- HENSE: Charter schools send teens to college [Friendship Collegiate Academy mentioned]
- D.C. Council, community, to discuss future of buildings vacated by school closures
- For low income residents, the District is becoming less accessible
- OP-ED| Measuring quality in D.C.'s school voucher program
HENSE: Charter schools send teens to college [Friendship Collegiate Academy mentioned]
The Washington Times
By Donald L. Hense
November 27, 2012
@Text.rag.dropcap.FG:The share of District of Columbia public high school students who graduate within four years has increased to 56 percent, up 3 points from last year, according to data just released from the District's Office of the State Superintendent of Education.
This more rigorous measure of high school graduation debuted last year. Before that, the District counted only how many 12th-graders graduated in any given year, regardless of their age. Now it follows each incoming eighth-grader through the end of the 12th grade to confirm whether the student graduated on time.
Taking a more thorough approach to ensuring that all of our children graduate from high school is essential for their futures. Urban youths cannot hope to become professional people unless they earn a college degree. Absent a high school diploma, they are unable to take even the first step to college.
Each failure to graduate from high school is a tragedy, both for the individuals who enter the adult world ill-equipped to care for themselves and their families, and for society, which pays a high price for this wasted potential.
High school dropouts aged 25 or older are more than 3 times as likely to be unemployed as college graduates, Department of Labor research reveals.
Adult men who fail to graduate from high school are 19 times more likely to be incarcerated than their college-educated peers, and 12 times more likely to serve time in prison, data from the U.S. Department of Justice and the College Board show.
Graduating urban youths is incredibly important. Friendship Collegiate Academy, one of six public charter school campuses and one of 11 urban campuses run by my organization, is a public charter high school in underserved Northeast Washington. Three in 4 of our students are eligible for federal lunch subsidies -- a similar percentage to other public high schools east of the Anacostia River.
Critically, we have been able to change the trajectory that results in the potential of so many students in the District's underserved neighborhoods being thrown away.
This year, our high school graduation rate is 91 percent -- 35 percentage points higher than the average for the District's traditional public high schools and 14 percentage points higher than the average for D.C. public charter high schools.
Ours is the only District open-enrollment public high school to graduate as high a share of our students with such a high proportion of low-income students. Of the six other public high schools to achieve graduation rates in the 90s, two are academically selective, three are specialist magnet high schools, and one is a public charter school with just 44 percent of its students from low-income families.
In fact, 35 percent of the students who earn a high school diploma in the District's most underserved areas -- Wards 7 and 8 -- receive theirs from Friendship Collegiate Academy despite the fact that there are nine public high schools, traditional and charter, in those wards.
There is no magic formula to keep students on track for high school graduation and college. Still, certain financial, academic and mentoring resources routinely make successful high school and college careers possible for children enrolled at suburban public or private schools. It is essential to our efforts to provide these same resources to urban students who otherwise would not have them. Our charter status enables this.
We pioneered the use of academically rigorous Advanced Placement courses in the District, enabling our students to prepare for success at college and earn college credits in high school, many via our partnership with the University of Maryland.
About 43 percent of black students in the District who took the AP U.S. Government and Politics examination did so at Friendship Collegiate Academy last year. Of those who achieved a passing score, 59 percent were Collegiate students.
While 100 percent of our graduating class is accepted to college, we understand that many offers could not be taken if it weren't for the $38 million Collegiate students have earned in college scholarships in the past four years.
By providing a mixture of the various supports required for any student to be successful, we build tenacity in youngsters who easily could give up or succumb to the streets.
It is often necessary for us to walk the extra mile. That sometimes means addressing deep-rooted emotional difficulties or providing scholarships for student athletes who cannot access college any other way. It means offering internships at our community office for scholars at college who must work during the summer to pay their bills.
We must work every angle to get our children to college.
Donald L. Hense is founder and chairman of Friendship Public Charter School.
D.C. Council, community, to discuss future of buildings vacated by school closures
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
November 27, 2012
Update 4 p.m.: The D.C. Council’s roundtable on vacant school building has been canceled and “may be rescheduled for a later date,” according to an e-mail from a staff member for Council member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4).
