FOCUS DC News Wire 7/8/13

 

 

STUDENTS WHO attend charter schools in the District gained an extra 72 days in reading and an additional 101 days in math over the course of a year compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools. That’s essentially an extra half-year of school. Those impressive findings from a new national study attest to the dramatic improvement of the District’s charter schools and show that they are creating an environment where students can achieve.

 

A comprehensive study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University showed D.C. public charter school students outperforming those in the D.C. school system. The results stand in stark contrast to 2009, when CREDO researchers found no difference in performance between the two groups.

 

Equally impressive is how D.C. charters, which enroll 43 percent of public school students, exceeded the performance of charters nationally. The 2013 analysis of student performance at charter schools in 25 states, D.C. and New York City showed gains for charters of eight additional days of learning in reading over conventional schools and about the same learning gain in math. The 2009 study showed nationwide charter school performance lagging regular school counterparts in both subjects, so the improved performance is significant. The improvement comes as greater numbers of minority and poor students with educational disadvantages are attending (and benefitting from) charter schools.

 

The willingness to close chronically failing schools seems to have made a difference in the learning gains. CREDO researchers said the jurisdictions that closed at least 10 percent of their charter schools — the worst performers — posted the best overall results. “Twenty-seven schools have closed their doors [since charters started in D.C.] and I guarantee that if they were still open D.C. would not show up in the CREDO report as outperforming,” Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said of the refusal to tolerate year-in-year-out failure.

 

There is, both on the local and national level, great disparity in the quality of charter schools, and much work still needs to be done. But the District has been fortunate to have a good law that ensures charter independence and a high-quality authorizer that has insisted on high standards and accountability. In that success story are lessons to be learned not just for other charter schools but for traditional systems as well.

 

 

Washington, D.C., has a new Michelle A. Rhee, and his name is David A. Catania. As the District’s education czar, Mr. Catania appears to be ushering in a slate of reforms that will bolster student achievement and parental engagement, and close the gap between the haves and the have-nots. But this emperor, who is mimicking Ms. Rhee, is proposing some of the same reforms as Mayor Vincent C. Gray and they likely will reveal the same limp results as those under former Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.

 

To her credit, Ms. Rhee, as Mr. Fenty’s schools chancellor, proved to be a premier game-changer when it came to dismantling policies that automatically handed senior status to teachers, principals and other school employees who could not be fired, and she tethered school accountability to student test scores. Where she fell incredibly short, however, was in implementing reforms that would push up students from the lower rungs of the academic ladder and tie teacher and principal pay to student performance. Enter Mr. Catania, at-large independent and the first D.C. Council member to grab the reins of the school system since the new governance system was put in place in 2007.

Mr. Catania is no reformer.

 

If he were, he would push a tracking system that reflects how teachers perform from grade to grade and school to school. Proposing to hold an eighth-grader back if he or she doesn’t make the grade is fine, as long as the new policy reflects the fact that academic performance is a two-way street. The Catania bill puts in place a performance framework with benchmarks for failing schools, but it does not do enough to hold individual teachers and principals accountable. Is things stand now, and under Mr. Catania’s proposal, students — not teachers — will suffer the consequences of poor schooling.

 

In six short months, since becoming chairman of the council Education Committee, the czar has:

• Proposed cutting funds for a top-performing charter school in Southeast because, The Washington Post said in an editorial, the proposal was made at “the behest of council member Marion Barry.”

• Proposed other budget cuts, including funds utilized by Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith. “Mr. Catania showed no effort to conceal a disdain for Ms. Smith,” the editorial said.

 

 

 

Last Sunday, the editors of the Washington Post recognized the outstanding academic progress that charter schools in the nation's capital have made compared to other such schools around the country and in comparison to DCPS. They go on to give credit for this accomplishment to two factors; the closing of underperforming schools by the D.C. Public Charter School Board, and the fact that the District has an excellent charter school law.

 

Now don't get me wrong, the PCSB has done a great job. However, I have always said that the body should be closing poor charters faster. In addition, the authorizer has not made progress so far in its stated goal of helping charters obtain facilities.

In addition, perhaps we should be looking at an alternative to shutting down bad schools. Of course, school choice only works if good schools grow in size and underperforming ones cease to exist. However, everyone recognizes that closing charters causes significant disruptions for the parents of kids that go there. Perhaps the PCSB should be working on a method to turnaround Performance Management Framework Tier 3 and low Tier 2 schools instead of locking the doors or persuading a Tier 1 school to take it over.

The D.C. charter school law may be better than almost every other state legislation but it is still far from great. Just try to obtain a permanent facility with the $3,000 per student facility allotment. And I should point out that this supposed excellent law has allowed the traditional schools to receive thousands per pupil in public funding over the alternative system. After 15 years, we are fighting to this day to get this changed.

 

No, the real credit goes to those in our schools. I am extremely fortunate in my role as a charter school board member and blogger that I get to visit a number of classrooms. The strength and persistence of the leaders and teachers in our movement is not to be believed. The odds have been stacked against them regarding funding and buildings but somehow they have figured out how to close the academic achievement gap which no one in the history of public education has been able to do in the past. These are the people we should be congratulating. They are nothing less than heroes to our children.