FOCUS DC News Wire 4/26/13

 

 

 

Proposed KIPP DC high school stalls [KIPP DC mentioned]

The Washington Post

By Emma Brown

April 26, 2013

 

KIPP DC’s controversial proposal to build a new high school on public land in Southwest Washington stalled this week when Gray administration officials announced they will not consider leasing the site this year.

 

The charter school operator had hoped to break ground at Randall Park this spring to open doors to students in summer 2014 — an ambitious timeline that would have required Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) to accelerate efforts to lease the land.

 

But the proposed school drew mixed reaction from those with a stake in the neighborhood and, absent a consensus, Gray officials chose to put off a decision. They will not issue a request for proposals for the development of Randall Park until they first complete a long-range strategic plan for the neighborhood.

 

That “small area plan” will not be done until sometime next year, rendering KIPP DC’s ambitious timeline impossible.

 

“The Small Area Plan will allow development decisions to be made with a clear sense of what the community wants,” wrote Steve Glaude, the mayor’s director of community affairs, in an e-mail to neighbors.

 

“If, in the end, the community is open to redevelopment at the Randall site that includes a school, an open and transparent process will be implemented in which all will be welcome to compete.”

 

KIPP DC runs one of the highest-performing charter networks in the city. Its leaders had promised to finance the project — including a recreation center, athletic fields and swimming pool for community use — with private funds. Five D.C. Council members and some residents heralded the proposal as an easy way to create a much-needed quality high school for the city.

 

But there was fierce opposition from some quarters, including from the backers of a $200 million commercial development planned on adjacent property. They said their plan — for a museum, restaurants and apartments — would be incompatible with a school and its teenagers.

 

“KIPP DC is disappointed that the timeline for the small area plan will prevent us from being able to open a high school at that location in school year 2014,” said Susan Schaeffler, KIPP DC’s executive director, in a statement. “We are hopeful, however, that through a public process we will be able to find a centrally located site that will meet the needs of our hard working KIPP DC students and their families in the near future.”

 

(The chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Co., Donald E. Graham, serves on KIPP DC’s board of trustees.)

 

KIPP DC may not be entirely out of luck. Gray officials plan to offer surplus DCPS buildings to charter schools sometime in the coming weeks. “The mayor remains committed to helping all charter schools identify long-term solutions to their facilities needs,” said Glaude’s e-mail.

 

A Gray spokesman declined to say if any of the buildings up for bid will include DCPS schools closing in June.

 

 

School choice frustration [Washington Latin PCS, Two Rivers PCS, and Elsie Whitlow Stokes PCS mentioned]

The Examiner

By Mark Lerner

April 26, 2013

 

I wrote yesterday about the negative perspective regarding public education in D.C. shared by panelists appearing Wednesday evening at a Washington Post forum. This morning I was going to urge the charter movement to figure out a way to improve our publicity so that more residents understand the great things occurring regarding academic achievement in our sector. But now I have another take on it.

 

Quality charters such as Washington Latin, Two Rivers, and Elsie Whitlow Stokes have waiting lists this year of over 1,000 students. Many others are facing the same demand. So when you are a parent who understands the critical value of a good education for his or her child the system right now is more than frustrating. It is easy to conclude that our city's leaders have let down their citizens.

 

No one is more upset with the current situation than those working in it. We are providing something our constituents desperately want but we are funded at a level thousands of dollars less per child than the traditional schools. Nationally, the biggest hurdle charters face is obtaining a permanent facility and yet we have shuttered DCPS buildings to which we cannot get access. The site allotment was reduced under Mayor Fenty and has not been increased in years. Yet, you cannot drive very far without witnessing the multi-million dollar renovations that the city has provided to underutilized regular schools. It's enough to drive you crazy.

 

Something has to be done but that action is not to try and reverse the progress charters have made over the last 15 years. Competition for students and charter accountability has had the intended effect of forcing all public schools to improve. The power of school choice is evident for all to witness, and we cannot go back to the days when children sat is unsafe classrooms with little instruction being done.

 

As was mentioned the other night we desperately do need to come together to fix what is wrong with our complex educational landscape. But solutions must start with a recognition and appreciation of the mighty efforts by an alternative school system that has brought us to this point.

 

 

D.C. attorneys respond to lawsuit challenging school closures

The Washington Post

By Emma Brown

April 25, 2013

 

Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s plan to close 15 District schools will improve education across the city and does not discriminate against poor and minority students, D.C. officials said in response to a lawsuit filed by activists seeking to halt the closures.

 

In a brief filed Wednesday in federal court, attorneys for the city raised objections to the lawsuit, which contends that the school closures violate civil rights laws because of their disproportionate effect on poor, African American and disabled children.

 

The city’s attorneys disputed the idea that having children change schools is a violation of their rights. “Plaintiffs have no grounds to argue that [D.C. public schools] must continue to educate their children in precisely the exact same schools they currently attend,” their brief says.

 

Empower D.C. filed the school-closure suit in March in U.S. District Court on behalf of two advisory neighborhood commissioners and three parents of children who attend schools that are slated to close.