Original post: Debate over the District’s plan to close 20 schools continues this week with a series of community meetings and a city council roundtable on what should become of vacant school buildings.
The roundtable was called by Council Member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) and may be particularly interesting for charter schools, developers, community activists and others concerned about the future of school system real estate.
Chancellor Kaya Henderson has said she hopes to keep facilities within the school system’s inventory rather than turning them over to the city.
The roundtable is meant to “review the maintenance of the closed buildings, property management issues related to the planned closures, and the Executive’s plan for surplussing of closed facilities,” according to the hearing notice. The meeting is at 5 p.m.today in Room 500 at the John A. Wilson Building, and Brian Hanlon, the director of the Department of General Services, is scheduled to testify.
Meanwhile, Henderson will be at Savoy Elementary in Ward 8 at 6 p.m. tonight to hear public feedback on her controversial closure plans.
At the same time, activists in Dupont Circle and Foggy Bottom are convening a town hall to rally against the proposed closure of Francis-Stevens Education Campus. And less than two miles away, “Save Garrison” yard signs have sprouted up around Logan Circle, part of a neighborhood campaign to keep Garrison Elementary from being shuttered.
At 6 p.m. Wednesday, Henderson will hold a community meeting at Sousa Middle School in Ward 7, where the local education council has called for a moratorium on all closures; at 6 p.m. Thursday, she’ll be in Ward 5 at Langley Education Campus.
And at 6 p.m. Dec. 5, Henderson will be at the Brightwood Education Campus to meet with residents from wards 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6.
For low income residents, the District is becoming less accessible
The Washington Post
By Courtland Milloy
November 27, 2012
As an increasingly elite D.C. begins walling itself off from the masses, the rough outline of an architecturally restored yet soulless city emerges. Redlined school boundaries around wealthy neighborhoods keep out less-privileged students. Closed streets and parking restrictions make for a “walkable city.” For the low-income resident who must travel longer distances to get to work and stores, a better description would be “trudge town.”
In the new D.C., the rich take a stroll. The poor take a hike.
“Wilson High drawbridge to students east of the park is going up,” read the headline on Ken Archer’s Nov. 9 post on the Greater Greater Washington blog. The park being Rock Creek, that great wall of trees and moat of rocks and running water dividing Northwest Washington — the west side, where Wilson is located, being mostly wealthy and mostly white.
No middle school students from outside the Wilson boundary were accepted this year, raising the specter of a “new line between educational haves and have-nots,” wrote Archer, chief technical officer of a software firm who lives in Georgetown.
You’d hope that striving for the common good would continue through a building boom, that the economic gap among District residents wouldn’t grow so wide that the well-to-do would lose sight of those on the other side.
“What I think is missing is a vision of what we can do to preserve affordable housing, maintain diversity by helping those who are struggling to stay in the city as housing costs go up,” said Ed Lazere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute. “The number of families with children in the city is going down, and they are largely African American families, low- and moderate-income families who aren’t just moving to other parts of town but actually leaving the city.”
This month, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) unveiled an economic development plan that he says will create 100,000 jobs and generate $1 billion in tax revenue over the next five years. But who will get those jobs? D.C. residents hold less than 30 percent of the jobs in the city, and readiness programs tried so far just haven’t worked.
But what if the city got as serious about creating jobs as making bike lanes? A study by Lazere found that if every adult living below the poverty line who was able to work had a $15-an-hour full-time job, then 80 percent of poor families in the city would be lifted 150 percent above the poverty line.
Jim Dickerson, founder of Manna and an advocate for social justice in the city for more than 40 years, said: “The bottom line is building community, getting people in Ward 3 (west of the park) to see that their future is tied to wards 7 and 8 (east of the park) and that’s a real hard connection for some to make.”
Until there is a crime, of course, such as the recent fatal stabbing at the Woodley Park Metro, which serves the National Zoo and the upscale Adams Morgan neighborhood. With the suspects believed to have come from east of the Anacostia River, some are calling for even more separation — with a blue line of police patrols as the divide.
