- Mendelson to Hold Hearings on Education, Truancy
- Charter Schools Expand in D.C., But Stall in Maryland and Virginia
- Local Charters Opposed By Some Neighbors
- Erasures: The Unsolved Mystery
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
July 6, 2012
The usage is a little rocky but morbidly appropriate. The official announcement of the July 13 D.C. Council public education roundtable is headlined: “What Priorities Should the Council Address During the Remains of Council Period 19.”
Those who want to pay their respects, or testify, should contact Erika Wadlington at 202-724-8124, by fax at 202-724-6664 or e-mail at ewadlington@dccouncil.us. The hearing starts at 1 p.m. in room 412 at the Wilson Building.
New Chairman Phil Mendelson also wants to reopen discussion of truancy in D.C. schools. The committees of the Whole and the Judiciary will hold a joint hearing at 10 a.m. July 12 in room 120. To testify, call Renee Johnson at 202-724-8092, fax to 202-724-6664 or e-mail at rjohnson@dccouncil.us.
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
July 7, 2012
The popularity of charter schools in the District is sometimes perceived as a fad, but know this: Experts are predicting that more students will attend public charter schools than DC Public Schools within a matter of years.
Forty-one percent of public school students in D.C. now attend charters. Last school year, 31,562 students attended District charters, up 7 percent from the year before, while DCPS enrollment decreased slightly.
Nearly 15,000 names are on waiting lists for admission to the city's 93 charter school campuses this fall.
Charter schools by the numbers
While Maryland's charter school law is tough, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools says 38 have popped up in Baltimore City because of its supportive superintendent.
D.C. 93
Maryland 49
Prince George's County 7
Anne Arundel County 2
Baltimore City 38
Baltimore County 1
St. Mary's County 1
Virginia 4
Albermarle County 2
Richmond 1
York County 1
Source: Maryland State Department of Education, Virginia Department of Education
Roughly four new charters are approved each year by an independent board. And DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson is seeking the power to create charter schools too.
Meanwhile, Montgomery County is preparing to open its first charter school this fall, an eighth school is opening in Prince George's County, and a group of Fairfax County Public Schools educators is trying to get approval for the first charter school in Northern Virginia.
What once seemed a fad might appear to be the new normal.
But the popularity enjoyed by charters in the District is evading its neighbors in Maryland and Virginia, as national experts say the states' charter school laws are among the worst in the nation.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the largest nonprofit charter advocacy group in the country, ranked Maryland as No. 41 among 42 states with laws governing charter schools, while Virginia fell in at No. 37.
Maryland and Virginia are two of just five states that give the final say in authorizing charter schools to local school boards, with local boards often viewing charter schools as competition to traditional school systems, in terms of both funding and reputation. "In Maryland it has more to do with the [teachers] unions' influence on the Democrats, whereas Virginia's school boards are very strong," said Todd Ziebarth, a vice president of the NAPCS.
Local charter operators agree: "It's kind of like we're a stepchild they don't want, or they're the old crazy aunt, you know?" said John Winn, a board member of Richmond's Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, the only charter school approved in Virginia in the last five years.
There are only four charter schools in Virginia. The state has approved the application for the Fairfax Leadership Academy, a year-round high school. Now, the local school board is scheduled to decide the charter's fate with a vote this fall.
Eric Welch, a teacher and the executive director of the Fairfax Leadership Academy, said the school board has been cooperative with feedback. But the board never approved a charter school before, and board members' lack of experience has slowed the process as Welch tries to get the school open by fall of 2013.
"The speed at which we're doing this is very much a molasses pace," Welch said. "My attitude as a teacher is there are kids we want to reach and it would be nice if it went quicker, but I understand it's a learning process our school district is going through."
Community Montessori Public Charter School will open this fall in Montgomery County, after originally being rejected by the county school board. Maryland overturned the local board's decision, questioning whether Montgomery school board members harbored biases against charter schools.
The Kensington school received nearly 247 applications for 70 preschool seats and will ultimately expand to older grades.
Dana Tofig, a spokesman for Montgomery County Public Schools, said the board will continue to consider charter school applications as they come.
Still, with the laws the way they are, few are expecting Community Montessori or Fairfax Leadership Academy to herald an era of charter schools in Montgomery and Fairfax counties.
"I could see over the next 10 years, three or four, but not 20 or 30," Welch said. "Fairfax is a very good school district, and the community members are by and far very happy with the traditional schools."
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
July 7, 2012
The state of charter schools in the District and Northern Virginia couldn't be more different. But the opposition to them? Quite similar.
