FOCUS DC News Wire 8/24/2015

Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS) is now the DC Charter School Alliance!

Please visit www.dccharters.org to learn about our new organization and to see the latest news and information related to DC charter schools.

The FOCUS DC website is online to see historic information, but is not actively updated.

NEWS

Some D.C. charter schools get millions in donations; others, almost nothing [KIPP DC PSC, Maya Angelou PCS and E.L. Haynes PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
August 22, 2015

Eight of the District’s 60 public charter schools raised nearly 75 percent of all charitable funds that went to such schools in the city between 2012 and 2014, highlighting a serious inequity between schools that raised millions of dollars and many that raised little or none.

Just three public charter schools — KIPP DC, Maya Angelou and E.L. Haynes — reported nearly half of all fundraising dollars that went to the city’s charter schools over the three-year period, according to the D.C. Public Charter Board’s most recent financial audit. In total, those three schools combined averaged $14.5 million in donations each year from 2012 to 2014; the average annual donations for all 60 charter schools over that time frame was $29 million.

Many charter school leaders see fundraising as an important way to advance their missions. Charitable dollars are seen as a key way to bolster their budgets as they work to build adequate school facilities and offer competitive teacher salaries. But records show a significant inequity in how much money the city’s charters receive from donors.

Although seven schools reported at least $1 million in donations in fiscal 2014, at least 20 schools reported less than $100,000. The charter schools reporting income range from small, individual schools to large networks serving thousands of students. Some charter organizations have senior leadership positions or entire teams dedicated to fundraising.

Ramona Edelin, executive director of the DC Association of Chartered Public Schools, said there is a limited number of national funders investing in charter schools, and they tend to prefer a certain kind of school with a strong focus on college preparation.

“It’s ironic that the rallying cry is that one size doesn’t fit all and that’s why we need charter schools, but funders are interested in one kind of school,” Edelin said.

A University of Arkansas study found a “highly skewed distribution” of charter school funding more broadly, with 95 percent of all recorded charter school philanthropy in 15 states going to schools that enrolled just one-third of all charter students. At the same time, more than a third of charter schools reported no philanthropic support of any kind.

Charter schools, which serve 44 percent of public school students in the District, receive the same public per-pupil funding as traditional schools, as well as a per-student facilities allowance of about $3,100. But charter advocates say those taxpayer dollars are stretched thin and don’t equate to the same kind of funding the D.C. Public Schools system receives.

Philanthropic funds made up 6 percent of the total revenue for the city’s public charter schools in 2014, up from about 4 percent the year before. That increase was almost entirely attributable to significant bumps at KIPP DC and Maya Angelou.

KIPP DC, a high-performing network that operates numerous schools in the District, reported $16.8 million in philanthropic revenue during fiscal year 2014 — equivalent to more than $4,600 per student. KIPP DC officials said the figure is misleading because $7.4 million of that sum reflects the net value of a school building it acquired from the former Arts and Technology Public Charter School.

Allison Fansler, president and chief operating officer for KIPP DC, said in an e-mail that the remaining funds are helping KIPP expand into new facilities and develop a “KIPP Through College” program that supports about 1,000 alumni, as well as a teaching residency program that is training almost 100 new teachers. More than half of the $9.5 million comes from grants or funds that are slated to be used over several years, she said.

“Our fundraising efforts have been critical to our growth over the past 15 years,” she said.

Some of its major funders included CityBridge Foundation, Venture Philanthropy Partners, NewSchools Venture Fund, the Marriott Foundation and the Clark Charitable Foundation.

Charter board officials said that schools self-report their philanthropic revenue, and they include donations — both in-kind and cash — from individuals, corporations or foundations.

Tracking philanthropic spending is difficult, in part because there is a time lag in how nonprofit organizations, including foundations and most public charter schools, report financial information and when tax forms become publicly available. Foundations are required to report the grants, but charter schools do not have to report the origins of their private funding.

A DC Fiscal Policy Institute report recommended that the charter board include additional information to make it clearer whether donations are from private foundation grants, parent fees or PTA fundraising.

Maya Angelou Public Charter School, which operates alternative schools for more than 500 students, reported $9.1 million in charitable revenue in fiscal year 2014, up from $454,000 the year before.

Leah Lamb, a spokeswoman for the school, said the multimillion-dollar revenue came from a multi-year capital campaign by the school’s See Forever Foundation. The funds were used in 2014 and 2015 to make major renovations to one of the Maya Angelou campuses.

The District has been a magnet for philanthropy since 2007, when former Mayor Adrian Fenty took control of the city’s schools and appointed Michelle Rhee as D.C. Public Schools chancellor. Rhee brought national attention to reform efforts in the District and attracted unprecedented levels of philanthropic support for major changes to the teachers contract.

By 2010, the District attracted more grant funding than any other school district in the country, earning the equivalent of $704 per pupil in philanthropic support that year, according to an analysis by two Michigan State University professors that looked at grant-making by the 15 largest philanthropies that invested in kindergarten through 12th-grade education that year.

The $31 million in grants that the report traced to the District in 2010 included many grants to support charter schools as well as major donations to support changes to the traditional school system, including the introduction of a teacher evaluation system tied to teacher raises and bonuses.

The new school year brings changes to the Washington region’s schools [Children’s Guild PCS, Monument Academy PCS, Washington Global PCS, Kingsman Academy PCS, Two Rivers PCS, DC Prep PCS and KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
August 21, 2015

As the 2015-2016 school year begins nationwide, more than 50 million students from pre-K to 12th-grade are expected to be in classes this fall, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That’s more than 15 percent of the U.S. population.

