- Three top charter schools bid on Winston site [DC Prep, Eagle Academy, and Rocketship Education PCS mentioned]
- Teaching District students 21st century skills [Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
- School House Blocked
- D.C. parents push for more recess
- Modernized facilities greet students on first day of class
Three top charter schools bid on Winston site [DC Prep, Eagle Academy, and Rocketship Education PCS mentioned]
Greater Greater Washington
By Martin Moulton
August 30, 2013
Two of the operators, DC Prep and Eagle Academy, already have campuses in the District. The third bidder, Rocketship Education, doesn't currently have a school in the District but has been authorized to open as many as 8 schools here by 2019.
The District's Department of General Services (DGS) announced the bids at an August 27 meeting at Hillcrest Recreation Center, which is adjacent to the school building. All three of the operators bidding on the site said they would move into the Winston building by 2015 if approved. It's possible, although not likely, that DGS will approve none of the schools, and bidding will go into a second round.
Members of the Hillcrest Civic Association have petitioned DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson to replace the former neighborhood school with an application-only school. The vice-chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 7B, Robin Hammond Marlin, who also represents the single-member district that includes the Winston site, has joined in that petition. To date, there has been no response from DCPS.
Some neighborhood parents at the meeting said they were interested in the services that the charter schools bidding on the Winston building might provide to local families.
The school, which was named after noted local educator Martha H. Winston, is drawing interest from the charter schools despite a forbidding exterior. The building appears to have only a few very small windows.
Of the three schools, only Rocketship Education might be subject to proposed legislation that would allow charter schools to give preference to students living in the neighborhood. That legislation, proposed by DC Councilmember David Grosso, would apply only to charter schools that are new to the District.
Rocketship's school would serve first- through fifth-graders and partner with AppleTree Early Learning, which would provide classes for 3- and 4-year-olds. AppleTree currently operates 7 well-regarded early-childhood charter schools in DC.
Rocketship, founded in California, uses a combination of face-to-face and online learning and has won acclaim for the results it has achieved with low-income student populations. In addition to the network's 8 schools in San Jose, Rocketship opened a school in Milwaukee just last week, according to Regional Director John Manahan. It has also been authorized to open schools in Nashville and is exploring possibilities in Indianapolis, Memphis, New Orleans, and Texas.
DC Prep hopes to open a new school at the Winston site serving pre-K through 8th grade. The organization currently has two campuses in Ward 5 and two in Ward 7, and, according to its CEO Rick Cruz, its Ward 5 middle school was the highest performing public charter school in the District on the 2013 DC CAS..
As many as 28% of DC Prep students gain admission to School Without Walls, a selective DCPS high school. And the school's students are often placed in two other selective DCPS schools, McKinley Technical and Banneker.
If Eagle Academy is the successful bidder, it hopes to open an additional school serving three-year-olds to third graders initially, eventually expanding to serve fifth graders. Eagle Academy PCS received some of the highest third-grade scores in the District on the DC CAS.
All three schools bidding on the site put a high emphasis on technology, with smart boards in all classrooms. But Eagle Academy is exceptional in that it provides laptops and as many as 30 iPads in every classroom.
Both DC Prep and Eagle Academy would need to secure authorization for an additional school from the Public Charter School Board, but given the schools' track records that shouldn't be a problem.
Several residents who spoke at the meeting displayed a deep hostility to charter schools despite the impressive results that many such schools have been able to achieve with high-poverty student populations. They seemed to place blame for the growth of charters on the District government rather than acknowledging that a growing number of parents apparently prefer to place their children in those schools.
Teaching District students 21st century skills [Two Rivers PCS mentioned]
The Northwest Current, p. 10
By David Philhower
August 28, 2013
As students head back to school, our new parents are excited. At this year’s
school lottery we received 1,840 applicants for 32 spots. As a D.C. public charter school we are obligated to hold a lottery when spaces are oversubscribed.
With so much focus on test scores, it is distressing that often missing from the conversation is discussion about how to develop non-cognitive skills, like character, that are necessary for success. In his latest book, “How Children Succeed,” education writer Paul Tough singles out five character skills that we need to be teaching our children: control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence.
