- More details on three charter-school chains seeking approval to operate in the District [Community Academy PCS mentioned]
- To quell D.C. truancy: It's the parents, stupid
- Henderson's plan to shutter schools ignites fury
- Why private school vouchers aren't enough
More details on three charter-school chains seeking approval to operate in the District [Community Academy PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
November 20, 2012
Three experienced charter-school operators have applied to set up shop in the District, eventually enrolling more than 6,000 kids at 10 separate campuses.
Meanwhile, the city’s school system prepares to shutter 20 under-enrolled buildings. And lots of people are wondering what all that means for the future balance of traditional public schools and public charters in the nation’s capital.
Here are more details on the three new charter applications, all of which offer some combination of online learning and face-to-face instruction. The D.C. Public Charter School Board will take public comment on the proposals in January and will vote to approve or deny the applications in February.
1. Rocketship Education, a nonprofit operator based in California, wants to open eight elementary school campuses serving 5,040 kids in Wards 7 and 8.
Rocketship has seven schools in San Jose, Calif. As my colleague Lyndsey Layton reported earlier this year,
its students — — overwhelmingly poor, Latino and Spanish-speaking — have outscored the county and state average. In some cases, the “Rocketeers” have performed as well as students in nearby Palo Alto public schools, where Stanford University professors send their children.
But there are a lot of questions about whether Rocketship’s model will work in a city with very different demographics. And, as Layton reported, “Critics, including several school superintendents in the San Francisco Bay Area, say Rocketship uses a low-cost ‘industrial’ model that depends on inexperienced teachers and computers.”
The education world has been buzzing about Rocketship for some time. The operator has said that cities who want Rocketship’s services must promise it at least eight schools.
The executive summary of Rocketship’s D.C. charter application is here.
2. K12 Inc., a for-profit company based in Virginia, wants to open a high school serving 600 students in Northeast or Northwest Washington.
K12 operates the nation’s largest network of full-time virtual schools, which have drawn intense scrutiny over the last year for high student turnover, poor achievement on standardized tests and other issues. (See here, here , here and here.)
The company also operates several blended-learning campuses across the country, where students go to a brick-and-mortar school but do much of their work online. The proposed D.C. Flex Academy would mirror that model.
In Washington, K12 already manages the online campus of the Community Academy Public Charter School, which enrolls 95 K-8 students who learn at home via computer. The company also partners with George Washington University to run a private online high school.
The executive summary of K12’s charter application is here.
3. Nexus Academy — which would be run by Connections Education, a subsidiary of the for-profit publishing giant Pearson — wants to open a high school serving 550 kids in Ward 2.
Connections is also a major operator of full-time virtual schools across the country, but like the other two proposed charters, this one would blend online and in-person learning.
There are already Nexus schools in Michigan and Ohio. The Washington school would locate in an office building or other non-traditional site, according to the proposal, and would offer a personal trainer “who runs the on-site fitness center and develops individual student plans for fitness and lifelong wellness.”
The executive summary of Nexus Academy’s D.C. charter application is here.
To quell D.C. truancy: It's the parents, stupid
The Washington Examiner
By Harry Jaffe
November 20, 2012
The triangle park at the intersection of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Avenues in Congress Heights is a cool place to hang out. At 1 p.m. on any given day you can find gaggles of high school students there. It might be the shank of the school day, and these teenagers should be soaking up lessons on Algebra or the Periodic Table or the Emancipation Proclamation. But they are on the loose, free of classroom constraints. Count them among the hordes of truants roaming D.C.'s streets, headed for a life of failure rather than one of learning and success.
Upwards of 40 percent of the students at nearby Ballou and Anacostia High Schools missed at least a month of class last year, according to D.C. public schools. These are the semistudents who are destined for dependency at best, jail at worst.
"We are in a crisis situation," Chancellor Kaya Henderson told the city council earlier this month.
Not so. A crisis refers to something sudden or unusual. Truancy in the District is endemic, historic, business as usual.
"If there is a true desire to conquer it," Superior Court Chief Judge Lee Satterfield wrote last week, "let's not act as though it just appeared."
Satterfield advocates the city recommit to a Truancy Task Force that brings judges and politicians to schools to meet with students and parents. Swell. I advocate pain for parents.
In 1995, the Washington State Legislature passed the "Becca Bill." It was named after a high school student who posed as a parent and called school to excuse herself from class. She would die as a result of her activities out of school. Her parents helped pass a law to make sure another child didn't suffer the same fate.
