- Examiner Editorial: Will the mayor step up for charter school children? [FOCUS Op-Ed]
- Kaya Henderson to answer council's questions on school closures
- D.C. considers new graduation requirements
- D.C. public schools may drop U.S. government requirement
- Council mulls punishing parents of truant public school students
- Dartmouth Stops Credits for Excelling on A.P. Test
Examiner Editorial: Will the mayor step up for charter school children? [FOCUS Op-Ed]
The Washington Examiner
By Robert Cane
January 22, 2013
Mayor Vincent Gray's budget office is preparing the administration's proposed fiscal year 2014 budget, which the mayor will send to the District of Columbia Council in late March. The budget will fund both the traditional public school system and public charter schools, which are run independently of the school system and educate 43 percent of District students enrolled in public schools.
Past years' budgets have shortchanged the charter schools, providing more dollars for each DC Public Schools student than for each charter school student. Will the mayor's 2014 proposal break with this tradition, which violates the law and principles of fairness? There are some hopeful signs.
The mayor recently announced he would end the practice of using an unreliable revenue stream -- federal school improvement funds -- to supplement the city's contribution to the charter school facilities allowance. Gray also promised that the allowance, which lets charter schools provide space to their students, would not drop below $3,000 per student annually. Although this figure permits charters to provide their students with only about half of the space DCPS provides for its students, these are significant moves for which the mayor deserves credit.
But still more needs to be done to eliminate funding inequities. The mayor also should end the practice of providing supplemental budget appropriations to DCPS -- $25 million this past year -- to cover its regular overspending, while providing no additional funding to the charter schools, which must live within their budgets. This has been common to all D.C. mayors since the first charters opened their doors in 1996, but it violates the District's uniform per-student funding requirement and encourages DCPS profligacy. An end to this practice would be a significant step toward fulfilling the mayor's campaign promise.
The mayor should also support legislation in the 2014 Budget Support Act to provide funding only for students actually enrolled in both DCPS and public charter schools. Currently, the charters get paid this way, but DCPS is paid for its estimated enrollment, which is always significantly higher than its actual enrollment as shown by an annual audit.
Additionally, the mayor's budget should break with the past practice of funding other government agencies to provide free services to DCPS that the charters have to pay for out of their Uniform Per Student Funding Formula appropriation. The most egregious example of this is the $40 million or so that is appropriated annually to the Department of Government Services to do building maintenance for DCPS. DCPS, like the charter schools, already gets maintenance funding through the formula, but, unlike the charter schools, doesn't have to use that funding for building upkeep.
In all, these operating funding inequities come annually to an extra $1,500 to $2,000 for every DCPS student that public charter school students don't get. To that, one must add the extra millions that the District government provides for DCPS capital needs.
None of this unfairness is justified by the job the charter schools are doing. Among students eligible for free or reduced-price school lunch, D.C. charter students pass the city's standardized reading and math tests at higher rates than their peers in the traditional system. The average pass rate for economically disadvantaged charter students is 14 percentage points higher than the pass rate of their peers in the city-run school system.
District charter high schools have a graduation rate 27 percentage points higher than the city's open-enrollment high schools. Partly because of this, charter high school students also are much more likely to be accepted to college than their peers in city-run high schools.
Polling reveals that six in 10 District voters believe public school funding should be equalized for all D.C. students, as the mayor promised. The mayor has taken some important steps to bring government policy in line with public opinion. Will he finish the job?
Robert Cane is executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.
Kaya Henderson to answer council's questions on school closures
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
January 22, 2013
D.C. Council members will have a chance Wednesday to question Chancellor Kaya Henderson about her plan to close 15 city schools.
Henderson is scheduled to testify before the council’s new education committee at noon in Room 412 at the John A. Wilson Building.
The chancellor told council members in a briefing last week that she would spend most of her time discussing an analysis that helped shape school-closure decisions.
The study was prepared by Education Resource Strategies, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization. Henderson has spoken about the analysis only glancingly during public debate over school closures, referring to it briefly during a D.C. Council hearing last fall.
DCPS has so far declined to release the ERS study, saying it is not ready for public release; The Post’s request for the document, submitted under the Freedom of Information Act, is pending.
The contents of the analysis are unclear, but Henderson told council members that the study answers many of the questions raised by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonprofit that recently released a report concluding that closing schools would result in no substantial savings next year.
Levy’s report also concluded that small schools don’t spend significantly more per pupil than larger schools, and that class sizes are likely to rise after schools are consolidated.
Henderson said last week that she expects the school closures to save $8.5 million annually. But that doesn’t account for the costs of closing schools and moving furniture and materials. Nor does it account for providing students with bus transportation, which DCPS has promised in some cases.