As a middle school principal at Two Rivers Public Charter School, I am grateful for the focus the author brings to these often-neglected foundations of learning.
Although grit can be hard to define, the most common definition is an unwavering dedication to completing the task. Psychologist Angela Duckworth came up with a “grit scale,” a 12-point self-evaluation that includes statements such as “setbacks don’t discourage me” and “I finish what I begin.” High grit scores are not related to traditional IQ, but they are directly correlated to success in competitive situations, like the National Spelling Bee.
In our middle school, we teach students that work improves through revision, and students complete draft after draft. Teachers and students critique early drafts. Later, students present this work to their parents at student-led conferences.
We ask them: “How did you improve your piece through revision?” For us, grit means working on the piece until it gets better, and then better still.
This complements our research-based, rigorous educational program known as Expeditionary Learning. This approach stimulates curiosity because it involves a problem to solve, and a set of guiding questions without easy answers. We know students need to be curious, apply knowledge to a real-life problem, and have the discipline to keep going to find their answer.
In his book, Tough defines conscientiousness as exerting oneself,regardless of a potential reward.
One example of how we teach this is the way our eighth-graders study ancient civilization by learning about public spaces, from ancient Greece to the present. They learn about history, and then they apply their knowledge to design a public space that would be part of our neighborhood. Students worked on proposals; met with city planners, architects and engineers; revisited
their plans; and then submitted the peer-reviewed best of these plans to
the NoMa Business Improvement District. Their work caught the eye of at-large D.C. Council member David Catania, who asked that they present their ideas to the council.
Connected to the concept of reward is learning how to delay gratification — something that Tough identifies as critical to children’s success. Our students learn this skill in our financial literacy instruction, which teaches them about budgeting, interest, saving, credit and how to talk about money.
Like Tough, we recognize that curiosity also is key to success. Last fall, sixth-graders learned about economics and history through considering “The Omnivore’s Dilemma for Kids.” By examining how farming changed after the Industrial Revolution, and learning about how their food gets from farm to table today, students took on a tough issue: How do I vote with my fork?
Creating a culture around all of the components required for students to be successful in adult life is worth it.
School House Blocked
Loose Lips
By Will Sommer
August 28, 2013
Fingers tented under his chin, David Catania is listening. He’s heard about how fingerprinting aimed at detecting sex offenders scares well-meaning parents away from schools, and about classrooms where the Internet is too slow for their new computers. Now, at a meeting on education in Ward 7, he’s hearing a Woodson High School senior read the ways that Catania has offended him.
“I don’t appreciate you calling my school low-quality,” the student says. “I don’t think my school is low-quality.”
“A school where half the kids don’t graduate is a problem,” Catania shoots back.
Catania, under a banner bearing his name and trademark green campaign colors, takes another comment masquerading as a question. That’s OK with Catania—–facing a hostile mayor, the Washington Post editorial board, and a D.C. schools chancellor who’s indifferent to his ideas, he’ll make nice with whoever he can. He’s getting ready for the fall.
Before the D.C. Council took its summer recess, Catania’s colleagues gave him a shove out the door. By a vote of 7 to 6 at the end of June, they rejected the education committee chairman’s effort to weight funding for schools by the number of students that receive free and reduced priced lunches, a formula that would send more money to schools with poorer students.
Catania tried to trade a “yes” vote on an amended Large Retailer Accountability Act (aka the Walmart bill) for support for his plan. That swap would have given the living wage bill enough support to override a potential veto from Mayor Vince Gray.
The promise of trumping Gray, though, couldn’t save Catania’s funding formula. As Catania raged from the dais, councilmembers voted to wait for more research.
Catania says he still wanders around his house trying to figure out how some councilmembers voted against him. He’s especially angry at councilmembers who voted for the living wage bill but against his weighted formula, both of which ostensibly help the poor. “I still can’t figure out a way to put a sentence together that isn’t laced with words that aren’t inappropriate to print,” he says.
The weighted funding formula was a high-profile flop for Catania on the Council’s education committee, which emerged in January after seven years in which the Council’s Committee of the Whole handled schools. It seemed ripe for the aggressive style Catania honed while steering the Council’s health committee. “If you take somebody like David and put him in charge of something,” says Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, “he’s not just going to sit there.”
