NEWS
- An education partnership between traditional and charter schools in D.C. [E.L. Haynes PCS mentioned]
- D.C.’s bikes-for-tykes may shortchange charter school kids [FOCUS mentioned]
- Is it time for D.C. charters to get help from Congress? [FOCUS mentioned]
- One in four D.C. public schools has a new principal this year
- Some are questioning whether all students should be on a college prep track
An education partnership between traditional and charter schools in D.C. [E.L. Haynes PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Editorial Board
August 28, 2015
D.C. MAYOR Muriel E. Bowser’s (D) administration has launched an effort it says is aimed at fostering collaboration between the city’s traditional and charter public schools. We hope the result will be improved effectiveness, efficiency and student outcomes. But the mayor has sent the charter community some mixed signals, raising fears that the effort will end up diminishing the autonomy that is vital to charter school success.
Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer Niles this month announced the formation of a task force charged with improving the coherence of public education in the city. With 56 percent of public school students attending system schools and 44 percent in charter schools, cooperation on creative approaches to common problems is in everyone’s interest. Possible areas of cooperation include purchasing, job recruiting, transportation routes, data sharing and dissemination of best practices in teaching. Ms. Niles is right that efforts to get the two sectors to work together more effectively are overdue.
What’s worrisome is the strain of anti-charter sentiment in some of the city’s education and political circles that wants to rein in the charter movement on such central issues as where they can locate, whom they must enroll or how many seats can be added each year. These are areas worthy of discussion and joint planning, but dictating terms to charters would be counterproductive and possibly in violation of the federal law that established charter schools in the District.
Efforts to tell charters where they can or can’t locate would be particularly galling given how stingy the District has been in making surplus or underused public school space available to them. Progress under former mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) seems to have stalled; according to charter advocates, of 12 D.C.-owned buildings that are a priority for charters, only one or two are possibly being made available for K-12 charter schools. Equally troubling was the mayor’s decision this year to rescind monies approved by the D.C. Council to help two charter schools build permanent facilities.
On the bright side for charter advocates was the mayor’s appointment of Ms. Niles, founder of the well-regarded E.L. Haynes Public Charter School. Her commitment to charter schools goes unquestioned. That she will identify the people to serve on the task force — promising there will be strong charter voices — hopefully will result in a group that will come up with the best ideas in meeting the educational challenges still facing the District. Washington students all have benefited from the choices offered by two parallel systems, improving side by side.
D.C.’s bikes-for-tykes may shortchange charter school kids [FOCUS mentioned]
Education Watchdog
By Moriah Costa
August 28, 2015
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Education reformers in the nation’s capital are already suing the District for shortchanging kids in charter schools. And as that case moves through the courts, there’s new evidence to support the complaint – evidence rolling in on two wheels.
With the help of the district’s transportation department, the D.C. school district will spend an estimated $350,000 this year to make sure every second grader in a traditional public school knows how to ride a bike.
“The bikes were acquired by the Department of Transportation – a benefit that certainly is not being shared with thousands of second graders served by D.C. public charter schools,” said Irene Holtzman, executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.
The reformers’ pending lawsuit alleges charter schools receive $1,600 to $2,600 less per pupil than traditional public school students, a violation of the district’s School Reform Act of 1995. But most of that difference doesn’t show up in official numbers. That’s because, as a 2013 city-commissioned study found, traditional schools often receive supplemental funding from other government agencies.
In the case of the new bikes program, the District Department of Transportation bought a quarter of the bikes and helmets, about 300 in all, for $59,370. The agency has also agreed to buy so-called balance bikes for all district preschoolers while the school district will buy another 300 bikes and helmets. In all, DCPS will have enough bikes for half of the district’s second graders to use in the fall and spring.
The bikes are part of Cornerstone, a District initiative aimed at closing the achievement gap between white and minority students in traditional public schools.
Part of that initiative is to make sure all second graders know how to ride a bike. The final exam: ride a bike with your class to a nearby park, said Miriam Kenyon, director of health and physical education for D.C. Public Schools.
“We want it to be a challenging experience and one that kids can see their city, see great pockets of the city, and potentially take their parents or families for a bike ride,” Kenyon said.
Nobody, not even charter advocates, argues that bike lessons are a bad idea, especially in D.C. With about 69 miles of bike lanes, the District is ranked among the 10 friendliest bike cities in the country, according to the Washington Post.
But charter school supporters point out they already do more with less. More charter students are enrolled in top-performing schools than ever before, according to the D.C. Public Charter School Board. And though the graduation rate for charter schools declined last year, from 76 percent to 69 percent, they still outperform D.C. Public Schools, where the graduation rate rose slightly last year, to 58 percent.
Is it time for D.C. charters to get help from Congress? [FOCUS mentioned]
parentshavechoicekidswin .com
By Mark Lerner
August 31, 2015
Over the weekend the editors of the Washington Post raised the issue of D.C. Mayor Bowser’s Cross-Sector Collaboration Task Force complete with all of the dangers for charter schools I had identified when the group was first announced. But there is one other point that needs to be addressed.
The Deputy Mayor for Education Jennie Niles explained that the Task Force will meet for a couple of years before a report will be created. Really? This means it could be another 24 months before additional excess facilities are turned over to charters. Another 24 months before some sort of resolution is reached over the FOCUS-coordinated funding inequity lawsuit? Two more years to determine if these alternative schools will have to provide a neighborhood admissions preference?
Two more years to find out if DCPS will have to adopt the same high academic standards that charters face?
Perhaps this is the moment when school choice advocates approach Congress to obtain the policy prescriptions that cannot be achieved locally. As the gap between white and black and rich and poor students grows this may be the time to say enough is enough. It appears that a new injection of passion is in order, an emotion sadly absent in the Wilson Building.
We can sit back and do nothing and the situation we are in today could go on for another two years or another two hundred years. Or, we can take a different path.
One in four D.C. public schools has a new principal this year
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
August 27, 2015
One in four D.C. public schools started the school year this week with a new principal, continuing a pattern of high turnover in the District’s traditional public schools.
Schools under new leadership included five of the city’s high schools and three dual-language schools. The list also includes three new schools that opened this year.
High turnover has been a persistent concern among many parents and teachers in the District, who say inconsistency promotes instability and undermines progress and confidence in the system. Last summer, D.C. public schools announced 21 new principals for the school system’s 111 schools. By comparison, Montgomery County had 23 new principals in a system with 203 schools.
Principals left for different reasons, including retirement and personal reasons. Some left abruptly, including Peter Cahall, who resigned from Wilson High School in the middle of the year after sending a letter to the D.C. Council saying he was not going to be reappointed because of test scores. Ivor Mitchell, principal at Roosevelt High School, left in the spring citing family reasons. Since then, the school system has appointed two different interim principals while it looks for a permanent replacement.
Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said some principals are being moved into different roles in the school system and some are being promoted within their schools or at different schools. “All turnover is not bad turnover,” she said.
Many of the newly appointed principals are graduates from the school system’s new principal training program, the Mary Jane Patterson Fellowship, so they are familiar with the curriculum and the “DCPS way,” she said.
“I feel more comfortable about principal turnover this year than I have ever before,” she said. “I feel like this group of principals will hit the ground running.”
Henderson announced last spring that the school district would begin offering three-year appointments to high performing principals in exchange for an agreement that they would stay in their schools for three years, a nod to community concerns and the notion that it takes time to build relationships and begin to see progress.
In all, 22 principals were offered the longer contracts. Decisions were based on principal evaluations that were introduced in 2012-2013 and sort the school leaders into performance categories according to school-wide achievement goals and a “leadership framework” that evaluates performance in various areas, including family engagement, instruction and operations.
The principal evaluations have been controversial in part because they have yielded low results for many District school leaders and can lead to termination.
In the 2013-2014 school year, the largest number of principals were rated “minimally effective.” Seven principals were rated “ineffective.”
Here are the new principal appointments this year:
Abdullah Zaki — Dunbar SHS
Aimee Pressley — River Terrace
Alethea Bustillo — Bruce-Monroe ES
Alysia Lutz — Janney ES
Angel Hunter – King ES
Annie Mair (interim principal) – Payne ES
Arthur Mola – Bancroft ES
Courtney Aldridge – Johnson MS
Cynthia Robinson-Rivers — Van Ness ES
Davia Walker – Thomas ES
Elena Bell — Peabody-Watkins ES
Felicia Owo – Smothers ES
Jada Langston – Luke C. Moore Academy HS
Jade Brawley – Shepherd ES
Kara Kuchemba — Bunker Hill ES
Kim Martin — Wilson SHS
Kortni Stafford – Kelly Miller MS
Loren Brody – Takoma EC
Malaika Golden – Aiton ES
Megan Vroman – West EC
Norah Lycknell — Brookland MS
O’Kiyyah Lyons-Lucas – Powell ES
Rinaldo Murray (interim principal) – Washington Metropolitan
Roman Smith – Kramer MS
Sah Brown (interim principal) – Roosevelt HS
Sharon Holmes – Simon ES
Sundai Riggins – Hendley ES
Zara Berry-Young – Malcolm X
Some are questioning whether all students should be on a college prep track
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
August 27, 2015
A former professor who spent two years teaching in a high-poverty DC Public Schools high school advocates separating students into a college prep track and other tracks that would lead directly to jobs. But to really know who belongs in which track we need to revamp an elementary school system that has left almost all poor students woefully unprepared for a college prep curriculum.
The old practice of separating students into academic and vocational tracks has fallen into disfavor. That's because traditionally, school systems often funneled white and affluent students into college prep classes while relegating poor black ones into classes intended to prepare them for jobs in fields like auto repair and cosmetology.
Education reformers have generally insisted that all students follow a college prep curriculum. But some are beginning to recognize the value of what is now called career and technical education in engaging disaffected students and providing them with practical skills.
Some school districts, including DCPS, are beefing up their formerly anemic vocational offerings with new Career Academies embedded within neighborhood high schools. Two new ones, focusing on engineering and information technology, are opening this year at H.D. Woodson High School in Ward 7.
But these academies—and much of the vocational training finding favor among reformers—are an addition to, not a substitute for, college prep classes. The DCPS website explicitly says the expectation is that "all Academy graduates continue on to college before pursuing a career."
A former teacher and others question whether "college for all" makes sense
Caleb Stewart Rossiter, a former professor at American University who spent two years teaching math at H.D. Woodson, proposes a different approach in his book Ain't Nobody Be Learnin' Nothin': The Fraud and the Fix for High-Poverty Schools..
Rossiter says only about 20% of students at schools like Woodson are "within striking distance of high school standards." And he argues that under the current system, those students will never be college-ready because they're being held back by students who are disruptive or hopelessly behind.
In some ways Rossiter's version of tracking differs from the paternalistic model that prevailed in the old days, when the school system decided which track a student should be on. Students and their parents or guardians themselves would choose either a college-prep or vocational track at 7th grade, with an option to reevaluate at 9th. Rossiter wouldn't exclude any students who are highly motivated from college prep.
But, as under the old system, Rossiter wants vocational tracks to lead students directly to jobs rather than to college. And he wants schools to require students who are years behind to undertake intensive remediation before embarking on either track, although they might need less remediation for the vocational one.
Rossiter's book details extreme dysfunction at Woodson (which he refers to as "Johnson" in his book), characterizing the "unspoken bargain of calm high-poverty classes" as "don't push me to work and I won't disrupt the class much." In addition to tracking, Rossiter wants extremely disruptive students and those far behind grade level removed from regular classes and getting counseling and non-credit remediation.
Rossiter isn't the only one questioning the assumption that all students should go to college. When students are in 11th or 12th grade and still reading and doing math at an elementary level, subjecting them to a grade-level college prep curriculum appears to be a waste of everyone's time.
And, as Rossiter argues, the supposed college-prep curriculum isn't even doing a good job with the low-income students who manage to make it to college: 64.5% of low-income students who enroll in a two-year college need remedial classes, as do 31.9% of those who enroll in a four-year college. Only 9% of the poorest students complete a college degree—less than a third of those who enroll. Those who drop out are often left with huge debt and no degree.
True, poor and minority individuals who make it through college do far better than those who don't. But college doesn't seem to be the great equalizer that some had hoped for. A new study has found that black and Hispanic college graduates have far less wealth than their white counterparts.
So offering students the option of a track that leads to a job rather than to college makes sense. And there should be no shame in vocational education. Society needs beauticians and auto mechanics as much as it needs college professors and lawyers.
Vocational classes may solve some of the disciplinary problems afflicting high-poverty schools as well. As Rossiter saw when some of his most disruptive students eagerly embraced a challenging masonry task and excelled at it, some students are far more responsive and persevering when learning is part of a hands-on task.
Lately, some reformers—including the Obama administration—have modified the "college for all" mantra, saying instead that "all Americans need some form of postsecondary education," if not college then at least a training or certification program after high school. But if we could embed that training or certification within a high school curriculum, and make it meaningful, we could save everyone time and money.
Before we embrace a version of tracking that allows some students to opt out of college prep, however, we should be aware of a couple of major caveats. One is that most decent jobs that don't require a college degree still require a high level of accomplishment. Some people who skip college and complete an occupational concentration in high school manage to out-earn college graduates, but only if they did well in Algebra II and advanced biology.
Inadequate elementary school education may be masking students' potential
More fundamentally, we may be overlooking a lot of undeveloped academic potential in low-income kids because of the education they get before they reach high school. Elementary education is currently so inadequate that we simply don't know how many kids would be capable of handling a college prep curriculum if they were given the right kind of foundation.
Even before standardized tests became important—but even more so afterwards—elementary schools have been focusing almost exclusively on basic skills in reading and math. In reading, that means hours every day practicing comprehension strategies like "finding the main idea" and making predictions.
Elementary schools have spent little or no time building students' knowledge of subjects like history and science. That's particularly harmful for poor kids, who are less likely to acquire that kind of knowledge at home.
When those kids get to high school, they suddenly encounter a curriculum that assumes a lot of knowledge and vocabulary they don't have. As a result, they can't understand much of what they're supposed to be learning. No wonder they become disaffected.
Of course, some teenagers will be disaffected even if we inject actual content into the elementary school curriculum—a slow and difficult process that DCPS is now beginning to undertake. And some students who are engaged in school still won't be interested in going to college. But right now, we can't know for sure which kids fall into which category.
In the short-term, the only way we might be able to tell is to offer motivated students intensive tutoring in the subjects they're supposed to be learning—not, as Rossiter proposes, tutoring in "basic skills," which will do them no more good than a skill-based curriculum did in elementary school. That would require a huge and most likely expensive effort, but it's worth trying.
For the longer term, we need to revamp the elementary school curriculum so that poor kids are acquiring the tools that will allow them to access high school level work. Only then will students and their families be able to make a genuine choice between a path that leads to college and one that leads in a different, but equally fulfilling and possibly even lucrative, direction.
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