In the Washington region, many changes and new initiatives are underway. Here is a rundown of what is expected to change for the 2015-2016 school year in D.C. and the close-in Maryland and Virginia suburbs.

THE DISTRICT

This year, D.C. Public Schools is projecting 49,145 students, up from 47,548, a fourth year of increases after many years of declining enrollment. Charter schools also are expected to continue growing, with 38,962 students, up from 37,684 last year.

Aug. 24 is the first day of school for D.C. Public Schools and many of the city’s charter schools. Here are some of the major back-to-school changes and news that parents can expect:

  • The traditional school system plans to add new electives and extra-curricular offerings at its comprehensive high schools this year, including many more Advanced Placement courses, due to a budget increase for the upper grades. The schools also will have full time athletic coordinators to strengthen those programs.
  • Teachers in D.C. Public Schools will be introducing a new set of “cornerstone” lessons, designed to bring more rigor and consistency to the curriculum across the city. They received training over the summer in the lessons, many of which offer hands-on and project-based learning opportunities for students.
  • Students in the District will be able to ride Metro rail for free for the first time this year. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the “Kids Ride Free” initiative this month. Now students can ride the bus, the D.C. Circulator and Metro without paying a fare to and from school and for school-related activities. Students age 5 to 21 are eligible to enroll and need a DC One Card.
  • Four new D.C. public charter schools are opening, including Children’s Guild, which offers tailored instruction for special education as well as accelerated students; Monument Academy, a residential boarding school for children who have experienced stress and trauma, including those in foster care; Washington Global, a middle school with an international and research-based academic focus; and Kingsman Academy, a school for students who are over-age and behind in credits.
  • Three high-performing charter schools are opening new campuses, including Two Rivers Public Charter School in Ward 5, DC Prep with a new elementary school in Ward 8, and KIPP DC, with a new middle school in Ward 7.
  • D.C. Public Schools will open four new schools, after two major rounds of school closings in seven years. They are Brookland Middle School, a standalone middle school in Ward 5; River Terrace, a special education campus that will serve special education students formerly enrolled in Mamie D. Lee and Sharpe Health; Van Ness Elementary, which is reopening near Navy Yard; and Dorothy Height Elementary School, formerly Community Academy Public Charter School, which lost its charter this year.

MARYLAND

Montgomery County

Fast-growing Montgomery County expects to start the new school year on Aug. 31 with more than 2,600 additional students, making for another year of record-high enrollment across its 202 schools. Total enrollment in Maryland’s largest school system is projected to top 156,000. Other things to look out for include:

  • School hours are shifting in all grades, following a lengthy effort by parent advocates to create a schedule that would give high school students more sleep. The changes passed by the school board fell short of what supporters sought.
  • For high school students, the schedule is 20 minutes later, with the school day running from 7:45 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. For middle school students, there’s also a 20-minute shift, so that most middle schools hold classes from 8:15 a.m. to 3 p.m. For elementary schools, there’s a 10-minute delay on start times and a 20-minute push-back on end times. Some elementary schools will go from 9 a.m. to 3:25 p.m., while others are scheduled from 9:25 a.m. to 3:50 p.m.
  • Montgomery begins 2015-2016, with Larry A. Bowers, its interim superintendent, at the helm. Bowers will lead the district this year as the school board continues its search for a new superintendent. The search started last February after former schools chief Joshua P. Starr resigned.
  • This year’s rollout of more Chromebooks in classrooms was delayed amid budget cuts, but the district now says students in grade 4 and some in grade 7 will get Chromebooks after all. The money will come from technology modernization funds in the capital budget previously targeted for such uses as desktop computers.
  • The rollout of Common Core-aligned curriculum continues and will affect Algebra 2, Math 7 and Investigations in Math (IM) this year. But state PARCC testing is being scaled back compared to last year, with one 30-day testing window planned and testing time reduced by 90 minutes for all students.
  • Eight hundred new educators were trained in August, both to replace those who have left the system and add some positions for growth. But overall the district also lost 380 employee positions due to budget cuts, and some class sizes are expected to increase.
  • Four elementary schools will start the school year with completed classroom additions: Bethesda, North Chevy Chase, Rosemary Hills and Arcola. Clarksburg High School will also start the year with a classroom addition, while Wheaton High School is slated to be fully rebuilt by the second semester. Montgomery also will use 26 fewer portable classroom trailers to relieve crowding, for a total of 378 districtwide.
  • Two-hour centrally developed final exams will no longer be given in middle school courses.

Prince George’s County

The state’s second-largest school system projects an enrollment spike of more than 1,400 additional students this school year, for a total student population of 129,000. Its students and families will see changes, including:

  • Two International High Schools will open this fall, one within Largo High School in Upper Marlboro and the other at Annapolis Road Academy in Bladensburg. The schools are based on a model developed by the International Network for Public Schools and are designed to boost achievement and serve English language learners. An inaugural 9th grade class of 100 students will start at each site.
  • Chief executive officer Kevin M. Maxwell begins his third school year in the district’s top post. Maxwell started in August 2013 with the expectation of turning the struggling system around. The Prince George’s system includes 209 schools and centers.
  • The district will be increasing its emphasis on literacy, with six new literacy coaches at the high school level and four new central-office literacy specialists to support literacy coaches.
  • Prices for school meals are inching up by 10 to 15 cents. Elementary school students will pay $1.60 for a full-price breakfast and 30 cents for reduced-price breakfast; lunch costs will rise to $2.75 and 40 cents, respectively. Middle and high school students will pay the same costs except for a full-price lunch, which will be $3.
  • John Hanson French Immersion has become the Maya Angelou French Immersion, and Robert Goddard French Immersion has changed its name to Dora Kennedy French Immersion. Both were previously named after their buildings and were renamed following community suggestions, officials said.
  • Athletic facilities were upgraded at 10 high schools. There are new turf fields and stadium lighting at Dr. Henry A. Wise and Gwynn Park and new rubberized running tracks at Charles Herbert Flowers, DuVal, Frederick Douglass, and Northwestern. There are new tennis courts at Frederick Douglass, Parkdale, and Suitland; and Potomac got new stadium bleachers.
  • Forty elementary schools and early childhood centers were improved with new playground sets.
  • The school system is launching a pilot program for Saturday School, which it says will provide academic support and instruction with certified teachers in a nurturing environment. The program starts in October.

VIRGINIA

Alexandria

Classes start Sept. 8 for Alexandria schools, when an estimated 14,700 students will head to class. Projected enrollment is up nearly 4 percent from last year. The school district expects to hire about 245 new teachers.

  • T.C. Williams High, the district’s sole high school, has a new principal. Jesse Dingle, formerly the principal of John Handley High School in Winchester, Va., took the reins of the storied institution this summer. He replaces Suzanne Maxey, a high-energy, hands-on administrator who was brought in to turn around the high school in 2010. Maxey retired over the summer.
  • Francis C. Hammond Middle School is starting an International Academy this year, which targets new immigrants who do not speak English. The program, modeled after one in a New York City high school, was instituted at T.C. Williams in 2012. The school also is under new leadership with principal Pierrette Hall.
  • The school system will begin a redistricting process to rebalance the enrollment at its elementary schools as it grapples with projected growth. The new elementary school enrollment boundaries will be implemented for the 2016-2017 school year. Spokeswoman Barbara Hunter said all but two of the district’s elementary schools are at capacity.
  • The Jefferson-Houston School, which moved into a new building and got a new principal last year, will expand its International Baccalaureate program to the entire school, which serves pre-kindergarten to eighth-grade students. Previously, the program was offered only up to 5th grade.

Arlington

An estimated 25,700 students will head back to school on Sept. 8. The high-performing district has seen rapid growth in recent years that has fueled conflicts over where to build schools and where to put students. The district is preparing to build a new school in Rosslyn to house the H-B Woodlawn program, which serves students in grades 6 to 12, and to renovate its current home on Vacation Lane to make room for more middle schoolers.

  • Discovery Elementary School will open this year. Spokesman Frank Bellavia said the school building will be “net-zero,” meaning it will produce as much energy on site as it consumes.
  • The district is rolling out eight school buses that are specially equipped with cameras to catch motorists who pass them when they are stopped and unloading children — a violation of the law. For the past month, those caught on camera were sent warning letters. But starting Sep. 8, motorists will get $250 tickets.
  • Elementary school students will no longer be released early from school on Wednesdays, except for parent-teacher conferences and professional development.
  • The Foreign Language in Elementary Schools program will expand to all of Arlington’s elementary schools. The program introduces young students to Spanish with 90 minutes of instruction each week.

Fairfax County

Fairfax County, the largest school district in Virginia, begins classes this year with a projected enrollment of 188,545 students, making it the 10th largest district in the country. Four new high school principals take the helm this year at Annandale, Langley, Woodson and Stuart high schools, with two vacancies remaining open and to be filled at Madison and Westfield high schools.

The county’s school board members, all of whom are up for re-election in November, must address a projected deficit in excess of $100 million. Much of the financial strain placed on the school system since the recession has been driven by a surging number of low-income students, who often require additional support in the classroom. This year, the school district will enroll more than 53,170 students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a federal measure of poverty, a number greater than the total combined enrollment of the Arlington and Alexandria school systems.

  • High school students will be able to get at least an extra 50 minutes of sleep this year as classes will now begin at 8:10 a.m. Last year, the first classes of the day started at 7:20 a.m. The school board approved the new start times after partnering with physicians from Children’s Hospital to give teenagers more sleep each morning, which experts say will provide health benefits.
  • Voters this fall will consider a $310 million school bond referendum that, if approved, the school system would use to renovate West Springfield and Herndon high schools, along with building an addition for South Lakes High School and paying for renovations at six elementary schools.
  • School board members have said they will seriously consider a petition aimed at re-naming J.E.B. Stuart High School, after students and alumni protested using a name that honors the confederate general and war hero. The petition had more than 25,000 signatures by mid-August. Supporters propose re-naming the school after pioneering U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who owned a house in the neighborhood surrounding Stuart.

Loudoun County

Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Eric Williams will begin his second year when classes start this fall for 73,000 students. Since 2000, the school district in Northern Virginia has experienced a surge in student enrollment as the county remains one of the fastest-growing in the nation. To accommodate the growth, the administration will open Riverside High School, the 44th new school in the past decade and a half. The new facilities will represent the district’s 88th school overall, meaning half of all schools in the county were built in the past 15 years.