The Becca Bill requires that schools inform parents of unexcused absences, that parents show up at school to discuss truancy, that schools can take legal action after five absences in one month. The schools must file charges after seven unexcused absences in a month or 10 a school year. It provides for jail time for the student, community service or fines for parents.
A 2002 study by the Washington State Policy Institute concluded the Becca Bill was "helping to keep youth in high school."
Why not make D.C. parents or guardians pay if their kids skip school? A West Virginia legislator proposed that parents of truants get a warning after five absences and lose their driver's license after 10. Sounds good to me.
There is a truancy law on city books, but it is weak and rarely enforced. The D.C. Compulsory School Attendance Law says neglect charges "may be filed" against parents who "may be" jailed, and students "may be" picked up by police and referred to courts.
A simple change of verbs in the bill from "may be" to "shall be" would put teeth in D.C. truancy laws, force parents to act and put kids back in class.
The park at MLK and Malcolm X Avenues might be empty of kids at midday, but the men for whom the streets were named would be honored.
Why private school vouchers aren't enough
The Washington Post
By Jay Matthews
November 20, 2012
If I were a D.C. parent with little money and a child in a bad public school, I would happily accept a taxpayer-supported voucher to send my kid to a private school. But I still don’t think voucher programs are a good use of education dollars, particularly after reading a startling story on The Washington Post’s front page on Sunday.
My colleagues Lyndsey Layton and Emma Brown revealed that the $133 million appropriated for vouchers in the District since 2004 have gone to private schools with no requirements to report publicly how well their students are doing. Some of those schools have dubious curriculums and inadequate facilities. At least eight of the 52 schools with voucher students are not accredited.
Take a look at the Academy for Ideal Education in Northeast Washington. Almost all of its students are in the voucher program run by the nonprofit D.C. Children and Youth
Investment Trust Corp. The school’s founder, Paulette Jones-Imaan, believes in learning through music, stretching and meditation, Layton and Brown report.
The Academy for Ideal Education does not have to reveal its results on the nationally standardized test that voucher students are required to take, but I suspect those children are not learning much. I have some experience with the Ideal Academy, a charter high school also founded by Jones-Imaan. In 2009 I wrote about it having some of the lowest achievement rates in the city, which I knew because charters have to report their test scores. The D.C. authorizing board for charters forced it to close. Sadly, no agency has that power over private schools using vouchers.
Apparently there are not even reliable health standards. Layton and Brown visited one school where “the only bathroom . . . had a floor blackened with dirt and a sink coated in grime.”
Ed Davies, interim executive director of the agency running the voucher program, admitted to Layton and Brown that quality control is “a blind spot” because the law has so many holes. The same goes for voucher programs in 14 states. Advocates for parent choice think vouchers are a good way to free educators and parents from oppressive government bureaucrats, but a voucher surge is likely to strangle that tradition of private school independence.
Only 1,584 D.C. students are receiving vouchers, just 2 percent of all publicly funded students in the city. The lack of oversight exposed by Layton and Brown is disturbing, but affects too few students to inspire much action. Imagine what would happen if voucher enrollment grew to match D.C. charter school enrollment, 35,019, or 42 percent of all publicly funded students.
A voucher program that size would cost about $450 million a year in tax dollars. At that price, the current lack of accreditation and accountability would no longer be tolerated. Private schools would have to accept severe regulation if they wanted voucher funds. Good-bye to their flexibility and autonomy. The voucher movement would die from its own success.
The temptations of voucher cash are great. The D.C. program pays $8,000 a year for every elementary school student and $12,000 for each high schooler. Rent an old house or storefront, lure parents with promises of a free private school education, and watch the money rolling in. Teachers don’t need credentials, just four-year college degrees. Schools don’t have to publish their test results, or answer questions from nasty reporters.
The better alternatives for those of us who want more parent choice are innovative regular public schools and independent charter schools. They are regulated, accredited and accountable. They have to report their test scores. They can be closed if they don’t work.
Vouchers sound good to the relatively few families who get them, but they will never be able to help more than a tiny fraction of the students who need better schools.
Henderson’s plan to shutter schools ignites fury
The Washington Informer
November 20, 2012
By Dorothy Rowley
An irate D.C. School Board member echoed the sentiments of many parents, educational and community leaders when she implored District officials to halt D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson's controversial proposal to shutter 20 schools across the city by the end of 2013.
During the sometimes testy, standing-room only hearing on Thursday, Nov. 15, that attracted more than 300 people to the John A. Wilson Building in Northwest, Dorothy Douglas made it clear to Henderson and the 13-member D.C. Council that enough is enough.
