- Rocketship encounters opposition; chosen location is steps from a halfway house [Rocketship PCS mentioned]
- Two charter applicants vie to take over Options PCS [Options PCS mentioned]
- School standardized testing is under growing attack, leaders pledge changes
Rocketship encounters opposition; chosen location is steps from a halfway house [Rocketship PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By By Michael Alison Chandler
October 15, 2014
Rocketship, a highly regarded California-based charter school operator, is encountering community opposition as it moves to open its first school in the District.
Opponents say that the school’s chosen location in Anacostia is unsafe — across the street from a halfway house for returning felons — and that the charter operator did not make sufficient efforts to reach out to its new neighbors. In letters to the D.C. Public Charter School Board, 11 people cited safety and other concerns.
The board on Tuesday night delayed a vote to give full authorization to Rocketship, providing the school time to address the concerns.
“As you may or may not know, the proposed location of Rocketship is uncomfortably close to Hope Village, one of the largest halfway houses on the east coast of the United States,” wrote Michael Bell, a senior pastor at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. “We value our children and want them to know that when making decisions on their behalf we consider the environment and the community.”
Bell said in his letter that the school had not reached out to key people in the community, and he asked whether the charter operator’s proposed location, within walking distance of three D.C. public schools, would “force unnecessary competition between traditional public schools and charter schools.”
One of the traditional public schools, Stanton Elementary, is undergoing what is considered one of the most promising school-improvement efforts in the city. It is also seen as a model of collaboration. The traditional school partnered with a Philadelphia-based charter school operator, Scholar Academies.
Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8B echoed these concerns in a resolution expressing its disapproval of the location. However, Commissioner Anthony Lorenzo Green did not sign on to the resolution. Green said that he initially had reservations about the location but that he now believes the school and halfway house can coexist.
Rocketship, which opened its first school in San Jose in 2007, quickly gained national attention with its low-cost, blended-learning approach and the strong test scores achieved by poor and minority students. Its model has inspired excitement among philanthropists, although its heavy reliance on technology is a matter of controversy.
The charter school board granted the operator conditional approval in 2013 through an expedited process. In July, after a lengthy search, Rocketship announced that it had found a location at 2335 Raynolds Pl. SE, a three-acre wooded parcel on an Anacostia hilltop facing a public housing development.
Katy Venskus, vice president for growth, development and policy at Rocketship, addressed the board Tuesday night. She said Rocketship was not initially made aware that the location was near a halfway house.
She said an outside developer, Turner Agassi, had done all the work scouting locations. As is the case for many charter operators seeking to open in the District, it was difficult to find property, and Rocketship was excited about the location in many ways.
“It’s sort of a unicorn,” she said, because of its size and natural features. “It’s going to allow us to construct a spectacular school facility.”
The vision is for a 54,000-square-foot, two-story building with a glass entrance, outdoor terrace, multiple play areas and nature trails. It is scheduled to open in time for the 2015-2016 school year.
That scheduled opening day could be in jeopardy if the charter’s final approval is delayed, Venskus said. She acknowledged that Rocketship’s due diligence regarding the property should have been better. The nonprofit had hired someone locally, who spent months reaching out to people in the community. But he left his job over the summer, and some time passed before a replacement was hired.
She said Rocketship is working out the details of a memorandum of understanding with Hope Village so that the two institutions, which share a mission of helping underserved communities, can find ways to work together.
She also said the school is developing a safety plan. “It will include fences and cameras and on-site security and all of those things,” she said.
The board asked to see that plan and letters of support before it votes on the charter at its next meeting, scheduled for Nov. 3.
“While we certainly retain our enthusiasm for the forthcoming school. . . . I want to underline how seriously we take the types of concerns we are hearing,” said board member Darren Woodruff.
Two charter applicants vie to take over Options PCS [Options PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
October 16, 2014
Monday evening the D.C. Public Charter School Board heard from two applicants wanting to create new charter schools for the purpose of replacing the management of Options PCS. The superior of the presentations came from the Phillips group. Phillips already runs four schools in the Washington metropolitan area, two of these specialize in teaching special education students. If you want to see a truly comprehensive bid to start a charter school in the nation's capital take a look at the document Phillips created in support of creating their institution. Simply reading the research these individuals did around the current student body of Options will give you a hint of the seriousness of this proposal.
Phillips has a 47 year history of serving this challenging group of scholars. The U.S. Department of Education has bestowed on Phillips two Blue Ribbon Secondary School Awards. In addition, in 2010 the Washington Post gave the organization an award for excellence in non-profit management.
The school's academic program is centered on the use of Universal Design for Learning and individualized instruction. Here is where the application ran into trouble. Apparently, several of the charter board members and staff toured one of the Phillips facilities and it seems the visit did not go well. From the comments coming from the stage the impression the visitors received made it appear that the instruction was standardized and not targeted to the needs of the particular student. However, the representatives from Phillips did an adequate job alleviating these concerns and their comprehensive answers to later questions gave me the feeling that they rose above the initial hesitations expressed by those evaluating the application.