So far, Catania has found it harder to carve out his own piece of the education agenda, despite proposing a package of seven reform bills that cover everything from social promotion to the creation of a charter lottery. That’s partly a result of education’s higher profile and partly because education was put under mayoral control in 2007. To make matters worse for an ambitious chairman looking for his own policy fiefdom, the mayor has his own proposed education reforms, including some that overlap with Catania’s.
Catania faces a more serious problem than resistance from Gray, DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson, and his Council colleagues. That’s the evidence that, six years after then-Mayor Adrian Fenty took control of the schools, they actually are getting better. District students posted an average increase of 4 percent in math and reading proficiency scores this year. The schools aren’t fixed yet, but they’re also not waiting around for Catania to do the job.
Problems persist, as Catania is eager to point out. If there were enough charters for every student who wants to leave a traditional school, he says, DCPS’ population would drop in half. At Dunbar High School, where students started Monday in a new building, reading proficiency dropped by nearly double digits this year. Catania also points to deficiencies in occupational and parental involvement.
Smarting from his weighted formula defeat, Catania spent the recess in a Rocky montage of education wonkery. He read up on public schools around the world (the differences between Singapore and Mumbai, Catania tells LL, are “fascinating”). For the Palisades’ July 4 parade, the traditional summer home of politicians with a campaign to flog, Catania’s entourage wore T-shirts with the names of different D.C. schools on the back.
But Catania’s largest push over the recess has been his education meetings in all eight wards, usually held with fellow At-Large Councilmember David Grosso, a convenient foil for the notoriously abrasive Catania. When Grosso slips up and tells a crowd, incorrectly, that every District charter school outperforms every traditional public school, Catania steps in and mediates, looking reasonable in the process.
The listening tour wasn’t about pushing his reform bills, Catania says, but the banner with his name and the message “We Support Public Education in D.C.” suggests otherwise. The message is clear: If you have a problem with the schools, bring it to the Council.
Catania plans to start to introduce some of his bills for mark-up when the Council returns on Sept. 17, with more to follow later in the year. But not everyone is eager for the Council to take a more active role in education. When Catania unveiled his bills in June, Henderson told LL she didn’t understand how they would help. Mayoral spokesman Pedro Ribeiro, meanwhile, wondered about Catania’s motivations in keeping the bills, developed by law firm Hogan Lovells, secret for so long. (Catania says no legislation in Council history has had as much executive input.)
Catania is also up against the Post editorial board, one of D.C. school reform’s most devoted backers. The paper called his bills a “power grab” in July. “I’m responsible for the Lindbergh kidnapping and the King assassination if you read the Washington Post,” Catania says.
Catania could have one unlikely ally in U.S. Attorney Ron Machen. If Machen’s ongoing investigation into Gray’s 2010 campaign keeps the mayor from running for re-election, the lame-duck uncertainty for DCPS could create an opening for Catania. Whether the mayor runs for re-election or not, of course, he wants people to think he will—witness his balancing act at press conferences, where he says he’s proud of his first term, but won’t say whether he’ll seek another.
The list of opponents to Catania’s reforms could grow even bigger. There’s his three Council colleagues and mayoral hopefuls—–Muriel Bowser, Jack Evans, Tommy Wells—–who likely won’t want to hamstring the office they’re seeking. There’s also the regular District resident who, seeing the system’s improvements under Henderson and predecessor Michelle Rhee, don’t want the Council further enmeshed in DCPS.
Catania, at least publicly, isn’t deterred by people who tell him to stay out of the schools. “I suspect there are people who wish I would just vacate the field,” Catania says. “And I’m sorry to disappoint them, but that’s just not going to happen."
D.C. parents push for more recess
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
August 30, 2013
Buried in the fine print of D.C. school budget documents last spring was a detail that many parents didn’t notice until last week, when their children headed back to class and discovered that recess had been cut to 15 minutes a day.
The recess change at some of the city’s traditional elementary schools prompted an immediate protest from parents, who argued that children need more exercise to be healthy and focused in class.
That backlash spurred officials to issue guidance for schools, raising the minimum to 20 minutes and emphasizing that principals may add more time if they wish. But parents say 20 minutes is still too little, given the time it takes kids to travel to and from the playground.