 

The suit argues that, in addition to violating local and federal civil rights laws, school officials failed to meet their legal obligation to consult with advisory neighborhood commissioners about the closures. Empower D.C. used the same tactic last year to temporarily block construction of a tour bus depot in the District’s Ivy City neighborhood.

 

The District’s attorneys argued that the plaintiffs, who are personally affiliated with only seven schools marked for closure, do not have legal standing to challenge all 15 closures.

 

Thirteen schools are scheduled to close in June and two more next year, displacing about 2,700 students. Black students account for 93 percent of those children, according to the suit. Black students make up 72 percent of the school system’s total enrollment.

 

Henderson initially proposed closing 20 schools, a number she reduced after community meetings and D.C. Council hearings. D.C. attorneys said that the process followed was evidence that decisions about the closures “were carried out in the glaring light of public scrutiny,” not “done in the dark,” as the suit alleges.

 

The city’s attorneys contend that Henderson’s closure plan was based on sound research, public comment and a rational desire to maximize scarce resources. Schools were targeted because of low enrollment, not because of the race or socioeconomic status of their students, they said.

 

The closures would save $8.5 million annually, which would be used to establish “additional elective and enrichment programs for all DCPS students,” the city’s brief says.

 

Halting the school closures at this point would create serious problems for the District, the city’s attorneys argue, interrupting planning of teacher and student reassignments, new bus routes and building maintenance. They also contend that the suit could set a dangerous precedent: “that a parent who is disappointed that his or her child’s school is closing” can successfully sue “if that school happens to have a higher proportion of African-American students than the District-wide average.”

 

The dispute about school closures “belongs in the realm of public discourse and local politics, not in federal court under vacuous and ‘kitchen sink’ civil rights allegations,” the city’s brief says.

 

The plaintiffs have until May 2 to file a response. A hearing is set for May 10.

 

“We are confident in our legal team,” said Daniel del Pielago, a community organizer with Empower D.C. “We’re going to have to do some extra work, but we feel confident that we can move forward with it.”

 

 

D.C. officials respond to school closing lawsuit

The Washington Times

By Jessica Gresko

April 25, 2013

 

A D.C. plan to close 15 schools was the result of extensive study and will improve education for all students, officials said in responding to a lawsuit over the closures.

Lawyers for the city filed court documents Wednesday in response to a lawsuit by a community group seeking to stop the closures. The lawsuit, which was filed in March, said the closings will disproportionately affect minority, special education and low-income students.

 

Empower DC, the group behind the lawsuit, said the plan violates the U.S. Constitution and city and federal laws. They’re asking a judge to halt the closures, which were announced in January.

 

Officials said at the time that the schools have low enrollment and moving students to existing schools would save $19.5 million, $11 million of which would be reinvested in the school system. The first 13 schools are set to close at the end of the current academic year. Two more schools will close at the end of 2014.

 

The closures affect approximately 2,700 students, over 90 percent of them black, according to the lawsuit. In the 2011 school year, about 70 percent of the overall student population was black, according to the school system’s website.

 

Lawyers for the District made several arguments in opposing Empower DC’s request for a preliminary injunction, which would halt the school closures. Lawyers wrote that the five people bringing the lawsuit with the support of Empower DC — three are guardians of children in schools that will be closed and two are local officials — have no standing to bring the suit. They said the group was connected to less than half of the schools scheduled for closure.

 

In addition, lawyers said school officials gave proper notice of the closings and responded to citizen concerns. The school system held six public hearings and changed its original plan to close 20 schools based on public feedback. Finally, lawyers said school officials did not intended to discriminate against any group.

 

Lawyers said halting the closure plan would set a bad precedent that “a parent who is disappointed that his or her child’s school is closing can file a lawsuit” and stop the closing if the school “happens to have a higher proportion of African-American students than the District-wide average.”

 

Lawyers for the District wrote that the disagreement over school closures “belongs in the realm of public discourse and local politics, not in federal court under vacuous and ‘kitchen-sink’ civil rights allegations.”

A judge has scheduled a hearing for May 10.

 

 

Surprise! D.C. admits school test tampering at Meridian Public Charter [Meridian PCS, Maya Angelou PCS mentioned]

The Washington Post

By Jay Mathews

April 25, 2013

 

The Meridian Public Charter School is a well-regarded institution serving students in preschool through eighth grade on 13th Street between V and W streets in Northwest Washington. Nearly all of its 531 students are black or Hispanic. Eighty-seven percent are from low-income families. The student body’s reading and math proficiency rates are about 15 percentage points above the city average.

 

But now the school’s record has been tarnished: The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE, pronounced aw-see) says that teachers or administrators at Meridian likely changed answers on student tests to improve the school’s results.

 

This is the first D.C. school, traditional public or charter, to be cited by official investigators for cheating based on abnormal numbers of test erasures, changing wrong answers to the correct ones. It’s about time. Until now, investigators hired by OSSE and the D.C. public schools – in addition to the D.C. Inspector General — to probe potential cheating have largely ignored wrong-to-right erasures or accepted school officials’ assurances that the students themselves made the corrections.