  • Loudoun will debut the One to the World project-based learning initiative, which will allow students to examine real-world challenges and display their solutions publicly.
  • High school students in Loudoun will not have to take mid-term or final exams this year. The decision follows two stormy winters when classes and mid-terms were canceled due to snow.
  • The school system will expand access to full-day kindergarten under a new lottery program. The district currently has 1,000 low-income, English language learners and special needs students in full-day kindergarten. The 2015-2016 budget includes funding to add an extra 800 students who do not fall into those categories to be seated into classrooms for all-day instruction.
  • All nine seats on the Loudoun County school board are up for election on Nov. 3. Six of the races will be contested; three board members are running unopposed.

Prince William County

Virginia’s second-largest school district will start classes Aug. 31, a week earlier than normal. Traditionally, classes in Virginia schools start the day after Labor Day, but Prince William and some other districts got a waiver to start early because it tallied so many snow days during the past few years. Spokesman Phil Kavits said the district saw enrollment growth slow last year, and he anticipates about 87,000 students.

  • One new school in Prince William will open this year: Chris Yung Elementary in Bristow, named for a police officer who died in a motorcycle accident on the way to an emergency call. The school will have room for 850 students. Kavits said the district anticipates about that many students will enroll.
  • Construction continues on the district’s newest high school, a $98 million facility that will include an aquatics center and a black box theater. In May, the school board voted to name the school after state Sen. Charles J. Colgan, who has represented a swath of Prince William County since 1976. The school is set to open in September 2016.
  • The school system received $1.5 million from the Department of Defense Activity Grant that will go towards programming for children from military families. The grant will pay for tutors, counselors and after-school programs. It also will be spent on special training for teachers and administrators who work in schools that serve high concentrations of military families. About 5 percent of students have parents who are serving in the military or are employed by the military.
  • The district has the region’s largest class sizes and is pressing up against state maximums in many grades. It’s an issue that will be expensive to address, but last year the district created more teaching slots to begin reducing the size of sixth grade core classes. This year, the district will spend nearly $1 million hiring teachers to reduce the size of 9th grade math classes. An additional $2 million — half of which was supplied by the county — will be spent to hire additional teachers in other grades to reduce class sizes. The district has hired nearly 700 teachers this year, some to fill vacancies left by retirement or attrition and others to fill the new positions created to reduce class sizes.

D.C. launches task force to increase collaboration with charter schools
Watchdog.org
By Moriah Costa
August 20, 2015

A task force will work to improve how Washington, D.C. works with charter schools, in a move city officials called “long overdue.”

“With approximately 56 percent of public school students attending (D.C. Public Schools) and 44 percent public charter schools, the next chapter of our education improvement efforts needs to be deliberate and purposeful collaboration,” Jennifer Niles, deputy mayor for education, said in a statement Wednesday.

Collaboration between the two sectors remains a contentious issue, with some worried charters are taking resources away from neighborhood schools. Others worry that collaboration could take away charter school autonomy.

As charter schools have grown in the city, many are concerned with the location of charters. At a public hearing in April on five charter school applicants, critics voiced concerns about the lack of planning and community involvement.  One worry is that charter schools are being built too close to neighborhood schools.

The purpose of the task force is to find ways to promote enrollment stability, help parents navigate school options, and find ways schools can share information.

The task force will host public meetings over the next two years in an attempt to gain public insight into how to increase student opportunities. The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education is in the process of finding members, which will include parents, community leaders, school leaders, and government representatives.

Scott Pearson, D.C. Public Charter School Board executive director, said the board looked forward “to participating and finding new ways to improve public school for all students in Washington, D.C.”

New D.C. superintendent aims to bring stability to job after years of turnover
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
August 22, 2015

Hanseul Kang, the District’s new state superintendent of education, faces a daunting challenge as she attempts to transform one of the city’s most troubled agencies.

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education was formed in 2007, when the city’s schools were placed under mayoral control, and it has struggled with management problems and high turnover. Kang is the eighth head of the agency.

After four months on the job, Kang said in an interview with The Washington Post that she aims to bring consistency, stability and high standards to the position.

“From my experience, the state education agency can make a difference,” Kang said. “I’m excited to be part of the administration and be here and work hard and see results for our students.”

Kang, a 33-year-old former Teach for America corps and staff member who graduated from Harvard Law School, most recently worked as the chief of staff for the Tennessee Department of Education, where she helped implement one of the nation’s first Race to the Top grants. When Kang’s appointment was announced in February, Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer C. Niles said that Kang came highly recommended as a hard worker who is “smart and capable and a problem solver.”

In the District, Kang has taken charge of a far less traditional department, with both state and local responsibilities. In addition to overseeing standardized tests, federal grants and compliance with federal laws, the superintendent also manages many local services, including the transportation of special-education students via a fleet of 700 buses and the city’s summer meals program.

Politically, she must contend with a powerful public school chancellor and an assortment of charter-school leaders, many of whom resist efforts to establish citywide policies because charters are allowed to operate independently.

The National Research Council released a report this year that documented progress in the city’s major reform efforts but painted OSSE as a weak link. It described the agency as a “large and complicated bureaucracy” that has “struggled to gain its footing and earn the trust of D.C. government officials who must rely on” it.

The agency has made strides in improving its compliance with federal laws, notably shedding its designation as a “high risk” grant recipient by the U.S. Education Department last summer and emerging from court oversight of its special-education services. But significant problems remain with monitoring and the outcomes for special-education students.

Many have high hopes that Kang, who is paid $160,000 a year, will steer the organization in a new direction.

“I’d like to see her stick around,” said D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), chairman of the Education Committee. “I hope she can hunker down and really focus on the operations of that agency and make sure the staffing is as high quality as possible and make sure the staff she has is supported.”

