NEWS
- Report recommends rating system to measure charter schools’ financial health [Options PCS and Community Academy PCS mentioned]
- Black families flock to D.C.'s charter schools
- Some DC schools are betting that personalization can fix education
- Students: Bring your own copier paper, cleaning supplies, tissues ...
- Lessons from the trenches on making school choice work
Report recommends rating system to measure charter schools’ financial health [Options PCS and Community Academy PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
August 12, 2015
Seven of the District’s 60 charter schools were deemed to be financially low-performing and 21 schools were financially high-performing during the 2013-2014 school year, according to the most recent charter school financial review.
But the annual Financial Audit Review does not directly say which schools are at the high and low end of the spectrum of financial health.
A D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute report released this month recommends that the D.C. Public Charter School Board remedy this by publicly rating schools according to their financial performance, similar to the way it rates schools for academic performance.
Such a rating system would improve transparency and help parents understand a key indicator of a school’s management and success, said Soumya Bhat, education finance and policy analyst for the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.
“It’s great they are putting the information out there, but it’s not as user friendly as it could be for parents,” she said.
Public charter schools, which enroll 44 percent of the city’s public school students, receive more than $600 million annually in local tax dollars. The schools are funded through the city’s per-pupil spending formula, which ranges depending on the needs and ages of the students served, as well as a $3,000-per-student facilities allowance. The District has some of the highest per-pupil spending in the country, but charter funding is a constant source of debate — and litigation.
Having accurate and detailed information about how schools spend money can help determine what level of funding is adequate and fair when compared with spending in traditional public schools.
The institute’s report analyzes school-level data that was released last May through the charter board’s annual audit review, and it found wide variations in each school’s cumulative per-
student spending and philanthropic support.
It recommended that the board report more information about how schools allocate funds for personnel and capital expenses, among other changes.
The charter board has taken steps during the past three years to add detail to the reports and make information more transparent, said Tomeika Bowden, a spokeswoman for the board.
She said it would be difficult to “adequately capture every management decision” for each organization in a single financial score. “We do not want to distract parents from the most important factor in choosing a school: academic quality,” she said.
In the coming year, the board plans to pilot a more parent-friendly version of the report, so that parents can get a better sense of a school’s financial health without a background in accounting, Bowden said.
The board’s annual financial audit review, published in May, includes “report cards” for each school’s financial performance, with information about deficits, cash on hand, debt ratio and net asset position. Spreadsheets with more detailed data also are available online.
In 2014, for the first time, the board began to report more information about schools that have contracts with outside management companies. Private management companies are not legally required to disclose detailed financial information, something that has created oversight problems.
Two lawsuits have alleged that D.C. charter school leaders used outside companies to divert millions of taxpayer dollars into their pockets. The two schools involved, Options Public Charter School and Community Academy Public Charter Schools, received favorable ratings for their financial performance during past financial oversight reviews — a result, charter officials have said, of limited access to financial records.
The board is working with the D.C. Council to pass legislation this year that would require private charter management organizations to report more detailed information.
Black families flock to D.C.'s charter schools
The Washington Examiner
By Jason Russell
August 12, 2015
Black families unsatisfied with traditional public schools are flocking to Washington, D.C.'s charter schools.
In the 2014 to 2015 school year, 83 percent of the students in Washington charter schools were black, according to the D.C. Public Charter School Board's latest annual report. In Washington's traditional public schools, only 67 percent of the student population is black, down from 71 percent in the 2011 to 2012 school year.
Almost 38,000 students attend charter schools in Washington, whereas nearly 48,000 students attend traditional public schools.
There are a number of reasons black families might prefer charter schools to traditional public schools.
"Parents like the quality education, academic rigor, diverse programs and innovative approaches that public charter schools offer," Darren Woodruff, Chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, told the Washington Examiner. "And they particularly appreciate the many choices available, including Montessori, extended day, year-around, language immersion and more."