Parents at Falls Church High School in Fairfax County are protesting an application to open a charter school just down the road from the campus, saying the Fairfax Leadership Academy would pull students and resources away from their already-struggling, underenrolled neighborhood school.
"They do not have enough public transportation funding secured, and they say in their own proposal that 30 percent will be walking from nearby neighborhoods. Well, that's our neighborhood," said Joan Daly, whose child is a junior at Falls Church High School. "They say it's a county school, but how are kids from Centreville going to get there?"
The District has also been grappling with how to balance the growth of charter schools with the need to replenish neighborhood schools.
Earlier this year, the deputy mayor for education released a report that recommended closing or turning around -- likely as charter schools -- more than 30 D.C. Public Schools' campuses, prompting former D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown to suggest that charters give preference to children who live in the schools' neighborhoods.
Concerned lawmakers have also pointed out that when involved parents leave the neighborhood schools for better charter schools, the neighborhood schools can be left without advocates.
In Falls Church, parents say they have enough trouble filling sports teams and justifying academic programs due to low enrollment, which they say is caused by Fairfax County Public Schools delaying renovations to Falls Church High School.
Jane Strauss, chairwoman of the county school board, said the high school's enrollment is expected to increase over the next few years.
"It's a separate issue, whatever we do with facilities, renovations, additions, what have you SEmD that's separate from this charter school application," Strauss said. "I know there are some building modifications going on this summer with Falls Church High School. I know parents are concerned, but they will get their turn."
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
July 9, 2012
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) serves as the equivalent of a state education department in the District. It provides reams of information, including data that suggest that principals and school district leaders are clueless or deceptive about test tampering.
The latest example is a large spreadsheet (the printout stretches four feet across my dining-room table) with a detailed accounting of erasures on the 2011 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests at 20 schools. It points to trouble spots ignored in a recent cheating investigation that D.C. School Chancellor Kaya Henderson, in a mystifying statement, said gave the community “a renewed sense of confidence in the work that we are doing here.”
For instance, the OSSE spreadsheet said one class of 19 students at J.O. Wilson Elementary School averaged more than nine wrong-to-right erasures per child on the math test and more than eight on the reading test. This was three times the average number of wrong-to-right erasures per student in that grade in math and four times the average number in reading.
Professional educators tell me children almost never make that many changes in those exams, and certainly not so many to their advantage. Many make no changes at all. The explanations offered by D.C. officials for students’ extraordinary success in turning wrong to right — that they had checked their work, had second thoughts about their initial answers or discovered they’d lost their place on the answer sheets — make no sense to classroom veterans. These pros, both teachers and principals, instead say it’s more likely school administrators tampered with the answer sheets after the students went home.
J.O. Wilson has a history of students’ experiencing amazing flashes of intuition and changing many wrong answers to right ones. In 2008, according to testing company data released by OSSE, 93 percent of classrooms tested at Wilson had wrong-to-right erasures far above the average. In 2009, the percentage was 83 percent. In 2010, it was 100 percent, the highest in the city.
D.C. officials told the team from the Alvarez & Marsal consulting firm that investigated Wilson in March to ignore the 2008, 2009 and 2010 erasure results. The investigative guidelines had been changed and only one classroom at Wilson — it is unclear what grade — had enough erasures in 2011 to qualify for the probe.
So did the investigators address the erasures and explain what happened? Nope.
The team’s two-page report on Wilson does not mention erasures at all. Wilson was given a clean bill of health: “No potential testing violations were identified,” the report said.
Did the investigators ask the students in that classroom at Wilson if they remembered erasing any answers, and if so how many? Alvarez & Marsal declined to tell me. The D.C. schools and OSSE also had no answer. Did the investigators compare the students’ recollections with the actual number of erasures on their answer sheets to see if they matched? No one will say.
About a dozen other classrooms on the OSSE spreadsheet show two or more times as many wrong-to-right erasures as the D.C. average, but the report offers no explanations of those erasures, either. The investigators seemed uninterested in how the answer sheets acquired so many smart corrections.
One other investigating team has not been heard from. The D.C. Inspector General, with help from the U.S. Education Department, has been examining pre-2011 erasures and scores for more than a year. Don’t expect too much. Even the D.C. state superintendent, Hosanna Mahaly, has praised the Alvarez & Marsal report that ignored her agency’s data.
If neither Henderson nor Mahaly recognizes the problem, I don’t think anyone else with the power to get to the truth will, either. The mystery of who made all those erasures will remain unsolved.
Mailing Archive: