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Middle School Survey: Sex, Fear and Suicide Attempts
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D.C. School Board Member Arrested Over Weekend
- Is the SAT Losing its Edge
- Upcoming FOCUS Workshops
Middle School Survey: Sex, Fear and Suicide Attempts
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
September 27, 2011
Chancellor Kaya Henderson sketched a bleak statistical picture of life in DCPS middle schools at Tuesday’s D.C. Council hearing, including a chilling survey finding that 10 percent of the school system’s 4,000 eighth graders have tried to kill themselves.
Henderson and other officials said they do not take the figure at face value. It is self-reported by students who filled out the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey administered last fall by OSSE. They said they regard it more as a reflection of the despair that often pervades their world, and of an on-line culture in which stories and images of teen suicide are readily accessible.
“They’re exposed to the Internet, to Facebook. They’re exposed to so many more things than we were,” said D.C. State Superintendent of Education Hosanna Mahaley. “Things we didn’t think about until well in our adult years.”
But even allowing for the adolescent sense of drama and hyperbole, the figure is sobering.
“It’s very alarming,” Henderson said. “I think it is a generalized cry for help.”
It is also consistent with past findings on the survey, which is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and administered by the District every two years. (High school students receive an expanded version.)
According to OSSE, self-reporting of attempted suicide by D.C. students has been consistently double the national average of 6.3 percent.
The survey has had some issues of its own. The 2009 results are considered questionable by CDC because they did not meet minimum sampling requirements. Some sub-groups in the student population were over- or under-represented in the respondent pool.
OSSE said Tuesday evening that the 2010 survey does not include public charter school students because many charter schools declined to participate. For that reason, OSSE excluded all charters from the survey.
Nevertheless, D.C. school officials came to the hearing, convened by D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D) with a litany of other depressing data points drawn from the risk behavior survey:
--28.2 percent of eighth graders have had sexual intercourse
--18.4 percent of sixth graders have missed school in the last 12 months because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school
--14.2 percent of middle school students have had a drink of alcohol (more than a few sips) in the past 30 days
The academic data from ninth grade--culled by DCPS--reflects the desperate circumstances of many middle schoolers. Two of every five ninth graders repeat the grade. One in three fails Algebra I, and almost half who re-take it fail a second time.
Henderson said she is studying the possibility of a middle schools literacy initiative--essentially a crash effort to bring students up to grade level in reading before they reach high school. It would involve new training for teachers, who would infuse every course with reading instruction.
Henderson said she does not yet know how much such a program would cost, but that it may be the only way to increase the academic survival rates of ninth graders.
“It means possibly doubling down on our spending for that group of kids,” she said.
D.C. School Board Member Arrested Over Weekend
The Washington Post
By Mike DeBonis
September 27, 2011
Trayon A. White, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education, was arrested Saturday and charged with a misdemeanor count of unlawful entry.
The arrest was made by D.C. Housing Authority police at the Woodland Terrace project in Ward 8, where White is well known as a community activist.
White, in an interview Tuesday, said he was arrested Saturday afternoon while on a routine “ride-through” of the 234-unit housing project. “I do that all the time,” he said.
Police, he said, stopped him and told him was in violation of an order barring him from the property. He disputes having seen any order.
”To this day, I have never seen a bar notice or have seen why I have been barred,” said White, 27, who lives about two miles away, in the Washington Highlands neighborhood. He did sign a stay-away order Monday as a condition of his release from jail.
White pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Monday; a court hearing is set for Oct. 25. A DCHA spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment.
White is also facing misdemeanor traffic charges filed in August accusing him of driving an unregistered vehicle and misusing temporary license tags. He has pled not guilty to those charges.
A first-time political candidate, White won office in an April special election with the support of D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and the Washington Teachers’ Union, pulling out a surprise victory over several political veterans.
In discussing the incidents, White said that he has been targeted by police, dating back to a 2007 lawsuit he filed accusing officers of assaulting him. Records show the case was settled in 2008.
He claimed that $300 he had on his person during his arrest Saturday was not returned by police upon release. He wants it back.
”They’re going to get it straight,” he said. “Everybody knows what I do in this community. That’s what I do, man, they know what I do.”
Is the SAT Losing its Edge?
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
September 28, 2011
More graduating seniors took the SAT last year than ever, 1.65 million. So why are the scores declining, and why is the best-known and most fearsome college-entrance test in U.S. history losing its edge?
Let’s start with the obvious. More students are taking its rival, the ACT. As my colleague Michael Alison Chandler reported, the SAT still dominates in the Washington area and on the East and West coasts. But more students, including those in the Washington area, are turning to the ACT when they bomb on the SAT, which contributes to the drop in average SAT scores. Low scorers took their usually better re-test score to the ACT.
The SAT has less power now to get students into the most selective colleges. Competition for the hottest schools has become so intense, with acceptance rates dropping below 10 percent, that a score of 2100 to 2400 gets you into only the maybe pile. Depending on your extracurricular activities, recommendations and family background, you might get in. Rejected and accepted applicants often look no different than Tweedledum and Tweedledee. And hundreds of schools, even some selective ones, let you apply without an SAT or ACT score.
The people who try to predict district- and school-level SAT averages are also frantic because the mix of students whose scores are counted keeps changing. As Chandler reported, the College Board for the first time added 50,000 scores from students who took the SAT after March of their senior year. That is a sign of desperation and of poor performance. As more students try college, many more lower-achieving students are taking the test.
This has created so much confusion that some standardized test critics, such as FairTest spokesman Bob Schaeffer and my colleague Valerie Strauss, are accepting SAT results as meaningful after years of doing the opposite. They say the SAT score decline shows that federal and state school improvement measures have failed. When SAT doubters such as them start taking the test’s scores as reliable measures, you have to assume something has gone haywire. (Schaeffer and Strauss both reject my analysis of their arguments.)
The SAT is not a suitable measure of school reform, but there are two things it is good for. It helps above-average (but not straight-A) students find ways to anchor themselves in the topsy-turvy college admissions world. For instance, a student in a competitive high school can use her SAT score as proof to admissions officers that she has attained an academic level comparable to that of an applicant with the same score but higher grade-point average at Grade Inflation High School.
Also, because SAT scores still matter for students applying to colleges that are selective but not near-impossible like the Ivy League, their SAT score becomes a good indicator of which college is most likely to accept them. Students can look up the SAT scores of freshmen accepted in previous years for almost every U.S. college. Find the colleges that select students with scores similar to theirs, and then decide which of them have the academic and extracurricular strengths they want. That leads to good results with less stress.
Despite its flaws, the SAT will be with us for years to come. Do your best on the test, then forget about it. It will soon be out of your life.
A few people such as me can still remember our scores. We talk as if the experience was a horror, when actually it was a thrill. Pity us, and be assured that by the time you get to be my age, no one will ask you your score, even when you wish they would.
FOCUS Workshop: Designing and Financing Your Facility
October 12th, 4 - 7pm
Thinking about renovating your current facility or moving into a permanent location? This two-part workshop will help you think through the architecture and design components of a charter school facility and then give you the perspective of the lenders themselves, who will host a panel discussion about lending to charter schools. Panelists include representatives from a regional non-profit lender, a local bank, and a national bank to give you a range of insights.
Cost: $50 for VSP schools, $100 for non-VSP schools.
Click here to register or go to www.focusdc.org/workshops.