He also said he hopes she will continue to build a central database that can help education reform efforts, a slow-moving undertaking that the National Research Council report highlighted as a major deficiency and that Kang has said is a priority.

In her first months in office, Kang launched a strategic planning process that is expected to wrap up this fall, and she led an overhaul of the agency’s process for responding to Freedom of Information Act requests after OSSE inadvertently released personal student information in response to a media request in March.

She also created a “communications review team” to examine many types of outgoing correspondence, a move that has drawn scrutiny for its top-down approach. Kang said the move emerges from a widely held view that OSSE needs to improve the quality and consistency of its reports and other documents.

In a recent interview with The Post, Kang reflected on why she came to the new job and what she hopes to accomplish. The following questions and answers are from that interview:

Why did you take this job?

I think there has been incredible progress happening in the District in student outcomes and enrollment growth in both traditional and charter schools. I think that a state education agency can play an important role in sustaining and accelerating that progress if it can perform at a consistently high level. When the state education agency can do that work well, it can support all schools in making those kinds of gains.

What have been your priorities since you arrived?

In my first few months, the goal has been to learn about the work of the agency and to help deal with some of the things that were backlogged, like reports and regulations, things that were waiting for decisions to be made. I also want to put us on a path for stronger coordination with other divisions.

The National Research Council’s report questioned the size of OSSE, which last year had a staff of 382 to serve about 83,000 students, compared with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which employed 570 people to serve nearly 1 million students. Why the imbalance? Is OSSE the right size?

OSSE covers much more than the 83,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grades. It coordinates subsidized child care and pre-K3 and 4 classrooms, and that is a function that most state education agencies don’t have. It also oversees adult education. We also do work around charter-school financing and help charter schools secure facilities. It’s a function that is not always the case in most state education agencies. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

What are the biggest challenges in the next year for OSSE?

Because of all the transition and turnover, both internal and external stakeholders need to know we can live up to our commitments. When we say we are going to do something, we are going to do it and see it through.

D.C. Looks To 'Cornerstones' To Bring Education Equity To Public Schools
WAMU 88.5
By Martin Austermuhle
August 24, 2015

For years parents and advocates in the District have complained that some public schools get more resources and better programs than others, leaving already struggling students to fall further behind their peers. But this year the city's public school system is launching a number of initiatives officials say will ensure that all students get the same opportunities — no matter where they go to school.

One of those initiatives is called "Cornerstone," a series of grade- and subject-specific classes and programs that all students across the city will participate in.

"Cornerstones are 200 shared experiences that all students will have across D.C. public schools starting this fall," says Brian Pick, DCPS's chief of teaching and instruction. "The assignments were developed by DCPS teachers for DCPS teachers."

Third-grade social studies students will study the city’s history and create a guidebook. In fifth grade, science students will devise ways to clean up oil spills, and high school music students will write blues songs based on their own lives. In second grade, every student will learn to ride a bike.

Last week, three-dozen physical education and health teachers gathered in a gymnasium at Browne Education Campus in Northeast to become acquainted with the bikes — over 300 of them, purchased collectively by DCPS and the Department of Transportation — and the lesson plans. Students will be taught to put on helmets, check the bikes and ride them in a straight line and around obstacles.

"Biking is a lifetime skill. Once you learn this you can use this for the rest of your life. You can use it to ride to school for transportation, you can go and exercise with your family. Different age groups can exercise together, you can see your city. It’s a great life skill," says Miriam Kenyon, DCPS's director of health and physical education.

Allowing students from all backgrounds and at all schools to take part in the same year-long project is both about education and equity, says Pick.

"Last year the chancellor tasked her team to think about different ways of bringing equity to the District. In the academic world, the Cornerstone initiative is one of the ways we’re doing that. So yes, this is about equity and access to rigorous content no matter what school you go to," he says.

Pick also says the focus on equity is extending across academics — more high schools will be offering AP classes this year than ever before, he says.

Teaching beyond the textbook in D.C. schools
The Washington Post
By Kaya Henderson
August 21, 2015

As a parent, I know what it’s like to want the absolute best for your child and to believe he or she can succeed. Even if your child is struggling, you have an unshakable belief in his or her brilliance and potential, no matter what the report card says.

I feel that way about my own children. And, as the D.C. Schools chancellor, I feel that way about every child in D.C. Public Schools — all 49,000 of them.

When your child doesn’t do well in school, you give him or her the academic support that he or she needs, but you don’t take away violin lessons or football practice. You continue to help the child explore other talents and passions. My vision for DCPS is a district in which we treat every student as if he or she were our own. It’s a place where we teach young people’s hearts, not just their heads.

At the end of the day, parents want opportunities for their children. For so long, education has been about checking boxes and fulfilling requirements. I think it’s time for a new approach. We’ve watched school systems spend millions of dollars trying to “fix” children. But our young people are not broken, and their lives are not full of holes. As educators, our job is to recognize their brilliance and give them opportunities.

In DCPS we know that when we challenge kids, great things happen. For example, last spring we asked students to design the first-ever DCPS app to help families support their children’s learning. We received entries from 18 teams, and the winning team from McKinley Technology High School spent the summer building the app through a paid internship with a consulting firm, Accenture. DCPS parents can download the app, the DCPS Parent Guide, on their Android phones this fall.

This summer, hundreds of DCPS students interned with diverse organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington Nationals and Microsoft. Nearly 200 eighth-graders from Alice Deal Middle School journeyed to Costa Rica, France and China to explore the cultures they studied in their world-language classes. As part of our Empowering Males of Color initiative, 10 teens from high schools across DCPS traveled to Croatia with the Step Afrika! International Youth Exchange program, where they served as cultural ambassadors and learned the art of step performance.