"In Washington, D.C. public charter schools are just one option that low-income and working class black families can choose for a high quality education," Jacqueline Cooper, the interim president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, told the Examiner. "Many public charter schools give families real hope that their children will be able to become economically independent adults and engage in the practice of freedom. … The Black Alliance for Educational Options believes that America should not be a place where only people with financial resources and privilege get to decide where and how their children are educated. As a result, we advocate for low-income and working class black families to have the same access to high quality educational options in traditional public schools, public charter schools and private schools. "
Charter schools are funded but not operated by the D.C. government. They do not charge tuition and they are open to all students, but they often don't have enough space to meet demand. They use a lottery system to determine admission. Compared to traditional public schools, charter schools have more independence in their operations and curriculum, which is why so many families find charter schools desirable.
Some DC schools are betting that personalization can fix education
Greater Greater Education
By Natalie Wexler
August 12, 2015
DC is at the forefront of a movement to make education a more personalized experience, relying in part on technology to tailor learning to each student's needs and interests. The approach promises to ensure that advanced students are challenged and struggling ones engaged, even if they share the same classroom.
n any given classroom, some kids grasp the material easily while others need more help. Teachers have generally taught to the middle, with the inevitable result that some kids are bored and some are lost.
While experts have long advised teachers to differentiate instruction so they can reach each student at her level, that takes a lot of training and talent. Some say it's impossible.
Now a different, more personalized approach is gaining ground across the country and in the District. While personalized learning models vary, most rely at least partly on technology to allow students to progress at their own pace, moving on when they've demonstrated mastery—sometimes of content they've chosen for themselves.
Programs that blend traditional and technology-based instruction are now in place at 17 schools within the DC Public School system on a school-wide basis. Many others use the approach in at least some of their classrooms.
And DC's CityBridge Foundation, through an initiative called Breakthrough Schools: DC, has provided funding and technical support to help 13 DC schools devise new personalized learning models. Each school can receive as much as $500,000 over the course of several years.
Evidence on the effectiveness of personalized learning has been scant, and the term embraces so many different models that it's hard to evaluate its success overall. Last year, however, two studies found that some low-income schools using personalized models had positive outcomes on test scores and other measures.
Some personalized and blended learning models could have drawbacks
Personalized and blended learning models have the potential to engage all students without separating them into different tracks, as schools used to do. But there are reasons to proceed with caution.
If kids are allowed to progress at their own pace, many may opt not to challenge themselves. If they're also allowed to choose what to learn, some may not choose wisely. And if each student is studying something different, it's hard to have a group discussion or an exchange of ideas.
And under many blended learning models, including those used at some DCPS schools, kids spend the day rotating between stations in a single classroom, spending a third of their time working at computers.
Students in those classrooms can lose valuable instructional time while making transitions. And in the many classrooms that have only one teacher, the unsupervised students working at computers don't always stay on task.
Even if they do, much of the software currently available has no connection to what students are learning from their teachers. Students may spend hours every week practicing reading comprehension skills rather than acquiring knowledge, an approach that is particularly harmful for low-income students.
Older methods of personalization are worth trying too
Given those possible flaws, we shouldn't lose sight of old-fashioned, low-tech ways of personalizing learning. One would be to have students write about what they're studying, something schools don't often do these days. Struggling students could write a sentence, more advanced ones a paragraph, and others an entire essay.
And then there's the time-honored version of personalization employed by the wealthy: tutoring.
There are logistical barriers to bringing both of these methods of personalization to schools on a large scale, but they're not insurmountable. DCPS has been piloting a writing program that has had encouraging results with students of varying needs and abilities.
And while tutoring has historically been expensive, at least one school has pioneered a low-cost version that has boosted achievement dramatically.
Like tutors, computers can get students to practice skills and give them immediate feedback. But they can't provide the emotional connection that is important in stimulating learning . Nor can they teach students to write well, or possibly to develop the analytical skills that good writing requires.
Of course, the high-tech and low-tech approaches don't have to be mutually exclusive. Used thoughtfully, computers can free up teachers' time to work with students one-on-one or in small groups, building relationships and doing other things only humans can do.
And personalization, if balanced by whole-group activities that create dialogue and a sense of community, is a more realistic approach than assuming that all students are proceeding in lockstep just because they happen to be the same age.
So by all means, let's experiment, judiciously, with these new approaches to an old problem. But at the same time, let's try to find ways to use older pathways to personalization that are tried and true.
Students: Bring your own copier paper, cleaning supplies, tissues ...