The other entity wanting to create a new charter is Kingsman Academy. This group is composed of Option's current leadership team. It was great to hear once again, as I've reported here, about the astounding work that has been done in an exceedingly short period to straighten out the severely serious problems at the school. Much of that effort is summarized in the executive summary of their application:
"[T]he school leadership team has embraced key turnaround principles by revising the staffing plan, applying effective staffing and instructional practices, focusing on the effective use of time, implementing intensive interventions and supports, using data to guide decision-making, improving school climate and culture, and engaging families and the Options PCS community."
The problem with this proposal involved the amount of student academic progress the team estimates will be accomplished each term which below average for the charter movement as a whole and under the actual track record of Options. This is not the way to seek approval in a movement focused like a laser beam on quality. Look for Phillips PCS to be given the green light to open.
School standardized testing is under growing attack, leaders pledge changes
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
October 15, 2014
The standardized test, a hallmark of the accountability movement that has defined U.S. public education since 2002, is under growing attack from critics who say students from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade are taking too many exams.
Four states have repealed or delayed graduation testing requirements in the past two years. Four others, including Texas — where the idea of using tests to hold schools accountable for educating children first began — have cut the number of required exams or reduced their consequences. Boycotts, such as when 60,000 students refused to take exams this year in New York, are on the upswing.
Former president Bill Clinton said two weeks ago that students don’t need to be tested annually, as required by federal law. “I think doing one [test] in elementary school, one in the end of middle school and one before the end of high school is quite enough if you do it right,” he said.
On Wednesday, a group representing top education officials in every state and the leaders of major urban school districts acknowledged the pushback and promised to evaluate the tests they give and to ditch those that are of poor quality or redundant.
“Testing is an important part of education, and of life,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, which represents 67 urban school systems. “But it’s time that we step back and see if the tail is wagging the dog.”
The urban school leaders were joined in their effort by the Council of Chief State School Officers, which represents education commissioners in every state.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who said in August that testing was “sucking the oxygen out of the room” and promised to do something about it, applauded the education leaders. President Obama on Wednesday praised the efforts of the education leaders and said his administration would help school districts promote “the smarter use of tests that measure real student learning.”
Robert Schaeffer of the nonprofit National Center for Fair & Open Testing said the move was too timid.
“It’s baby steps,” he said. “We’ve had 12 years of this high-stakes testing, and the evidence on the ground is that it’s not working. And the public is getting angrier and angrier.”
Teachers have always administered tests. But exams became a federal mandate in 2002 under the No Child Left Behind Act, which required states to annually test every student in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. States also must give three separate science tests. The data must be reported publicly and broken down by subcategories such as race, income, English language status and disability.
The data revealed jarring differences in student achievement between poor and affluent students and among black, Hispanic and white students — variations hidden when schools did not test every child, or when they reported average school test scores.
No Child Left Behind also ushered in the practice of using test scores to evaluate schools and punish them for meeting student performance goals set by the federal government. Since 2011, the Obama administration has exempted most states from the most draconian aspects of the law but, in exchange, states must use test scores in part to evaluate teachers and decide which ones to keep, reward or fire. Some critics say that has increased the pressure that comes with the testing.
That requirement has become particularly thorny this year as most states migrate to new, more challenging standardized tests aligned with the Common Core State Standards. Both major teachers unions have been pushing for a moratorium on the use of test scores for employment decisions, an idea endorsed by the Gates Foundation.
“The tide on testing is turning,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “But this effort addresses the symptoms, not the root cause, of test fixation. . . . It doesn’t touch No Child Left Behind’s highly consequential testing for every child, every year.”
In addition to the federally required tests, states have layered on more assessments, with many requiring exams such as an exit test to graduate high school. Local school districts and individual schools often administer more tests.
The result is that, on average, students in large urban school districts take 113 standardized tests between pre-K and 12th grade, according to data being collected by the Council of Great City Schools.
Students in 11th grade are tested the most, with as many as 27 days, or 15 percent of the school year, in one district. Students in eighth grade spend an average of five days taking annual exams required by federal law, as well as other state and local tests.
The council has embarked on the first comprehensive analysis of the testing that exists in major urban systems and will make recommendations about ways to lighten the testing burden, Casserly said.
Two bills in the House would get rid of the federal requirement to test annually and instead instruct states to assess students once during a span of several years.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), a former education secretary and the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said through a spokeswoman that he would consider eliminating some annual testing when Congress rewrites No Child Left Behind.
But John White, Louisiana’s superintendent of education and a member of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said annual testing is a civil rights necessity.
“We should always be conscious we still have a country and a society that is rife with injustices,” White said. “We must commit to an annual measurement of our delivery of an education so we can lay bare the honest truth as to whether we’re succeeding in educating every child.”