FOCUS DC News Wire 8/26/13

 

 

The controversy over academic testing has spread to an unlikely frontier in Washington: preschool.

 

Some D.C. parents are protesting a proposal by the city’s public charter school board to rank preschools based largely on how children as young as 3 are performing on reading and math tests.

 

The board set out to provide parents with a clearer picture of how charter schools compare with one another. It also wants to provide educators with a way to measure progress toward the goal of better preparing children for school, a goal that led city leaders to make a historic investment in universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds.

 

But as of Saturday, more than 200 parents had signed a petition asking the board to take a broader look at school quality and put more weight on the social and emotional development they want to see emphasized in their children’s schools.

 

“People are going to focus on what is measured,” said Luba Vangelova, a parent who spoke against the plan at a public hearing this month. “This is going to steal time away from the things that really matter, like play and exploration.”

 

Early assessments of reading and math skills are administered in preschool classes throughout the country, but they are typically used to improve instruction and target lessons to children’s varying needs.

 

The charter school board’s rating system could inform decisions about whether a charter school would be closed, according to Sara Mead, a member of the public charter school board. Some parents also worry that it could harm fundraising and student recruitment.

 

As government-funded preschool programs have grown nationwide, so have efforts to provide consistent information on the quality of those programs. But there is considerable debate about how best to measure outcomes in preschools that have a role not just in cognitive development but also in the physical, social and emotional growth of children.

 

Still, many educators say that third grade, the year standardized test scores are first reported for federal accountability purposes, is too late to begin assembling an objective picture of how students are performing academically.

 

By third grade, only 43 percent of D.C. third-graders are proficient in math and 44 percent in reading, according to the latest results on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System.

 

Most of the three dozen early education charter school operators in the District took part in a task force to help shape the “performance management framework” for preschool through second grade. They largely supported the framework.

 

“The whole promise of early childhood education is as an early intervention to close the preparation gap before kindergarten,” said Jack McCarthy, president and chief executive of AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter Schools in the District.

 

The charter school board is accepting public comment on the proposal until Wednesday.

 

The initiative would be among the first at the preschool level to attach high stakes to the results, said Thomas Schultz, director of early childhood initiatives for the Council of Chief State School Officers.

 

A 2008 report by the National Academy of Sciences urged “extreme caution” in basing high-stakes decisions on assessments of young children, particularly in “well-defined academic content areas.”

 

Ayize Sabater, chief executive of Shining Stars Montessori Academy, said he participated in the task force and suggested that there might be unintended consequences of tying rankings to math and literacy test results.

 

“Where before we might have been more concerned about the child’s holistic development, and allowing them to move with their natural developmental process, now would we start teaching to the test?” Sabater said.

 

The early education initiative — which would replace schools’ individual accountability plans — would evaluate schools based on children’s progress in literacy, use of language, and math, as well as teacher quality and school attendance. Literacy and math would be weighted to account for 45 to 60 percent of the total score. A social and emotional assessment, weighted at 15 percent, would be optional.

 

Board officials said the tool they use to evaluate the quality of teachers’ interactions with preschool students, which accounts for 30 percent of the preschool rating, also considers social and emotional development.

 

For kindergarten through second grade, math and reading performance would account for between 70 and 80 percent of a school’s rating, with an optional social and emotional component weighted at 10 percent.

 

Schools would choose from a list of more than two dozen assessments already used for early learners. Many of the tests are given one-on-one, or the results are based on a teacher’s observations of children playing.

 

“Every school leader [on the task force] agreed that social emotional is a huge component of early learning, but they did not agree that it should be a mandated part of the framework,” said Erin Kupferberg, a quality and accountability specialist for the charter school board.

 

Traditional D.C. public schools are taking a different approach to assessment. They evaluate how students are developing in areas that including language, literacy, math, social, emotional and physical skills.

 

They use test results to improve instruction and inform parents — not to rank the schools, said Danielle Ewen, director of early childhood education for D.C. public schools.

 

If children don’t develop the motor skills to climb up a slide, they are likely to have a difficult time holding a pencil, Ewen said. If they struggle to follow directions, they are unlikely to do well on a reading activity.

 

“We do not weigh one over the other, because they are all connected,” she said.

 

 

In a follow-up Washington Post article to the inaccurate one penned by Valerie Strauss last week explicitly claiming that the D.C. Public Charter School Board intends to give standardized tests to 3 to 5 year olds, reporter Michael Alison Chandler yesterday did nothing to stop the spread of this false rumor by writing that the organization’s goal is to “rank preschools based largely on how children as young as 3 are performing on reading and math tests.”

 

In reaction to the first article the PCSB’s executive director Scott Pearson issued the following declaration on the PCSB website:

 

“To be clear, the proposed Early Childhood PMF builds off measurements schools already use, which are detailed in a school’s accountability plan . . . There are no new tests. I repeat, these measurements are not "standardized test" in the sense of fill in the bubble tests. [Bold and underline included in the original text.] 

Mr. Pearson goes on to explain that:

 

“Data from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education shows that more than half of all 3rd grade students are unable to read and do math at a basic level. If a student falls behind by third grade, it is extremely difficult for them to catch up.

 

That’s why it’s important for young learners to leave preschool programs and enter kindergarten with a strong foundation for doing well in elementary school and beyond. To do that, there has to be some measure of how our youngest learners are doing in identifying their colors (literacy), counting (math), and managing their own emotions and getting along with others (social-emotional).”

 

PCSB Board member Sara Mead also fires back in a column with her own points, with details on each assertion here:

 

1. The early childhood PMF does not require any new tests or testing of preschool or early elementary students,

2. The early childhood PMF does not require pencil and paper tests for young children,

3. The early childhood PMF does not establish high-stakes testing for young children,

4. The early childhood PMF does not evaluate schools based solely on assessment, and

5. The early childhood PMF recognizes the critical importance of social-emotional development.

 

Ms. Chandler does point out that the 26 schools involved in the pilot of the Early Childhood PMF generally like the new tool. At the same time, however, she reveals that there is now a petition with 200 parent names calling for the PMF to place more weight on social and emotional growth. It seems that Shining Stars Montessori Academy, which participated in the task force that developed the tool, has a particular problem with it since I’ve heard from school representatives twice now opposing the plan.

 

It should be a lively meeting when the PCSB votes on the policy in September.

 

 

There are a lot of misperceptions flying around about the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board's Early Childhood Performance Management Framework. As a member of the board who supports the framework, I'd like to try to clear up some of those misperceptions and explain why I support the framework.

 

It's clear to me that a lot of the confusion here stems from a misunderstanding of what charter schools are and of DCPCSB's role as a charter authorizer. Charter schools are independently operated public schools that receive increased autonomy and flexibility in exchange for accountability for the results they produce--this exchange of freedom for accountability is the heart of the charter school bargain. Authorizers, the entities that approve and oversee charter schools, are responsible for making sure that bargain is honored. In the case of DCPCSB, this means we not only carefully evaluate the potential of schools before granting a charter to open, but that after we open, we also continually monitor the extent to which our schools are living up to three primary obligations: 1) Using taxpayer funds appropriately and responsibly, 3) Honoring the "public" part of "public charter school" by maintaining access for all students, preventing discrimination, and following all laws to which they are subject, and 3)Effectively educating students.

 

Since 2011, DCPCSB has used our Performance Management Framework (PMF) to evaluate how well schools in our portfolio educate their elementary and secondary students. The PMF replaced the individual accountability plans that previously existed for schools, and provides a consistent way for PCSB, parents, and the public to compare performance between schools and make choices. It has been effective in supporting parents to make informed choices and in helping us to improve the overall performance of our portfolio.

 

This PMF did not apply to all charter schools in D.C., however. Uniquely and, I believe, invaluably, the District of Columbia allows charter schools to serve preschool students and to receive per pupil public funds for these students in the same way they do for elementary and secondary students. As a result, a large number of our charter schools serve preschoolers--including some schools that are exclusively serve early childhood. Charters that serve preschoolers are schools. They receive millions of dollars in public funding every year, and as an authorizer we have the same obligations to oversee the learning results they produce as we do for any other school in our portfolio.

 

When we launched the PMF in 2011, we did not include an early childhood PMF, because we realized that evaluating the performance of preschools and early elementary programs is a complex undertaking, and we wanted to take time to develop the best approach we could. Over the past nearly three years our staff has worked closely with charters that serve young children, and consulted with outside experts, to develop an early childhood performance management framework that we will use to evaluate the performance of these schools going forward. I'd like to make a few points about this PMF clear:

 

The early childhood PMF does not require any new tests or testing of preschool or early elementary students: Instead, it is based on assessments that schools were already using to monitor children's progress under their existing accountability plans.

 

The early childhood PMF does not require pencil and paper tests for young children: All the approved assessments approved for school use in the PMF have been determined to be developmentally appropriate for the age groups for which they may be used. The approved assessments for preschool include authentic assessments, such as Teaching Strategies GOLD, that use teacher observations to track students' development and progress over time.

 

The early childhood PMF does not establish high-stakes testing for young children. Nothing in the PMF establishes consequences for children based on assessments. The Board recognizes that making high-stakes decisions about children based on assessments is developmentally inappropriate and would not support policies to do so.

 

The early childhood PMF does not evaluate schools based solely on assessments: The preschool PMF also includes the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), an validated and reliable observation of the quality of adult-child interactions in preschool classrooms, which has been shown to predict children's learning and development in preschool. CLASS accounts for 30% of the PMF scoring for preschool. Attendance, a leading indicator of how well schools are engaging children and families, counts for 10% of the early childhood PMF at all levels, and re-enrollment, a measure of family satisfaction, accounts for 10% of the PMF in kindergarten and elementary.

 

The early childhood PMF recognizes the critical importance of social-emotional development: PCSB recognizes that social-emotional development is a critical component of children's learning in the early years. That's why the PMF includes an option for preschool programs to include an assessment of children's social-emotional development as 10% of their PMF rating. PCSB made this component optional because we did not want to impose an additional assessment of social-emotional development on schools that were not already using one. Even if schools do not elect this option, however, that does not mean the PMF ignores their effectiveness in supporting students' social-emotional development. The CLASS, required for all charter preschools in the PMF, includes 3 components: instructional support, emotional support, and classroom organization. The emotional support component of CLASS reflects how effectively teachers support students' social-emotional development in preschool, meaning that the quality of adult support for children's social-emotional development counts through CLASS for 10% of a school's PMF rating in preschool.

 

In terms of social-emotional development, two additional points: I fully agree with parents and educators that it's critically important to ensure that schools are supporting children's social and emotional development. But recent research suggests that the available measures of social-emotional skills and behaviors at school entry are not as strong of predictors of children's later school success as measures of their early math and early literacy skills. Thus, if we want to focus on the measures that are most predictive of children's later school success, we need to look at math and early literacy skills. Moreover, other research on quality in preschool classrooms suggest that most preschool programs do a better job of supporting children's social-emotional development than they do of supporting their cognitive, language/literacy, and math development.

 

As an early entrant into charter school authorizing, responsible for charters serving more than 40% of D.C. students, DCPCSB often finds itself on the bleeding edge of new challenges facing charter authorizers and the charter school movement. When it comes to authorizing early childhood charter schools, that's definitely the case. I don't think that what we've done is perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe that by moving forward with something pretty good now, we can learn from the results and get better over time. It's my sincere hope that state and federal officials will increase spending on preschool in the coming years and that, as they do so, more authorizers will find themselves approving and overseeing preschool charters--and that they'll be able to learn from what we've done, and ultimately help us learn and get better together.

 

The reality is that, as challenging as it may be, the early childhood field is going to have to move in the direction of increased information about child outcomes. Over the past few weeks, I've been speaking with a number of leading early childhood thinkers from across a wide ideological spectrum and was shocked by the consistency with which I heard this refrain. It's partly a matter of practical politics: If we want public officials to invest more public funds in preschool, we're going to need ways to show them that these funds are working. But it's also a more nuanced issue: If we want to improve quality and outcomes in early childhood education, we need to do a better job of figuring out which early childhood programs are doing the best job of educating kids, so that we can learn from what they're doing. And if we want to experiment with greater flexibility or new approaches, we need a consensus on how to tell if those strategies are working or not. For too long, an excessive paranoia about assessing young children has prevented us from being able to answer basic questions like, "Which Head Start programs are doing the best job of getting kids ready for school?" But in order to move the ball forward for kids, we need to be able to do that--and to do it in smart, nuanced ways that take into account how complex all of this is. This doesn't mean (at all!) NCLB-style accountability for preschools. It does mean being able to be much more transparent about how programs are serving kids--including outcomes.

 

 

Politicians and bureaucrats generally engage in feel-good packaging. Any step forward is amplified, treated as worthy of a gala. They are motivated often by the possibility of reelection, reappointment or promotion. But their brand of marketing can be dangerous, creating misperceptions and inviting complacency when just the opposite is needed.

 

That’s the case with the 2013 public school test scores released last month. District leaders launched a celebration that included a commentary by Mayor Vincent C. Gray published by The Post two weeks ago. It’s true that many public schools — traditional ones and charters — showed improvement. Math proficiency for D.C. Public Schools’ (DCPS) Bruce Monroe Elementary, for example, went from 40.6 percent in 2012 to 56.5 percent in 2013. Reading rose from 27.9 percent to 40.5 percent. That kind of growth deserves acknowledgment.

 

Don’t start dancing yet. The truth is this: After six years of education reform and billions of dollars in investments, many schools continue to struggle. The math proficiency rate at Ballou High School in Southeast, for example, was 18.7 percent in 2013 — down from 22.8 percent in 2012. Reading scores took an even bigger dive: from 20 percent in 2012 to 13.4 percent in 2013.

 

The new $122 million Paul Laurence Dunbar Senior High School may gleam, but student achievement doesn’t. Only 16.8 percent of students tested in 2013 demonstrated proficiency in math — down from the 19.7 percent in 2012. Reading scores dropped from 27.7 percent to 17.9 percent.

 

“The reality is that we have 64 DCPS and charter schools [or nearly one-third of the 195 participating institutions] that continue to warrant the label of Priority or Focus schools — schools with unacceptably low performance in both math and reading, and distressingly low graduation rates,” said Ward 6 Council member and mayoral candidate Tommy Wells (D). Further, Wells noted, 46 schools saw drops of 5 percentage points or greater in either math, reading or composite scores; 32 of those schools were in Wards 5, 7 and 8.

 

Gray has said the improved test scores demonstrate that school reforms are working and the city should stay the course. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson has yet to indicate what action she will take in the schools cited by Wells, other than perhaps extend the school day.

 

“We need to see true entrepreneurial leadership at those schools,” said Wells, citing the public education turnaround in his ward as an indication of what is possible.

 

Wells said that many of the low-performing institutions are in communities that have witnessed significant school closures. Losing neighborhood facilities will force children to be bused outside of their communities. “That disenfranchises families in terms of their involvement in their child’s education.”

 

Interestingly, in 1943, John P. Davis, a Brookland resident, sued the board of education over that very thing. He complained that his son had to travel miles outside his community, including a “circuitous bus route,” to reach the “colored” school when there was a “white” one just across the street from their home.

 

Then, leaders were outraged by such treatment of the city’s children. Today, few people seem to care. Low-income families frequently lack the political or economic muscle to effect change.

 

The District’s public education system, as in most urban areas, particularly with large African American populations, serves as indisputable evidence of the failure of black leadership. It is also a testament to the unfinished business of the civil rights movement.

 

Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. That event allowed African Americans and others to articulate their hopes and dreams for themselves and the nation. Most commemorative events have highlighted jobs and social justice as key issues. The District’s flyer promoting its segment of a rally this Saturday focuses on statehood, jobs, voting rights, immigration reform, women’s rights, gun violence and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

 

What about education? It is the linchpin in any program for economic or social advancement. Why hasn’t there been any major protest march over the fact that the academic proficiency rate for black DCPS students trails that of their white counterparts by nearly 50 percent?

 

In some cities, including parts of the District, the quality of public education may be worse than it was during the days when African Americans battled segregation and faced limited opportunities. Consider that Dunbar High School was one of the city’s premier academic institutions, graduating the crème de la crème. When it was called the M Street School, nearly all of its teachers had degrees from prestigious colleges or universities. “M Street High student body outperformed its white counterparts at other high schools in the District,” according to Richard Kluger, author of “Simple Justice.” Today, test scores indicate that few Dunbar students can even read at grade level.

 

What would the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. do about that?

 

 

Maybe they’re showing off their new Hello Kitty or Spider-Man backpacks. Maybe they made a friend on the bus. Or maybe they cried their eyes out before the first bell rings, terrified of saying goodbye to Mom and Dad.

 

Or, maybe Mom and Dad were the ones to cry.

 

Monday marked the first day of school for more than 200,000 public school students in Montgomery County and the District.

 

This is the 30th year of growth for Montgomery County’s school system and the first time enrollment has exceeded 150,000, with an estimated 2,500 new students expected to file into classrooms Monday.

 

To accommodate the swelling number of students, Montgomery opens four modernized and expanded campuses Monday: Glenallan Elementary School, Weller Road Elementary School, Herbert Hoover Middle School and Gaithersburg High School.

 

Along with the additional students, Montgomery is welcoming 800 new teachers to the district and dozens of new principals.

 

Montgomery school employees were up even before the sun as Superintendent Joshua P. Starr greeted bus drivers at the depot as early as 5 a.m. before they set off on their routes.

 

The District’s school system, meanwhile, is fighting to maintain enrollment as it faces increasing competition from public charter schools.

 

More than 45,000 D.C. students headed back to class Monday, many to newly modernized buildings, including Dunbar High — where officials recently cut the ribbon on a new $122 million campus— and Cardozo Education Campus, where the crumbling building was gutted and renovated for $130 million.

 

Many D.C. charter schools also began Monday, including two that are opening their doors for the first time: Somerset Prep in Southeast Washington and Sela, a Hebrew-immersion school in Ward 4.

 

A third new charter, Ingenuity Prep, opened earlier in August, while a fourth — Community College Preparatory Academy — opens in mid-September.

 

Many other charters are expanding to new campuses or additional grade levels. In 2012-13, charters enrolled 43 percent of the city’s public school students.

 

At Cardoza’s made-over campus, volunteers offered an energetic welcome early Monday, chanting as students made their way up the front steps, down a red carpet and through an arch of purple and white balloons.

 

Tenth-grader Sheila Paredes hung back with her mother, taking it all in. “I’m nervous,” said the teenager, who is new to Cardozo after moving to the District from Maryland.

 

Cardozo expanded this year to serve middle school students as well as high school students, taking in children who would have attended Shaw Middle, which closed in June.

 

Sixth-grader Angelica Edwards said she was excited about having a locker of her own. Her mother, Monique Edwards-Kellam, said she is thrilled by the new building and the promise of a rich curriculum.

 

“It’s an excellent start to a bright future for these kids,” she said.

 

 

At a crowded public hearing Wednesday evening, some Edgewood residents urged that the now-closed Shaed Elementary School be developed into a recreation center. With so many charter schools in the area already, they said a recreation center would be of more use to the community than another school. But district regulations give charters the first opportunity to bid on the property, which DC officials say is too large for a recreation center anyway.

 

The Shaed building is located at 301 Douglass St NE at Lincoln Road in Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie's Ward 5 and ANC Commissioner C. Dianne Barnes 5E09 Angela Blanks' 5E10 single member district.

 

Indeed, there are already 7 charter schools in this area of Ward 5.

 

The hearing took place in the very hot and humid field house of the existing Edgewood Recreation Center, at 300 Evarts Street NE. Several people at the meeting noted that the small field house is clearly inadequate to meet the needs of the neighborhood.

 

Officials from the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), the Department of General Services (DGS), and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education were on hand to explain the decision to surplus Shaed ES, which is adjacent to the recreation center, and explain the process for its redevelopment. DCPS closed Shaed at the end of the 2011 school year because of low enrollment.

 

Bids for Shaed Elementary from "eligible applicants" are due August 30. The District has defined "eligible applicants" as existing charter schools or schools that have received conditional approval for their charter applications.

 

Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Debbie Smith-Steiner (5E01) and several other community representatives urged that Shaed be redeveloped as a community recreation center. But DPR Director Jesus Aguirre responded that Shaed, a 70,000-square-foot facility, is much too large to be converted into a recreation center.

 

Aguirre did assure residents that the District would consider their requests for a new recreation center during the next round of budget negotiations. He distributed printed surveys and encouraged residents to submit their concerns through an online survey or send them to playdc@dc.gov.

 

Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser, who briefly attended the meeting, told community members that the government intends to maintain some control over the recreational area around the footprint of the Shaed building whether it is ultimately leased to a charter school or not.

 

Several charter school representatives attended the hearing to listen to the concerns of the community, but none made remarks or presented plans.

 

Several residents described the Shaed building, which has been vacant for two years, as a poorly maintained blight on the neighborhood. DGS is responsible for maintaining the building but has not done an adequate job of managing the properties in its portfolio.

 

Considering that the official DGS announcements for the public meeting used an incorrect address for the Edgewood Recreation Center, some might wonder whether DGS officials even know where all their properties are located. (The DC Register and DGS announcements indicated the public meeting would be held at 3 Evarts Street NE instead of 300 Evarts Street.)

 

In addition to Aguirre, other officials at the meeting included Jackie Stanley, representing the DC Department of General Services, and Marc Bleyer of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education. They assured the audience that the community would have additional opportunities to comment on the development of the Shaed property.