FOCUS DC News Wire 8/12/13

 

 

D.C. charter and D.C. Public Schools officials are for the first time sharing and comparing rosters over the summer, a move they hope will help cut down on the number of students who are enrolled in more than one school.

 

Officials said that, on average, for every 10 students enrolled in a school, one is enrolled in at least one other school. Some students are enrolled in two schools, while others are enrolled in three or four.

Officials shared the enrollment data with school leaders for the first time this week. Previously, schools did not get information about double-enrolled students until after the school year started.

 

“It’s super helpful,” said Karen Dresden, head of Capital City Public Charter School. “We’re just a lot further ahead of where we were previously.”

 

The information is meant to help principals reach out to families who are holding on to multiple seats, to gauge their real interest and to perhaps nudge them toward making a commitment.

 

That could reduce the annual “wait-list shuffle,” in which parents give up extra seats after the first day of school and principals, scrambling to fill their rolls, recruit students already enrolled elsewhere. The cascading effect means thousands of seats change hands in September and early October.

 

It is not yet clear what impact the early roster-sharing will have on that movement, said Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. “We hope it’ll be better,” Pearson said.

 

Parents interested in skipping wait lists altogether can enroll in their neighborhood traditional school or in one of the many charter schools that still have space. The charter board has posted an updated list of more than 1,500 seats available at schools across the city, including several rated high-performing.

 

 

Many traditional D.C. public schools supplement their budgets with private fundraising, often giving those in affluent neighborhoods a financial edge over their counterparts in poorer areas.

 

D.C. charter schools also vary widely in their ability to tap into philanthropic donations, according to data the D.C. Public Charter School Board recently released, with the best fundraisers boosting their budgets by thousands of dollars per student each year.

 

Altogether, charters across the city raised an average of $24 million annually between 2010 and 2012 — about $932 per student each year for the three-year period.

 

But some did far better. Howard University Public Charter Middle School of Mathematics and Sciences reported an average annual philanthropic revenue of $1.9 million — or $6,588 per student per year. That figure, the highest in the city, includes facilities, computers and other in-kind donations from the university.

 

KIPP DC raised the most overall: An average of $7.2 million a year, or $3,621 per student.

 

The private donations come on top of D.C. government funding — a base amount this school year of $9,306 per student, with more for certain students, including those with disabilities and students learning English as a second language.

 

Top charter-school fundraisers, ranked by average annual philanthropic revenue per pupil between 2010 and 2012:

 

1. Howard University Public Charter Middle School of Mathematics and Sciences, $6,588 per student

 

2. KIPP DC, $3,621 per student

 

3. Shining Stars Montessori Academy Public Charter School, $3,002 per student*

 

4. E.L. Haynes Public Charter School, $2,707 per student

 

5. Hospitality High School, $2,454 per student

 

Bottom charter school fundraisers, also ranked by average annual philanthropic revenue per pupil between 2010 and 2012:

 

1. Options Public Charter School, no philanthropic revenue reported

 

2. Community Academy Public Charter School and Imagine Southeast Public Charter School, both $10 per student

 

3. Roots Public Charter School, $11 per student

 

4. AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter School, $19 per student

 

5. Howard Road Academy Public Charter School, $38 per student

 

*Shining Stars opened in 2011, so its per-pupil figure reflects only a single year’s revenue.

 

 

“I’m gonna rock that CAS,” Jefferson Middle School seventh-graders promised last spring in a hit music video, a version of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” meant to get their classmates psyched up for the District’s annual standardized tests.

 

And, according to test scores released last week, they made good on their word.

 

Nearly two-thirds of Jefferson students scored proficient in math and 45 percent scored proficient in reading — double-digit gains over 2012 test scores.

 

Seventh-graders at the Southwest D.C. middle school did particularly well: 77 percent were proficient in math and 60 percent were proficient in reading.

 

“It’s not all about the test, but it’s a good way to show that we’re making a lot of progress and pushing them to achieve,” said seventh-grade math teacher Greg Dohmann.