And that’s just what our kids did during the summer. This school year, our investments are about giving young people even more opportunities for greatness — not only in grade school but also in college, career and life.

Challenging curricula have always been part of DCPS’s strategy, but going forward, students will receive the same high-quality learning experiences no matter where they live or go to school. Every first-grader, from Simon Elementary in Ward 8 to Janney Elementary in Ward 3, will bioengineer a frog habitat, and 10th-graders at every high school will build electric batteries. And starting this year, every DCPS second-grader will learn to ride a bicycle, regardless of whether they have one at home. All high schools will provide at least six Advanced Placement courses, and some will offer more than 20.

We are going into our second year of career academies, which help teenagers make choices about their collegiate and professional futures. These academies, in engineering, hospitality and information technology, provide experience through mentoring and internships and are aligned to high-wage, high-growth jobs in the area.

Thanks to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), for the first time, our students have access to free transportation to and from school through Kids Ride Free on Metro. This is a game-changer for families.

DCPS is a place where children have opportunities to travel abroad, to learn to ride a bike or speak a new language, to design an app or build a robot. By nurturing their talents, we’re positioning them for success.

I have learned in my 22 years in education that students rise to the expectations that you set for them. In DCPS, we are setting those expectations high.

Our investments in our young people are paying off. By every indicator, from enrollment to academic performance to student satisfaction, DCPS is on the rise. Together with their families, we will help our young people understand that they can be anything they choose in this world.

The investments the mayor and I are making in young people are paying off.

Equity over equality in D.C. schools
The Washington Post
By David Grosso
August 21, 2015

For centuries, our country’s public policies, their implementation and financial investments were unfair, leading to discriminatory practices in banking, housing, public health and the criminal justice system. This systemic discrimination resulted in the achievement gap we see today in our public school system.

After visiting dozens of D.C. schools and speaking with parents and community members, I know that D.C. residents are committed to eliminating the achievement gap as quickly as possible. As chairman of the D.C. Council’s education committee, I grapple every day with the question of how I can level the playing field after unfair policies and investments.

Equity and equality are two approaches to policy that we can take in an effort to produce fairness. Equality is treating everyone exactly the same; it can be effective only when everyone starts in the same position. Equity, on the other hand, is giving everyone what he or she needs to be successful. Equity is a more difficult and expensive approach. Equity will always seem unfair to people who do not have a full understanding of systemic discrimination.

The long-awaited evaluation by the National Research Council of the public education system in the District since the passage of mayoral control confirmed what many already knew. While our schools have made progress, there is much left to do. Overall achievement scores may be up, but the achievement gap is widening between white and minority students.

I share in the urgency to see progress in the public education system in the District, but I am convinced that we won’t see the achievement gap narrow until we begin to approach our policies and investments from an equity framework.

Fortunately, the D.C. government signaled its commitment to equity in providing financial resources to our public schools. While many jurisdictions are wrestling with questions of school finance, adding a weight in our uniform per-student funding formula for students considered “at-risk” was a progressive move by our leaders. Our definition of at-risk is complex and goes beyond receiving free or reduced-price lunch. Some considerations: students who are homeless or in the foster care system, students whose families qualify for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or students who are in high school and a year or more older than the expected age for their grade level. An out-of-boundary student is not automatically considered at-risk.

But funding is only one area where the idea of equity vs. equality is easily discernible.

It is imperative that we shift our mind-set when considering any policy involving our students. For example, when it comes to student health, equality would say that we should provide every school with a school nurse based on national best practices for student-to-nurse ratios. Equity, however, would call for the District to set its ratio based on the health-needs assessment of our student population. Equality is providing the opportunity for every student to take the SAT free of charge. Equity, on the other hand, would be supporting students who are underprepared for the SAT with free test-prep classes and other interventions.

We should look to apply an equity framework even with policies involving teachers and school-based staff. For instance, equality would be evaluating every teacher on a scale by grade level. Equity would be finding a way to incorporate classroom demographics into evaluations, recognizing that not all classes have the same dynamics.

Fixing systemic inequities requires intentionality and taking some risks. The achievement gap was not created overnight and will not be resolved overnight. As we head into a new school year, I will continue to commit to equity. My hope is that everyone in the District who cares about improving our education system will join me in that commitment.

The writer, an at-large independent, is chairman of the D.C. Council’s Committee on Education.

Serving Our Children is the new administrator of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program
Parentshaveschoolchoicekidswin.com
By Mark Lerner
August 21, 2015

t was just made official that beginning this school year the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the $15 million plan that provides private school vouchers to low income children in the nation’s capital, will be transitioned from being administered by the D.C. Youth and Investment Trust Corporation to a new non-profit entitled Serving Our Children.  Here’s the background.

From its inception as a federal program in 2003 under President George W. Bush, the OSP was run by the Washington Scholarship Fund, the organization created by Joseph E. Robert, Jr., the same individual who twenty five years ago founded Fight for Children.  From the time they came into office President Obama and U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been fierce opponents of the scholarships, seeking to end Congressional funding and limit the number of participants.  Mr. Robert gallantly and bravely opposed these efforts, even during his brave battle to beat the brain cancer that would eventually take his life.  But in 2009 the obstacles set up to stop those living in poverty from receiving a free private school education became too much, and the WSF decided to end its association with the OSP.