The closure of 23 D.C. schools in 2008 cost nearly $18 million, according to an audit released in August — far more than the $9.7 million that was initially reported by the school system.
Henderson told reporters last week that DCPS has learned from earlier mistakes and will be able to avoid millions of dollars in closing costs this time around. She may be asked to explain further on Wednesday; David Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the council’s education committee, has said that one of his top priorities is improving the school system’s budget transparency and understanding how every dollar is spent.
The chancellor won some fans on the council when she decided to spare five of the 20 schools she had initially proposed for closure.
Jack Evans, whose two Ward 2 schools were among those to remain open, called the chancellor “fair and “very open and accessible,” while Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) praised Henderson (yet again!) for improving upon the closures conducted by her predecessor, Michelle Rhee — “the worst process I’ve ever seen in my life,” Barry said.
But the chancellor also drew ire, including from Yvette Alexander (D), whose Ward 7 is home to four of the 15 schools to be closed.
The 2008 closures were supposed to strengthen remaining schools, Alexander said — but the school system invested little in Ward 7 schools to make them attractive choices for families.
The council member said she would demand that savings from the closures of her four schools — Ron Brown Middle, Kenilworth Elementary, Davis Elementary and Winston Education Campus — remain in Ward 7.
“I want to see art and music and P.E. in every school in Ward 7. I want to see language offerings in Ward 7, modern libraries in Ward 7, and a STEM focus in every school in Ward 7,” she said.
D.C. considers new graduation requirements
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
January 22, 2013
D.C. high school students would have to study more art and music, get more physical exercise and complete a thesis project under proposed changes to city graduation requirements.
The proposal by the D.C. State Board of Education would raise the total number of required high school course credits in the District from 24 to 26 — more than students need to earn diplomas in Maryland, Virginia and many other states.
But for the first time, D.C. students would be allowed to earn some credits outside the classroom, including through team sports, study-abroad programs and extracurricular arts and music performances.
“Our goal is to create high standards but also to provide flexibility for students and schools,” said Laura Slover, board president. “We really want kids to learn. Sometimes they do that in a classroom, and sometime they do that out of a classroom.”
The plan has drawn skepticism, however, from critics who question how and whether schools will verify students’ extracurricular activities.
“Certifying non-classroom hours only invites fabrication,” wrote Erich Martel, a former DCPS high school teacher, in a letter to the Current newspapers.
One proposed change — to eliminate the requirement that students take a course in U.S. government to graduate from high school — has already proven particularly contentious, particularly among advocates for civics education. Slover said she recognizes the concern and considers that proposal “open to discussion.”
The board will hear public comment on the proposed changes at its Wednesday meeting. It plans to vote on the proposal on March 20.
The proposal comes as the District struggles to raise graduation rates. Fewer than two-thirds of D.C. high school students earn a diploma within four years, giving the District a lower on-time graduation rate than any of the 50 states.
Key changes:
— Students would have to to take an additional unit of physical education, and organized extracurricular sports may count toward this requirement. Perhaps more important, students would also have to do an additional 225 minutes of physical activity every week — or 67.5 hours each semester — for all four years of high school.
The changes are meant to help address health problems among D.C. children, including high rates of obesity and diabetes. But it’s not clear what would constitute appropriate physical activity, or whose job it would be to certify that students have completed it.
Slover said those are details that can be worked out, citing the longstanding requirement that students complete 100 hours of community service in order to graduate.
— Currently, students take a half-credit of art and a half-credit of music. Under the new proposal, they’d have to fulfill that requirement and take an additional unit of either art or music. Students’ outside art activities — such as ballet or chorus programs — may help satisfy this requirement.
— Students would still have to take two years of a foreign language — but for the first time, it would have to be the same language both years. Online and study-abroad programs can satisfy this requirement “if their rigor can be verified,” according to the board’s proposal.
“We’re trying in nuanced ways to make global awareness and global studies more of a priority for the District,” Slover said.
— Students would have to complete a thesis project in their junior or senior year. This is not a new idea: The board adopted it years ago as a requirement for students beginning with the Class of 2011. But the requirement was either ignored or overlooked, and four years later, students discovered at the last minute that they were in danger of not graduating.
“The thesis requirement is a critical component of preparing kids for college and careers — being able to do research and marshal evidence from a variety of sources and write a cogent essay,” said Slover. “Schools should be providing opportunities to students to meet those standards.”
D.C. public schools may drop U.S. government requirement
The Washington Post
By Valerie Strauss
January 23, 2013
In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff category: The public school system in the nation’s capital may let high school students graduate without taking a high-school-level course in how their country’s government works.
D.C. Public Schools officials are proposing changes to graduation requirements from the system that would actually get rid of the current requirement that students take a U.S. government class, my colleague Emma Brown reported here. If approved, they would have to rely on the information they received in elementary and middle school.