 

Meridian’s chairman, Christopher Siddall, said Wednesday that the school has hired a law firm to determine who was responsible for the erasures. The school also has hired a consulting firm to oversee security during the 2013 D.C. standardized tests underway there this week.

 

The case against Meridian could cause trouble for other D.C. schools whose student tests have shown wrong-to-right erasures on the same scale or greater than Meridian but who were given a pass.

 

On April 12, OSSE released a report by the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal revealing that 11 city schools, including Meridian, had such egregious test security violations on the 2012 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams that many scores were thrown out. At Meridian, all scores were invalidated in five classrooms — a fourth grade and two fifth and sixth grades.

 

As in previous investigations, Alvarez & Marsal focused on teachers and proctors who defined words and pointed out the right answers to students during exams. It found examples of that behavior at Meridian and other schools, some reported by students. All were declared violations of the District’s test security rules.

 

But for the first time in any D.C. cheating investigation, the investigators also said that the sheer number of wrong-to-right erasures at Meridian showed “strong circumstantial evidence” that the erasures “occurred at the school level and not at the classroom level.” The erasures themselves violated the city’s rules, the investigators said.

 

At Meridian, the report said, “1,804 answers were changed from wrong to right,” calling it “one of the highest levels”of such erasures in the city. Meridian had 227 students take the DC-CAS, putting the average number of wrong-to-right erasures per child at about eight. The average per child on the same exams in other D.C. schools was less than one.

 

In an unusual addition to the report, investigators revealed that four Meridian administrators were questioned extensively about erasures. Meridian administrators “did not offer any potential explanations for the extraordinary level” of wrong-to-right erasures, the report said. “They repeatedly stated that they stood behind the students’ scores,”and each denied changing answers or ordering others to do so.

 

We don’t know how long cheating has been going on at Meridian unchecked. Seventy percent of its classrooms had wrong-to-right erasure rates that were four standard deviations above the mean in 2009. That climbed to 83 percent in 2010, the second-highest rate in the city. On the 2011 tests, one Meridian classroom registered more than six wrong-to-right erasures per student, yet that year’s investigation, also by Alvarez & Marsal, said Meridian “promotes a culture of compliance and accountability.”

 

The D.C. Public Charter School Board, which has the power to close the school, plans to discuss the Meridian report next month. The Meridian board could fire the administrators who offered no explanation for tampering.

 

But that would not go nearly far enough to curb test cheating in city schools. OSSE and DCPS should review several other schools with high rates of wrong-to-right erasures as recently as 2011, including J.O. Wilson Elementary and the Maya Angelou Public Charter middle school. This latest investigation of Meridian should be the model for those to come.

 

 

 

Ensuring test integrity

The Current Newspapers

April 24, 2013

 

Ever since the District made students’ standardized test scores a factor in teacher performance reviews — and fostered the rise of charter schools that must compete for students — there have been allegations of cheating. Various investigations have found no evidence of widespread misbehavior, but critics say that’s because the reviews haven’t been thorough enough.

 

Given the contentious history, we’re glad the District has upped its proce- dures to crack down on cheating. Both the D.C. State Board of Education and the D.C. Council last week discussed whether officials need to do more.

This month, the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education released results of an investigation into test integrity and security procedures for last year’s D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams.

 

Throughout D.C., there were 2,688 testing groups in 243 schools. The investigation focused on just 41 testing groups in 25 schools — the class- rooms where data in two of four categories showed cause for concern. The criteria were the number of wrong-to-right erasures, score variation within classrooms, unusual gains from 2010 to 2012, or dramatic score drops.

 

The study results found 11 schools with “critical” test security violations. Another four had “anomalies with defined violations but not test tampering.” One of the schools had procedural infractions. Officials invalidated the 2012 math and reading test scores for 18 of the 41 testing groups studied.

 

So does this mean the problem is isolated to a few bad apples, or is there evidence of broader misconduct? There’s no clear answer, but it is troubling that 18 educators would help their students cheat or look the other way.

 

We agree with critics that next year the District ought to adjust its thresh- old for scrutiny, to see whether investigators uncover cheating in classrooms with fewer suspicious erasures, or less dramatic variations. That should reveal whether investigators need to continue broadening the scope.

 

Last week, with the results of the 2012 investigation in hand, the D.C. Council Education Committee heard testimony on legislation proposed by at-large Council member David Catania to mandate standard security proto- cols. The standards are now found only in rules set by the superintendent’s office. We hope the council will move quickly to adopt the legislation. Penalties should include the possibility of firing and even jail time.

 

It’s encouraging that the council is using its oversight and legislative roles to ensure test integrity is taken seriously. It is an example of the merits of restoring the council’s Education Committee. We hope that the result will be restored confidence in the integrity of the test results. To paraphrase Mr. Catania, parents, students and educators deserve a system where cheating does not — and cannot — occur, and where student gains are indisputable.