Since 2010 the program has been administered by the Trust.  While recognizing that there are people at this organization who have worked hard to support the program, voucher advocates have been critical of the management of the OSP by this group,  pointing out that its efforts to market the plan to eligible families should have been significantly stronger, and highlighting that much of the money that could have spent on scholarships has not been distributed.  For example, it is estimated that approximately $42 million in rollover funds is currently sitting unused.

This year the agreement under which the OSP was directed was up for renewal and the Trust informed the Department of Education that it was no longer interested in playing this role.  A Request for Proposal was issued and Serving Our Children responded, along with another entity entitled DC School Reform Now, whose executive director David Pickens worked under Mr. Duncan when he was CEO of Chicago Public Schools.

Serving Our Children is excited to have been awarded the bid to run the OSP, as the board of directors is comprised of several prominent members who have years of direct experience with school choice.  Among these include past Mayor of the District of Columbia Anthony Williams, past D.C. Councilman Kevin Chavous, Friendship PCS founder and chairman Donald Hense, and Sheila Jackson, a community activist and OSP parent.  SOC’s executive director is Rachel Sotsky, who as Senator Joseph Lieberman’s deputy legislative director was one of the original drafters along with U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner of the SOAR Act which re-authorized the OSP in 2011.  The bill is part of a three-sector approach that provides money for private school vouchers as well as D.C. charters and the traditional school system.

Many important goals have been established by Serving Our Children for the OSP including building a stronger relationship with OSP families and with the Department of Education, establishing a more effective application timeline that will ensure wider participation in the plan, growing the number of participating schools, and perhaps most importantly, bringing the Opportunity Scholarship Program into the 21st century through a grant that will allow a major technology upgrade to the OSP database and application processing system.

It is truly a new day for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and for families living in poverty in the District of Columbia seeking a quality education for their children.

District families lose buses to higher performing schools
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
August 21, 2015

When Savoy Harris was looking for a new school for his twin son and daughter, he did not want to send them to the struggling school near his home in Southeast Washington. But he heard about a federal program that gave children assigned to failing neighborhood schools the right to transfer to higher performing schools and to get a ride to school.

Harris filled out a form and requested Key Elementary, a school he used to pass by as a mail carrier in Palisades, a prosperous neighborhood near the Potomac River. His request was approved, and for the past six years, a chartered bus has been transporting his children on the nearly 10-mile route across town to Key, and then last year to Hardy Middle School near Glover Park.

But starting Monday on the first day of the new school year, the twins will have to get their own ride to school or make their way on public transportation, as many D.C. students do, because the charter bus program was canceled.

Harris feels stuck. He said he does not think it’s safe for his now 12-year-old twins to ride the bus or Metro by themselves, and he doesn’t want to bring them back to a neighborhood school. “If I am going to a top-notch school, why would I go back to a school that’s not performing?” he said.

While a majority of families take advantage of school choice in the District by applying for schools outside their neighborhood through an enrollment lottery, transportation is typically not provided. D.C. Public Schools and most charter schools provide bus service only for special education students. Students are eligible for free city bus passes, and as of this school year, free commutes on Metrorail.

For many years, though, a little-known provision of the No Child Left Behind law required that students assigned to failing schools have the chance to transfer to higher performing schools, and it required school districts to help with transportation.

Surprisingly few people took advantage of it. While nearly 30,000 students were eligible in the 2007-2008 school year, only 225 applied and received a placement, according to school officials.

The school choice provision expired in July 2012, when the school system got a waiver from the mandates of the federal law, but D.C. Public Schools continued to offer transportation to the 164 students who were taking part in 2012.

Since then, the number of participants has dwindled to 33 original riders and 10 siblings in the 2014-2015 school year, officials said.

In light of budget reductions, school system officials decided to eliminate busing starting this fall. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson wrote a letter to participating families last December saying that the District could no longer justify the cost. She directed families to public transportation and the school lottery, in case they wanted to change schools.

Commute distances vary widely for children in the District. Most traditional school students, and about 10 percent of charter students, travel less than a mile to school.

Hardy Middle School, with mostly out-of-boundary students, has the longest travel distance of any traditional public school in the District, according to data released by D.C. Public Schools this spring. Students commute a median distance of 5.3 miles to get there.

Tiffany Fuller, a 911 dispatcher who lives near Fort Lincoln by the Prince George’s County border, enrolled her daughter in Horace Mann Elementary near American University a few years ago through the enrollment lottery. She was driving her child to school before she found out about the white bus that pulled up to the school each day carrying other out-of-boundary students. She hadn’t heard about the federal program, but she asked around and found out her daughter was eligible and signed her up. Last year, when she enrolled at Hardy Middle School, she took a chartered bus there, too.

But this year, relying on public transportation will require riding a bus, train and another bus, a lengthy commute that Fuller said is too much for a young person.

“They have had this bus service for all these years,” she said. “It’s like they are throwing our children out there in the city right now.”

D.C. starts new school year with lots of changes
Washington’s Top News
By WTOP Staff
August 24, 2015

D.C.’s public schools are set to open with increased enrollment. D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson says she expects enrollment to grow to 50,000 this year. Plenty more teachers will be in D.C. classrooms: 750 new teachers have been hired, 250 more than last year.

And schools will offer more courses, including new AP selections and new electives. Henderson says the choices are designed to keep kids engaged while pushing rigor throughout the curriculum.

“Kids will be able to take things like African-American literature or journalism.”

Henderson says recruiting new teachers to teach those added courses was not the challenge it used to be.