“They’re kids. They need time to recharge their batteries and get their wiggles out,” said Becky Levin, a parent of a 6-year-old at Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan. “This just doesn’t really seem to make sense on any level.”
Across the country, recess has become one flash point in a debate about whether schools — under pressure to demonstrate gains on math and reading tests in the era of the No Child Left Behind law — are siphoning too much time from art, civics education, play and other important pursuits.
Recess advocates point to research showing that physical activity can have a positive impact on student achievement and emotional well-being, and is a key to addressing the epidemic of childhood obesity.
Approaches to recess vary across the Washington region. Montgomery County schools do not have a minimum requirement, but elementary schools tend to offer a half-hour recess, officials said. Loudoun County expects schools to offer 15 minutes daily.
Fairfax County also has no policy but recommends 20 minutes per day. And Arlington County schools require between 100 and 125 minutes per week — between 20 and 25 minutes per day — for children in grades one through five. Recess for kindergartners is a few minutes longer.
Recess time varies in the District. Some schools saw a reduction this year as Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson implemented new requirements meant to ensure that all elementary students get a minimum amount of time in each subject each day: two hours of literacy, 90 minutes of math, and 45 minutes of science or social studies. An additional 45 minutes is required for an elective, such as art, music or physical education.
Henderson’s new requirements also included a minimum of 15 minutes for recess — five minutes less than the minimum specified in the school system’s wellness policy.
When parents raised questions about the discrepancy last week, officials said they would clarify for principals that the minimum expectation is 20 minutes.
“DCPS believes strongly that along with strong academics, students need access to physical activity, before, during and after school,” D.C. schools spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz said in an e-mail.
Under the new requirements, schools have 45 flexible minutes they may use for whatever they deem most important. Some have used it to expand recess past the minimum; others have not.
Modernized facilities greet students on first day of class
The Northwest Current, pg 1
By Elizabeth Weiner
August 28, 2013
After a last-minute rush of construction activity, newly renovated Mann and Hearst elementary schools reopened to about 300 students each Monday morning — part of the latest chapter in the District’s effort to bring dilapidated public schools into the 21st century.
There’s still much work to be done, not only in the renovation, but in promised additions to both schools that have yet to break ground. But teachers, parents and students were clearly pleased by the larger class rooms, bright lighting, interactive white boards and robust air conditioning systems.
“They brought the building to life,” Hearst principal Deborah Bergeron said of the restored brick schoolhouse on 37th Street, pointing out a refinished wooden fireplace in one classroom and gleaming marble floors, all dating to 1928. “They just buffed them,” she said. “They’re beautiful.”
Mann and Hearst join seven other elementary schools modernized this year as part of a multibillion-dollar school modernization drive that started in 2007. Powell and Shepherd elementary schools in Ward 4 are also in the latest batch, which includes a totally new Dunbar High in Ward 5 and a renovated Cardozo Education Campus in Ward 1.
Mayor Vincent Gray touted the latest accomplishments of the modernization effort in his radio address Sunday, saying that “state-of-the-art” physical facilities are an intrinsic part of the school reforms instituted by his predecessor, Adrian Fenty. After decades of neglect, “beautiful and inspiring spaces ... reflect values that we, as a community, place on our children’s future,” Gray said.
But the effort has not been without stumbling blocks and controversy. Modernizations at both Mann and Hearst were complicated by design disputes with nearby residents, as well as uncertainty about the funding for additions needed to serve growing enrollment.
Both sites now boast big temporary trailers, providing needed classroom and accessory space. Although funding — $13.5 million more for Hearst, $22 million for Mann — was proposed by Gray and approved by the D.C. Council last spring, Department of General Services officials say they’re still not sure when construction of permanent new wings will begin.
Hearst is now at 152 percent of capacity, and Mann at 136 percent, according to Ward 3 D.C. Council member Mary Cheh’s office, making the addition of permanent new wings all the more urgent. David Dickinson, a Hearst parent and member of its Local School Advisory Team, said he’s hoping the new construction will begin soon.
“They’re not taking down the [construction] fences, and that’s a good sign,” he said
See link above for full article.