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
August 12, 2015
As millions of students head back to school in coming weeks, they’ll be toting more than just a few notebooks and a backpack. Increasingly, public schools are leaning on families to outfit entire classrooms, asking them to supply items as varied as cardstock, copier paper, hand sanitizer and Band-Aids.
“The supply list that used to be sent home was very short — you were asked to bring a notebook and pencils and pens and paper,” said Michael Griffith, a senior policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States, a nonpartisan think tank. “We’ve seen that list creep up and up, and now you start seeing things like tissues and toilet paper and cleaning supplies. Things you weren’t normally asked to bring a decade ago. It’s a hidden type of fee.”
With school districts strapped for funds and looking to trim expenses, many have turned to parents for help with basic supplies that many people assume are part of a school district’s operating budget.
Tim Sullivan, a former teacher, founded TeacherLists.com, a Web site on which 800,000 teachers have posted their supply lists for the coming school year. Among the items on the lists: standard erasers and pencils, trash bags and disinfecting wipes.
“You see complaints from parents who say, ‘Gosh, seriously? I have to provide paper? There are no tissues at school?’ ” Sullivan said. “I’m 46, and I can remember big rolls of paper towels, big industrial-size tissue boxes. Very few districts are buying their own tissues now.”
For the coming school year, families, on average, will spend $642 for elementary school students, $918 for middle school students and $1,284 for high school students, according to a recent study by Huntington Bank. Those amounts include not only school supplies but also fees, which schools are increasingly charging for extracurricular activities, workbooks, textbooks and the use of school laboratories.
Since the bank first started analyzing school spending in 2007 as part of its “Backpack Index,” costs have increased 83 percent for elementary school students, 73 percent for middle-schoolers and 44 percent for high school students. The bank measures the cost of classroom supply lists and school fees in six states: Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky.
Those rising costs, which far outpace the rate of inflation and wage increases, place a particular burden on the growing number of students from low-income families in the nation’s public schools.
Felicia Massie, a 57-year-old resident of Northeast Washington, fretted last year because she couldn’t afford to buy school supplies for her youngest son, David, then a student at Cardozo High School.
“It makes you feel like you’re less than a mother,” said Massie, who is disabled and lives on food stamps and $750 a month from Social Security. “It makes you cry in the middle of the night. . . . When this child was born, I had so many hopes and dreams I thought I would be able to provide for, and then life happens and your body breaks down. You feel like less than nothing.”
Massie found out about Communities In Schools, a national nonprofit organization that provides support to 1.5 million students in high-poverty schools, including Cardozo. “They gave him a backpack of school supplies, a calculator, ink, pencils, paper, notebook. Just the calculator alone is $30. I couldn’t afford that. They gave him everything the school is supposed to provide.”
A D.C. Public Schools spokeswoman declined to answer questions about school requests for supplies.
While nearly all schools frame supply lists as a request and not a requirement, the assumption that families will comply is stressful for those with low incomes, said Dan Cardinali, president of Communities In Schools.
“This expansion of school supply expectations beyond just the student becomes not just another barrier, it sends out a signal to a family that you’re inadequate,” Cardinali said. “It tells them that not only can’t they outfit their kid, now they can’t support the institution, either.”
Cuts to education budgets have meant bigger class sizes and fewer programs in many school districts, and schools are increasingly turning to families to fill in gaps. An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that 35 states spent less per student in 2014 than they had before the Great Recession.
At the same time, public schools have more students who come from low-income families. In the 2012-2013 school year, 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade were eligible for the federal program that provides free and reduced-price lunches.
Nanette Anderson, a disabled, unemployed single mother of six, struggles to come up with money for supplies and fees requested by the public schools in her small community of Ottawa, Kan.
When her three younger sons return to high school this week, they won’t have all the supplies their teachers requested. “If people ain’t got it, they ain’t got it,” said Anderson, 44, whose family relies on $700 a month from Social Security.
“All of this extra stuff — tissues, Germ-X — she can’t provide, she has to go in and talk to the principal and stuff to tell him there’s no way she can afford it,” said daughter Kimber Linnell, 21. “We use whatever we already have, like old binders that aren’t torn or shredded; we get mechanical pencils so all you have to do is replace the lead.”
Cardinali, of Communities In Schools, said “supply creep” is a gradual phenomenon that isn’t getting the attention it deserves.