“We’ve gone from being the lowest-paying school district in the region to being not only the highest-paying school district in the region for teacher salaries, but we’re also the highest-paying first-year teacher salary in the country.”

An indication of the change: a fourth-year teacher’s earnings — including salary and bonuses — could top $100,000.

The days leading up to the first day of school are like the days leading up to a big holiday, Henderson says.

“People are cooking and people are cleaning and people are fixing and all of that stuff: it feels like the night before Thanksgiving.”

Four more schools are coming on line this year: Brookland Middle School; River Terrace; Van Ness Elementary; and Dorothy Height Elementary School.

DCPS is introducing Cornerstones into this year’s curriculum: Henderson says it’s a way of deepening the curriculum that aligns with Common Core and the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) test. She says teachers like it. One actually ran up to her in a hallway and hugged her, saying that Cornerstones was the best thing that ever happened to her.

“We took the approach that we’ll provide guidance — and guidelines — but teachers still have room to get their creative instruction on,” Henderson says.

There are still many challenges: D.C.’s graduation rate hovers at about 58 percent, compared with Montgomery County’s 89 percent. Henderson is used to the comparisons, but doesn’t dwell on them.

“Our kids are as smart as, and as talented as, kids in Fairfax and kids in Montgomery. Our kids, I would say, come with some additional talents and resources, like perseverance and grit and determination. We’re proud of that and we want to capitalize on that.”

U.S. schools are too focused on standardized tests, poll says
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
August 23, 2015

Americans overwhelmingly think there is too much emphasis on standardized testing in public schools and that test scores are not the best way to judge schools, teachers or students, according to a national poll.

The results released Sunday come from the 47th annual PDK/Gallup poll of attitudes toward public schools, the longest-running survey of Americans’ views on public education.

The survey showed that the public rejects school accountability built on standardized tests, which has been federal policy through No Child Left Behind, the signature education initiative of President George W. Bush.

Signed into law in 2002, No Child mandated annual tests in reading and math and required schools to raise scores every year or face penalties. Through its own policies and grant programs, the Obama administration has further emphasized testing by requiring states to evaluate teachers based on test scores.

“You see a solid public rejection of [testing] as a primary policy,” said Linda Darling Hammond, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, after reviewing the poll.

A majority of respondents — 64 percent — said too much emphasis has been placed on testing, and a majority also said the best way to measure the success of a school is not through tests but by whether students are engaged and feel hopeful about the future.

“Too many kids in too many schools are bored,” said Joshua P. Starr, a former superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland who is now chief executive of PDK International, a network of education professionals. “Parents maybe see that and they want their kids to be engaged in schools.”

Many Americans also said they think students should be judged by multiple measures, including student work, written teacher observations and grades. And they overwhelmingly think teacher quality is the best way to improve education, followed by high academic standards and effective principals.

Although the national debate over public education has become polarized during the past several years, with bitter divisions inside and between political parties, the PDK/Gallup poll showed a surprising level of agreement in the public at large.

The 2015 survey, based on telephone and Internet polling performed in May, includes for the first time a breakdown of responses to some questions by racial groups as well as political parties.

A majority of respondents — regardless of political affiliation — opposed the notion of evaluating teachers based in part on test scores, an idea heavily promoted by the Obama administration and fought by teachers unions.

When it comes to the role of the federal government in public schools, a majority of respondents said Washington should play no role in holding schools accountable, paying for schools or deciding the amount of testing. Seven out of 10 respondents said they wanted state and local districts to have those responsibilities.

Regarding academic standards, more than six out of 10 said the expectations for what students should learn is important to school improvement. But a majority — 54 percent — is opposed to the Common Core State Standards, the K-12 academic benchmarks adopted by 43 states and the District of Columbia that have been under fire by critics on the left and right.

Despite the view that there is too much standardized testing, a majority of respondents said parents should not excuse their children from tests. A majority also said they think test scores are “somewhat important” in judging the effectiveness of their local schools.

In a rebuttal to those who say states should use common tests so that the public can compare how students perform across state boundaries, fewer than one in five public school parents said it was important to know how children in their communities performed on standardized tests compared with students in other districts, states or countries.

But nearly one in three blacks said using standardized tests to compare their local schools with schools in other districts and other states is “very important.” Just 15 percent of whites gave the same response.

Overall, the public is happy with local schools, with 57 percent of public school parents giving their school an A or a B for performance. But just 19 percent had that opinion of public schools nationwide.

“Clearly, there is anxiety about what’s happening in teaching and learning,” said Andres Alonso, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a former chief executive of Baltimore City Public Schools.

Respondents said they support charter schools, and more than six out of 10 say parents should be able to choose any school for their children within their school district.

But respondents were opposed to vouchers, or using tax dollars to pay for private school tuition, a policy increasingly promoted by Republican politicians. Several of the 2016 presidential hopefuls — Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal — support vouchers.

Overall, 57 percent of respondents were opposed to vouchers and 31 percent were in favor. Public school parents split in a similar way.

But by political party, Republicans were divided on vouchers, with 46 percent in favor and 46 percent opposed. Democrats were strongly opposed to vouchers, with 71 percent against and 16 percent in favor. Independents opposed vouchers by a margin of about 3 to 2.

On some issues, there were clear differences of opinion along racial lines. Blacks tended to be more supportive of the Common Core and standardized testing than whites, and a majority of blacks — 55 percent — gave President Obama an A or a B for his support of public schools, compared with 17 percent of whites.

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