"Our kids are not cattle, so stop moving them from school to school," said the visibly upset Douglas, who referred to the two dozen closings that took place in 2008 under the strong-arm regime of former chancellor, Michelle. Rhee. "There's no need to move our kids from one established community to another. DCPS has enough seats for [its] students," said Douglas, 73, of the plan to merge under-enrolled buildings with charter schools. "It's not fair to blame these 20 schools for all the troubles in the system. . . I don't believe this is the legacy of Mayor Gray and the [D.C.] Council," the Ward 7 School Board member said.
Most of the schools slated for closure and consolidation have been designated as low-performing – and are located in wards 5, 7 and 8 where many students are already enrolled in charter schools. To that end, in accordance with the recommendations submitted earlier this year to District officials by the Chicago-based Illinois Facility Fund, under-utilized and low-performing District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) facilities would be better suited merging with high-performing charter schools.
Under Henderson's plan, which would affect 3,000 students and have to be signed-off by Mayor Vincent C. Gray, schools like Garrison Elementary School in Ward 1 – which enrolls only 94 students, and Spingarn High School in Ward 5 – which could become a garage for the streetcar trolleys coming to that area – could be re-opened with anticipated population growth, or restructured for other educational purposes. Henderson, 42, also noted that in some instances, empty school buildings could be leased to outside interests or organizations.
"With the resources that I have, I'm trying to reorganize so I can spend money on those programs that are right," said Henderson, who like most of the council members, believes too many DCPS buildings have been left languishing for years with enrollments that have steadily decreased.
"I've looked at enrollment and [other] options surrounding school buildings, and there's an opportunity for us to come together to create the right conditions," Henderson said, adding that in order to improve the situation, it's imperative the system downsizes where necessary to ensure quality academics and related resources for all 45,000 DCPS students. "We have to think about where our investment is going," Henderson said, "when DCPS continues to support schools with fading enrollments."
One such school is Francis-Stevens Education Center in Northwest. With just 55 percent of the building in use, Henderson said it's being subsidized more than any other DCPS facility.
But while Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham said Henderson's proposal sends the message that DCPS students are being subtly led to enroll at charter schools, Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry insisted that her administration needs to step up its pace and increase "quality seats" for all the city's public school students.
"Many parents in D.C. can't find quality seats in the schools, unless they go out of boundaries," said Barry, 76. On the other hand, "as long as students are allowed to attend quality schools outside of their [neighborhoods] there will be no quality schools in Ward 8," the veteran council member said.
Retired District Superior Court Judge Mary Terrell, 68, attended the hearing. She said that she was concerned about how DCPS resources are distributed. She also stressed the importance of parents advocating on behalf of their children's schools.
"A lot of our schools are very hostile to parents and consequently, they don't [confront] issues on their children's behalf," Terrell said. "As one who has been a judge and a prosecutor, educator and was the founder of the Dix Street Academy for dropout kids, I have seen the whole spectrum of what we face. . . We have to advocate for strong schools and for accessible education. If we abandon public schools, that will doom us."
Ryan Williams and Walid Bouachi, both 17-year-old seniors who attend Woodrow Wilson High School in Northwest, said although they won't be impacted by the chancellor's proposal, they have friends who will.
"They're upset and don't want to get uprooted because some of the schools have gangs, and they don't want to have to deal with any violence," said Ryan.
Walid said he was concerned about closing Garrison which he once attended.
"They're supposed to be feeding the school into Francis-Stevens, but I don't think it's going to work out," Walid said. "They don't need to close Garrison because it's a completely turned around school that needs to remain open for kids living close to it."
Council member Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) shed light on the vast amount of growth and development in her community. "We want to have schools in the community to accommodate that growth," said Alexander, 51.
Ward 5 Council member Kenyan McDuffie, 37, said that with several schools in his ward having already been closed, it's become even more critical for parents to maintain trust in DCPS.
"This is tough medicine for a sick patient," McDuffie said of Henderson's proposal. "There were many promises made in 2008 that did not come to fruition. Once parents lose trust, it's very hard to restore."
Joseph Mathews, 38, was among a strong contingent of parents from Ward 5 that stood by, cheering McDuffie on.
"My concern is that I've seen a pattern of an attack on public schools where they've denied students resources and then punished them because they don't have the resources," Mathews said. "For example, last year at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School [in Northeast] – which is on the [closure] list – we had 130 students and now we have 160. There's currently a lot of economic development going on around our area, so if you look at the numbers, you have to ask why close the school now," said Mathews.
"Is there a social demographic that they don't want in the community," he asked. "I think they've already promised the new population that's moving in that there's going to be a school for their children. I think those parents already know – and are just waiting for our poor black kids to be pushed out of their neighborhood schools."