- D.C. last in nation in rate of high school graduation
- BAEO defends D.C. voucher program
- Don't make parents pay when schoolkids play hookey
D.C. last in nation in rate of high school graduation
The Washington Times
By Meredith Somers
November 29, 2012
The nation’s capital had the worst four-year high school graduation rate in the country in 2010-2011, a finding that suggests the city has more work to do to reform its historically troubled school system.
Touting the use of a “common, rigorous measure” across the states for the first time, the U.S. Department of Education said in a report released this week that the District had a graduation rate of 59 percent, placing it behind Nevada’s rate of 62 percent. Iowa fared the best, with an 88 percent graduation rate. Maryland reported an 83 percent graduation rate, while Virginia had an 82 percent rate.
States in the top half of the report posted rates between 80 percent and 88 percent, while 25 other states reported between the District’s rate of 59 percent and the 78 percent rate shared by Arizona, Delaware and North Carolina.
The annual graduation measurement is significant this year because for the first time federal officials based the figures off the number of students who graduate in four years rather than allowing the states to define their own rates. Twenty-six states reported lower graduation rates, while 24 states either increased their rates or remained the same.
“By using this new measure, states will be more honest in holding schools accountable and ensuring that students succeed,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said.
Under the new measure, the District’s graduation rate decreased from 76 percent in 2009-2010.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, a Democrat, noted the difficulty of comparing the District’s strictly urban school district to geographically diverse systems in states across the country.
“We consider ourselves a state and we’re treated as a state in many regards. At the same time to make a comparison between us and let’s say, Wyoming — which is completely rural — one has to be mindful that that comparison will not hold all the time.”
Traditional public schools and charter schools in the District have shown steady, yet slow, gains in annual standardized exams. Yet fewer than half of the city’s public school students were proficient in math and reading, according to the 2012 results of its D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System.
The education department’s figures arrive as the D.C. Public Schools officials and city lawmakers mull a controversial proposal to close nearly 20 schools across the District, including one high school. By consolidating students into fewer buildings, the system can devote its resources to educational programs, according to D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson.
Ms. Henderson is shepherding the system through its reforms in the wake of former chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, a nationally renowned and polarizing figure who charged forward with sweeping reforms — including school closures and firings of principals and teachers — during her tenure under then- Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.
“The bottom line, though, is that the graduation rates are poor,” Mr. Mendelson said. “The goal should be that every kid who enters the ninth grade will graduate from high school.”
Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy for the Brookings Institution, said while it was good that states are being required to report a uniform graduation rate, “it seems to me to have some obvious flaws.”
His skepticism, Mr. Whitehurst said, lies in the comparison between numbers the Department of Education presented and figures used by the National Center for Education Statistics, which on its website calls itself the “primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.”
“It’s supposed to be measuring the same thing, but there’s a big difference in the two sets of numbers,” Mr. Whitehurst said. “That raises issues of which numbers should we be believing.”
See full article at link above
BAEO defends D.C. voucher program
The Examiner
By Mary Lerner
November 30, 2012
Regarding Colbert I. King’s Nov. 24 op-ed column, “We’re failing D.C.’s youth”:
Children may miss school if they are hungry or don’t have warm clothes to wear — issues that wouldn’t be helped by Mr. King’s proposals of parental fines and incarceration for habitual truancy. Such actions would only diminish a family’s future. And youths who are “grade levels behind” may see only humiliation and frustration in attending school, rather than hope and opportunity.
It is a cop-out to blame truancy on parents, the vast majority of whom desperately want their kids to succeed. Truancy arises from the failure of adults in control of District schools and budgets to create a quality educational system for all of D.C.’s youth.
My Puerto Rican father dropped out of high school due to language barriers, but that was in a different era — one in which you could own a house and raise a family on a factory worker’s income. That era evaporated even during his lifetime.
Mr. King was correct in saying that the earnings trajectory for those without a high school degree is dismal. But doling out harsh punishment for truant students to their parents is ineffective at best. At worst, it is a cover for institutional negligence.
Tracy Velázquez, Washington
The writer is executive director of the Justice Policy Institute.
Don't make parents pay when schoolkids play hookey
The Washington Post
By Tracey Velázquez
November 29, 2012
"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."
I continue to be amazed at the absolute silence generated by the original Washington Post story. Could it be that with the four year high school graduation rate for traditional schools at 59 percent (the lowest in the nation) and charters at 76.7 percent, the 91 percent recorded by students attending private schools through the voucher program looks like extraordinarily good public policy?
Instead of laboring to diminish the value of federal scholarships to underprivileged children we should be striving to significantly expand the number of participating families.