 

Dohmann is the musical mastermind who not only wrote the lyrics for the “Rock that CAS” video, but also makes cameo appearances alongside his students. Last year was his first at Jefferson, which Principal Natalie Gordon is trying to transform into one of the city’s top middle schools.

 

Gordon had experience leading two D.C. charter schools — Friendship Tech Prep and D.C. Prep’s middle school — before she was tapped for Jefferson, which was struggling with low test scores. In 2011, she led the sixth-grade academy, and starting in 2012 she also took responsibility for the seventh and eighth grades.

 

Calling herself “a bit of a disciplinarian,” Gordon said she has focused on changing the culture inside the school, introducing systems routines that have cut down on disruptions that cut into learning time. When students change classes, for example, it's not a free-for-all in the hallways; kids walk in straight lines with a teacher escort.

 

“People think they should be able to transition on their own, but what had happened was a whole lot of chaos going on in the hallway,” Gordon said, adding that suspensions dropped 50 percent at Jefferson last year.

 

The school has also introduced an International Baccalaureate program in an attempt to attract families seeking a more rigorous academic experience. And Gordon said the building is filled with teachers, many of them who have come to Jefferson in the last two years, who are talented and hardworking.

 

“We’ve definitely had some challenges bringing in all these new ideas at once across the school community, but there were a ton of successes this year,” Gordon said. “We have an awesome team at our school.”

 

 

The District got some very good news late last month, when the leaders of our public-education system joined me in announcing the results of this past year’s D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS) tests. These exams are given to students in grades three through eight and in grade 10 every year, and they test a number of subject areas.

 

The results were impressive, representing the biggest gains on these standardized tests in the past six years. Citywide, math scores went up by 3.9 percentage points. In reading, they went up 4.1 percentage points.

 

Moreover, these gains were seen across every category. Scores in D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) as well as the District’s public charter schools improved; all ethnic groups saw improvement; and scores went up across sub-groups (such as students who are economically disadvantaged and English-language learners).

 

For example, students for whom English is not their first language showed an improvement in math of 4.2 percentage points. DCPS students showed gains in math (up 3.6 percentage points from 2012), reading (4 percentage points), science (1.8 percentage points) and composition (4.4 percentage points). By any measure, that’s impressive.

 

These results show that all students are benefiting from the hard work that parents, teachers and school leaders are doing to improve student outcomes. And they show that we are also beginning to close the achievement gap that has divided some of our students with the most significant needs from other students.

 

These results come at a crucial point in the District’s efforts at education reform. We have had mayoral control over our traditional public schools since 2007. In the last few years, we have moved closer to a balance between the number of students in the D.C. Public Schools and our public charter school system, even as both are growing in enrollment.

 

While the road has been far from smooth, what these latest statistics tell us is that we are on the right path. And that means it is time to find ways to accelerate our progress rather than make a sudden turn.

 

In the past six years, we’ve transformed our curriculum, significantly beefing it up. We’ve established high standards for teaching and learning, and we’ve crafted instruments for holding teachers, schools and students accountable to those standards. We’ve had tremendous success at attracting, incentivizing and retaining the best and the brightest teachers, principals and other educators to work in our schools. And — from beautiful, contemporary new school facilities to universal pre-K to teacher training to wraparound services for students — our system is much better at providing resources to help set the stage for students’ success.

 

Nonetheless, I am well aware that we still have a long way to go. Although these most recent gains are significant and exciting, overall scores are still far too low. And they are not improving quickly enough.

 

Make no mistake: I am as impatient as anyone when it comes to the pace of education. But I also know there is no simple way or quick fix.

 

This is why we must stay the course on education reform while doubling down on the methods we know are working. We need to increase the number of schools with longer instructional days and shorten the summer recess, when students suffer academic losses. Moreover, we need to ensure all 3- and 4-year-olds have the chance to attend school so they get the start that will prevent them from being behind right from the beginning. We need to scale up the examples of excellence that we have by replicating these conditions for more students and more schools. And we also need to strengthen other existing schools and programs so they can achieve the kinds of results already expected in our best schools. We already are working hard at implementing plans to do exactly those things.

 

We cannot turn back, turn around or veer off the road. We need to double down on our hard-gained reforms and speed up the pace. These impressive test results prove we are on the right path — and we can’t afford to get distracted.