Under the proposed changes, high school students in the District would take more physical education, art and music, and be required to write a thesis before graduating. They would also be permitted to earn some of their credits — proposed to go from 24 to 26 — outside the classroom, including study-abroad programs as well as off-campus arts and sports programs.
Civics education advocates are, Brown reports, unhappy with the proposal to drop the U.S. government requirement, and it is said to be open for discussion.
The real question is why it is a consideration.
On the last administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in civics, in 2010, only 24 percent of high school seniors scored on the proficient level, with knowledge deficiencies in areas including the U.S. Constitution, civil rights, immigration laws, and the court system. As for the eighth graders, less than half could identify the purpose of the Bill of Rights. When those scores came out last year, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that “we have a crisis on our hands when it comes to civics education.”
Perhaps an idea better than dropping the requirement is making the course so engaging that kids actually learn something from it.
Council mulls punishing parents of truant public school students
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
January 22, 2013
Five D.C. lawmakers introduced a measure to punish parents of public school students who skip school 10 or more times a year.
Fewer than half of DC Public Schools students were rated proficient in either math or reading on their DC Comprehensive Assessment System standardized test last year, and 56 percent graduated high school within four years. The first step to solving these problems is getting students to go to school, said at-large D.C. Councilman David Catania, the lead sponsor of the bill introduced Tuesday.
Under current law, a parent whose child has two or more unexcused absences a month can be found guilty of a misdemeanor and be forced to pay a fine of up to $500 or spend two days in jail.
But the law isn't enforced, Catania said. "As a result, we have an epidemic of truancy."
Last school year, 7,110, or 17.5 percent of DC Public Schools students between ages 5 and 17 -- the age when students are legally required to attend school -- had 11 or more unexcused absences, according to DCPS data. Of those, 3,103 had 21 or more.
School staff are expected to refer students between ages 5 and 13 with more than 10 unexcused absences to the Child and Family Services Agency. But staff referred only 722 of the 3,510 students in that category last year, DCPS data show.
"When you have literally thousands of children missing weeks and weeks of school, it is no wonder why our test scores are so low, and it is no wonder why we have the lowest graduation rates in the country," Catania said.
The bill introduced Tuesday would require parents to be issued a warning once a student reached 10 unexcused absences in a school year. They would be prosecuted when the student has 20 unexcused absences for that year. Parents found guilty would be required to perform community service, receive parental counseling or both. Parents who don't comply would then spend up to five days in jail, pay up to a $100 fine or both.
Though Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry co-sponsored the bill, he said the measure does not tackle what he said is the largest cause of truancy -- poverty.
Ward 8 is home to the two DCPS schools with the highest truancy rates, Ballou Senior High School and Anacostia High School, where 46 percent and 45 percent of students, respectively, had 21 or more unexcused absences last year.
"You cannot solve the truancy problem unless you solve the income gap," Barry said. "In the public school system, two-thirds of the students are from low-income families."
Representatives of DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson, the DC Public Charter School Board and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education said the agencies are reviewing the legislation and declined further comment.
Dartmouth Stops Credits for Excelling on A.P. Test
The New York Times
By Tamar Lewin
January 17, 2013
Concerned that Advanced Placement courses are not as rigorous as college courses, Dartmouth has announced that it will no longer give college credits for good A.P. scores, starting with the class of 2018.
Elite institutions like Dartmouth have long discussed how to handle the growing number of freshmen seeking credit for top scores on A.P. or International Baccalaureate exams. Dartmouth changed its policy after an experiment measuring whether top A.P. scores indicated college-level competence.
“The psychology department got more and more suspicious about how good an indicator a 5 on the A.P. psych exam was for academic success,” said Hakan Tell, a classics professor who heads Dartmouth’s Committee on Instruction, so the department decided to give a condensed version of the Psych 1 final to incoming students instead of giving them credits.
Of more than 100 students who had scored a 5 on the A.P. exam, 90 percent failed the Dartmouth test. The other 10 percent were given Dartmouth credit.
A follow-up effort produced even worse results, Professor Tell said. “We looked at the students who failed our on-campus exam but decided to enroll in Psych 1, to see whether they did any better than students who had never taken the Advanced Placement class, and we couldn’t detect any difference whatsoever,” he said.
The College Board, which administers the A.P. program, said it found the Dartmouth results hard to credit.
“It’s very difficult to believe that 90 percent of students with a 5 on their A.P. would flunk a test on an introductory course,” said Trevor Packer, the College Board official in charge of the A.P. program. “We have research, including Dartmouth students who got a 5 on their psychology A.P., showing that they did better than students without that A.P.”
Mr. Packer said he believed Dartmouth had an obligation to share details of the experiment.