The fight brewing over school boundaries highlights a more systemic problem.
“If there is one system that serves rich neighborhoods, and another serving the poor neighborhoods, would well-meaning parents in the wealthier and more politically powerful neighborhoods lobby for more funding for traditional public education and inadvertently disadvantage less affluent areas?” Archer wrote on the Greater Greater Washington blog. “Or would politicians from the poorer wards of the District end up opposing DCPS’s needs? A battle for resources between the haves and have-nots is not what we need, regardless of how it turns out.”
District officials recently announced a plan to promote bicycling and mass transit, with changes that could affect 10,000 parking spaces. How about making the creation of 10,000 decent-paying jobs for working-poor residents more of a priority?
“That is the sign of the future. That discourages car ownership,” said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), referring to the aggressive campaign against parking spaces.
Meanwhile, the basic rush-hour fare for a Metro bus and rail ride is up to $1.60 and $2.10, respectively, making public transportation more expensive than some car trips.
“Stay out.” That’s what the sign of the future really says.
OP-ED| Measuring quality in D.C.'s school voucher program
The Washington Post
By Kenneth Cambell
November 27, 2012
On Saturday, November 17, 2012 the Washington Post published an article entitled “Quality controls lacking for D.C. schools accepting federal vouchers”. As the only national Black organization focused on on empowering low-income and working-class Black parents to choose where and how their children are educated, the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) has been and continues to be a strong supporter of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program.
While the story pointed to some concerns with the program that are worth raising, we have seen some great results for students enrolled in the program and we believe that working to ensure greater quality can move this program from good to great.
Nationwide many of our most vulnerable children are consigned to failing schools by virtue of their zip codes, and they lack the financial means and support to opt out. The implications are staggering, including high rates of joblessness, government dependency, crime, and incarceration in the Black community. The achievement gap will continue to divide the haves and have-nots in America until we strengthen the quality of our schools and make high-quality educational options accessible to those in need.
We know that parental options work. In fact, participants in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program graduate from high school at a rate of 91 percent, according to the 2010 study from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. That’s 30 percent more than DC public schools. (Editor’s Note: This graduation rate is based on information reported by parents and not verified by schools, and every school sets its own graduation requirements). In addition, programs like the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program requires every voucher student to take a national norm-referenced standardized test and report whether they are accredited or not.
While BAEO does believe scholarship program students should be assessed using the same set of assessments given to students in traditional public schools, we also strongly believe, however, that test scores should not be the only measures used in assessing quality.
The goal of a scholarship program should be two-fold: 1) to allow low-income and working class families with the resources to access an education that otherwise would be unobtainable, and 2) that participating schools actually deliver quality education.
The Value of Parent Choice Programs
To this end, BAEO believes that affording parents the right to choose and giving them the resources to opt out of schools that do not work for their children is essential to the effort to reform education in America. A strong parent choice program affords low-income and working-class families access to quality through:
- Sound regulation that ensures that learning environments are safe, orderly, and conducive to high-quality teaching and learning, while refraining from onerous mandates and involvement in day-to-day operations
- An assessment system that considers multiple indicators of student performance and school quality (including not only state tests, but also other quality measures, such as ACT or SAT scores for high school students, graduation rates, and the extent to which schools prepare students for success in college and careers)
- Public reporting of assessment results to ensure transparency
- Strict criteria for participating schools and sanctions for under-performance (i.e., a participating private school that repeatedly fails to achieve minimum performance standards at some point should be barred from accepting new scholarship students) to ensure accountability
- Structured plans for the prudent replication of successful programs to increase the number of high-quality options available in accordance with the need and demand for such alternatives
We encourage parents to become savvy educational consumers who will look for measurable indicators on school quality.
Through parent choice programs, policymakers can open doors that have previously been locked to families on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. But establishing these programs is not enough. There must also be adequate funding and quality to give our neediest children the opportunity to succeed.
Appropriately targeted programs enable our most vulnerable students to escape under-performing schools, changing the trajectory of their lives and gives them a real chance for a bright future.
Campbell is the president of The Black Alliance for Educational Options.