“There either has to be an honest conversation on a public level about what expectations are for families to supply schools directly out of their own pocketbook or a reallocation around budgets in terms of supplying schools with the resources they need,” he said. “We really ought to have a public conversation about this.”
Lessons from the trenches on making school choice work
Brookings
By Ashley Jochim
August 12, 2015
In the United States, what school a child attends is determined in large part by where she lives. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly three-quarters of American children attend schools assigned to them based on their residence. When combined with deep and long-lasting patterns of residential segregation, particularly in cities, assigning students to their neighborhood schools results in educational opportunities that are extensively stratified by race and class. Low-income and minority children, who now make up the majority of public school students in the U.S., are less likely to attend high-performing schools than their non-minority and more affluent peers and more likely to attend schools that are under-resourced and staffed by the least experienced educators.
Many education reformers have turned to school choice as one answer to these challenges. Proponents of school choice argue that untethering school enrollment from residential location levels the playing field for less advantaged families, who often are unable to compete with more affluent families to buy a house near a good public school. Critics, however, worry that school choice may exacerbate existing inequities in public education, with the least advantaged children least likely to benefit.
Research conducted by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, where I work, lends some evidence to debates about whether offering school choice to families is an effective tool to promote educational equity. We learned that many less advantaged families will take advantage of school choice when provided the option. But, without more attention to the barriers families face in the process of choosing a school, the effects of choice on access to educational opportunity will be limited.
We examined families’ experiences with school choice in a March 2014 survey of 4,000 public school parents in eight “high choice” cities (Baltimore, Denver, Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C.). We found 49 percent of public school parents with a high school diploma or less chose a non-neighborhood-based public school, which we defined as any school not based on geographic assignment of students (including charter schools), compared to 59 percent of parents with at least some college. In a few of the cities we studied (Indianapolis, Detroit, and Cleveland), parents with less education were about as likely to exercise choice as their peers with more education while in others (Denver, Baltimore, and Philadelphia), we observed large and troubling gaps in access between families of different circumstances.
Of the 4,000 public school parents we surveyed:
- One-in-three reported difficulty understanding eligibility requirements
- One-in-four reported struggling to get information about their public school options and to find transportation
- One-in-five reported trouble with the enrollment system.
Families with lower levels of educational attainment were much more likely to report difficulty with all of these issues, a fact that is especially troubling given the desire to expand access to good schools for more vulnerable students and families.
Cities like Denver and New Orleans have made strides in streamlining the process of choosing a school. These cities and others investing in similar policies have simplified enrollment paperwork, created parent guides that make it easier for families to access information on schools, and are investing in innovative transportation options to ensure that access to choice isn’t determined by the resources families have available to them. The Brookings Institution tracks many of these investments with its annual Education Choice and Competition Index.
While these supports are essential, it is likely that some families will require even more targeted assistance to help them navigate the labyrinth of public school options. D.C. School Reform Now is one of just a handful of organizations that works directly with families in underserved communities to provide direct and personalized support in the process of choosing a school.
While the efforts of these and other organizations help to remedy many of the barriers families confront in the process of choosing a school, they do not address the fact that demand for quality schools far outstrips the number of seats available. Among those parents we surveyed, nearly half reported having no other option they’d be happy with, and four-in-ten said the available schools were not a good fit for their child.
These data suggest the most pressing challenge for making school choice work lies in expanding the number of high quality schools families may choose from. While many proponents of school choice argue that market pressures incentivize school systems to improve over the long run, choice on its own is unlikely to drive improvement quickly enough to address gaps in educational opportunity. As John Maynard Keynes famously observed, “[The] long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we are all dead.”
In many cities, getting a handle on the supply side of school choice will require aggressive action by those who lead urban school systems—superintendents and school districts, but also charter school operators and authorizers. Education reform advocates can play an instrumental role in ensuring these players don’t just compete for students, but also work to ensure all families have access to high quality schools.
At CRPE, we believe education needs to be viewed through a citywide lens, much like public safety and public health. Rather than assuming that offering school choice resolves equity issues, city leaders should take advantage of the data that is captured through the school choice process. Understanding families’ barriers, preferences, and unmet needs can be instrumental in helping city leaders determine where they need to seed high quality schools and programs and which groups of students may need targeted supports to navigate the school choice process.
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