent, or 7 schools, of the top United States High Schools had populations of pupils over the 50 percent mark that qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Mr. Zulueta characterized these findings as "disgusting."

 

However, for charter schools the story was much different. Of the charter schools that made the top 1,000 performing high schools for 2013 on the U.S. News and World Report rankings, 35 percent had student populations comprised of kids who live in poverty. Mr. Zulueta congratulated the audience on this achievement and asked them to do what they could to get this information out to the general public. A fascinating presentation.