FOCUS DC News Wire 9/5/2013

The District has allocated $2.8 million to help city high schools plan for nine new “career academies” meant to help students gain the skills they will need to enter the workforce after graduation, Mayor Vincent C. Gray announced Wednesday.

 

City officials hope to open the academies to students in the fall of 2014. They will offer internships and training in one of three career tracks: hospitality, engineering and information technology. All three are areas in which the District needs workers, officials said.

 

“Our goal is to be able to get people to work and reduce our unemployment levels over time,” said Gray (D), speaking to a crowd of high school principals and other D.C. education officials at Cardozo Education Campus, one of the grant recipients.

 

Like many D.C. high schools, Cardozo offers some career and technical education through academies. But there has been a broad call to beef up such training to ensure that students can leave high school ready to work.

 

A 2012 law required the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education to convene a task force dedicated to reimagining the city’s vocational education. The career academy planning grants emerged from that task force.

 

Most of the money will go to eight schools — six traditional and two charter — to each hire at least two administrators, tasked this school year with developing and planning for the academy. Each academy will also receive $85,000 for staff training and marketing to students.

 

About $239,000 will go to the National Academy Foundation — which helps schools across the country establish career academies — to provide D.C. schools with technical assistance.

 

The funds are good through fiscal 2014, and future funding will depend on annual budget cycles.

 

The other grant recipients include Columbia Heights Education Campus, Dunbar High, Phelps ACE, Wilson High and McKinley Technology High, which won grants for two academies. The two charter recipients are Friendship Collegiate Academy and Friendship Tech Prep.

 

Donald Hense, chief executive of the Friendship school network, welcomed the initiative as “a sign of a more serious focus on things that are important to careers in Washington.”

 

D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), who has been Education Committee chairman since January, is pushing a bill to increase per-pupil funding for students enrolled in certified vocational education programs. Catania called the career academy initiative “anemic” compared with the number of young people who have either dropped out of high school or are unemployed.

 

“If this city can find $150 million to build a soccer stadium, we can certainly find money to make a commensurate investment in our young people,” Catania said, criticizing Gray for not moving to improve career education until the third year of his term.

 

“Mr. Catania has been a council member for 15 years. Where has he been on education?” Gray spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said, describing the academies as “a small component of a much larger system” of career education opportunities. Ribeiro called Catania’s criticism “artificial controversy.”

D.C. Mayor Gray announced yesterday the awarding of $2.8 million to eight D.C. schools to support vocational training in the areas of hospitality, engineering, and information technology, according to the Washington Post's Emma Brown. The funding will create academies at the Cardozo Education Campus, the Columbia Heights Education Campus, Dunbar High School, Phelps Architecture, Construction, and Engineering High School, Wilson High School, and McKinley Technology High School.

Friendship Collegiate Academy and Friendship Tech Prep were the only charter schools to be provided with the grants. Ms. Brown reports that Friendship CEO and Chairman Donald Hense was extremely satisfied to be one of the recipients. She writes,

 

"Donald Hense, chief executive of the Friendship school network, welcomed the initiative as 'a sign of a more serious focus on things that are important to careers in Washington.'"

 

The Washington Post reporter goes on to explain that about $239,000 of the money will go to the National Academy Foundation, which is a national organization that aids schools in setting up vocational training. Ms. Brown states that the grants came out of 2012 legislation calling for the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education to create a task force focused on improving adult job training. The forming of academies was a recommendation of the group.

 

Left out of the award was Carlos Rosario PCS, Booker T. Washington PCS, Hospitality High PCS, Maya Angelou PCS, and the new Academy of Hope PCS which already provide vocational education. There may be more.

 

Instead of the Mayor trying to pick winners and losers I would greatly prefer that he allocate all school funding through the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, eliminate the wide inequality in revenue between the charters and DCPS, and allow each school to decide on their own how to spend their money. This is called justice.

For most students and their parents, the first day back to school is always an exciting time.

 

But for many students, opening day on Aug. 26 at several District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) also meant an additional hour of learning.

 

“It came as a surprise when I took my grandchild to Simon Elementary on the first day, to learn that the day was being extended,” said Southeast resident Angie Johnson. “They were handing out a paper with the new school hours and when I asked my daughter about it, she didn’t recall being previously notified,” Johnson said. “I’m not [necessarily] for or against the extra hour, but I understand it will replace the before- and after-school activities that [parents] usually [have] to pay for.”

 

According to a statement issued by DCPS, nine schools will participate in the extended-school day program, which stems from the success of the program that was launched last year. “Expanding the school day allows schools to engage in more time on tasks, and gives teachers more time to teach,” said DCPS spokesperson Melissa Salmanowitz. She added that sufficient notice had been given to parents regarding the new school day hours for participating schools which begins at 8:45 a.m. and ends at 4:45 p.m.

 

“[We notified them] in a variety of ways, [such as] through end-of-year flyers, PTA meetings, flyers posted in [school] offices, [and in notifications] at the time of enrollment and registration. [Parents also received notification via] robo-calls,” Salmanowitz said

 

In addition to Simon, this year’s participating buildings are C.W. Harris, Garfield, Nalle, and Orr elementary schools in Southeast; Noyes in Northeast; Kelly Miller and Johnson middle schools in Southeast; and Dunbar Senior High School in Northwest.

 

Chancellor Kaya Henderson acknowledged earlier that her decision to add more schools to this year’s extended-day roster depended on accessing funds and negotiating with Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU) officials.

 

“In [April] 2012, Chancellor Henderson created the ‘Proving What's Possible’ program [gleaned from the DCPS budget] and identified $10 million for schools to apply for a grant to innovate around time, talent and technology,” said Salmanowitz. “Several schools chose to extend their school day using these funds and were very successful.”

 

Seven of the eight schools that tested the extra hour during the 2012-13 term at a combined cost of $300,000, showed significant improvement on standardized tests.

 

For example, while students at C.W. Harris in Ward 7 posted significant gains among standardized test scores released in July – with math proficiency up to 11.9 percent and reading proficiency of 13.1 percent, students at Malcolm X Elementary School in Ward 8 achieved 13.1 percent in math and 20.2 percent in reading.

 

Overall, the “Proving What’s Possible” initiative includes a set of goals to be accomplished by the debut of the 2016-17 school term – in accordance with Henderson’s five-year reformation plan.

 

The goals include getting at least 70 percent of students proficient in reading and math and doubling the number of students with high test scores. In addition, the District’s 40 lowest-performing schools will have increased proficiency by 40 percent, at least 75 percent of first-time freshmen will have graduated on time – and more importantly, DCPS will have significantly increased its enrollment.