 

The writer is mayor of the District.

 

 

To parents, the most important features of a school may include quality of instruction, proximity to home, and safety. These preferences matter in a place like DC where charter schools and choice are so prevalent. But many parents also look for another factor: racial and ethnic diversity.

 

The Public Charter School Board (PCSB) provided us with the numbers of students of different groups at each charter school campus. We then used those numbers to create a ranking of all DC charter school campuses from most to least diverse.

 

To measure "diversity" we divided the school populations into four categories: black, Hispanic, white, and "other," with "other" including Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, and multiracial. Then we ranked schools by the share of their largest group. The smaller the dominant group, the more diverse. (A breakdown of the "other" category is available here, along with a ranked list of all 103 campuses.)

 

By this definition, the most diverse campus in the city is Capital City's lower school, where none of the four groups has more than 35% representation. All figures are for the 2012-13 school year, and school locations may not reflect moves to new buildings for the school year that just ended. (Capital City consolidated its upper and lower schools onto a new campus in Ward 4, but the new campus would also be the most diverse charter in the city by this measure).

 

Generally speaking, the diversity of these schools roughly reflects the ethnic make-up of the wards they're in. Half of the top 10 schools are in Ward 1, which as of 2010 was 40% white, 33% black, and 21% Hispanic. Three of the others are in Ward 4, which is 59% black, 20% white, and 19% Hispanic. Two are in Ward 5, which is 77% black, 15% white, 6% Hispanic.

 

Most DC charter campuses are majority African-American. Five charters are majority Hispanic. The first eight of our top 10 have no group in the majority. On the other hand, you can form the groups differently, combining "other" with "white" or categorizing "multiracial" differently. Our spreadsheet shows these different calculations, but the rankings are mostly unaffected.

 

The overall picture in DC is that charter schools are disproportionately African-American. In a city that is just barely majority black, the percentage of black students in charter schools is 79%. In DCPS schools, the percentage is 69%.

 

Much of the explanation for this is location: Wards 7 and 8, which are about 95% black, have over 40 charter schools between them. On the other hand, Ward 3, which is about 80% white, has none.

 

The most diverse schools also tend to be towards the top of the heap in quality, according to the PCSB. Of the 10 schools listed, 6 are in Tier One, the highest grouping under the PCSB's ranking system, the Performance Management Framework. One, Elsie Whitlow Stokes, is in Tier Two. Three aren't ranked. One, Creative Minds, is too new to be ranked, and two others, Bridges and Mundo Verde, aren't ranked because they're categorized as early childhood campuses.

 

But parents who are eager to enroll their kids in one of these schools may have to get in line. As of June, all of them had wait lists of over 150. And in two cases (Capital City Lower School and Mundo Verde) those lists had well over 1,000 names on them. 

 

 

Lauren Markoe had an article in the Washington Post yesterday entitled "Can a Hebrew charter school teach the language but not the faith?" I say this is a question that need not be asked.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court decided 11 years ago in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that Ohio in providing private school vouchers so that student could attend religious schools was not violating the seperation between church and state. The reasoning behind this ruling was actually rather simple. The Court wrote, as explained in Clint Bolick's book Voucher Wars,

 

"In sum, the Ohio program is entirely neutral with respect to religion. It provides benefits directly to a wide spectrum of individuals, defined only by financial need and residence in a particular school district. It permits such individuals to exercise genuine choice among options public and private, secular and religious. The program is therefore a program of true private choice. In keeping with an unbroken line of decisions rejecting challenges to similar programs, we hold that the program does not offend the Establishment Clause."

 

Since in Washington, D.C. money follows the child whether a public school student attends a charter or traditional facility there is no effective difference between Uniform Per Student funding and a voucher. Perhaps to eliminate controversies over whether a child enrolled in Sela Public Charter School is in effect supporting the establishment of a religion the dollars should be reclassified as a scholarship belonging to the student instead of government money flowing to an educational entity. In this way a parent who selects a religious school for their child is the same as an adult who uses a Pell Grant to attend Georgetown University, a Catholic and Jesuit institution.