- Meridian continues to examine allegations of test-tampering [Meridian PCS mentioned]
- Up to 16 D.C. vacant schools made available for charter status
- D.C. Council must stop micromanaging public schools
- Post editors call for D.C. Council to stay out of the public education business
- Washington area spends big bucks on its students
- D.C. Bets Big on Common Core
Meridian continues to examine allegations of test-tampering [Meridian PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
May 21, 2012
Meridian Public Charter School officials have said that are continuing to examine allegations of test-tampering at the school and have not yet disciplined any staff members.
Meridian was among four charter schools that the Office of the State Superintendent flagged last month for cheating on 2012 standardized tests. Five classrooms — representing more than 40 percent of tested students -- were implicated. Meridian’s students had an inexplicably high number of wrong-to-right erasures on answer sheets. Across the entire school, 1,084 answers were changed from wrong to right — one of the highest levels in the city.
The D.C. Public Charter School Board had asked the school to report on its response to the cheating allegations by Monday. Meridian officials said they need more time to do a thorough job and promised to reach conclusions and take action before the board’s next meeting in June. If Meridian fails to persuade the board that it has responded appropriately, board members could vote to begin charter revocation procedures. At each of the other three flagged charter schools, problems were isolated to one classroom. Representatives from those three schools told the charter board Monday that teachers and administrators who cheated are no longer employed.
The Washington Business Journal
By WBJ Staff
May 21, 2013
Sixteen former public school buildings will be made available for public charters and other community use, District MayorVincent Gray announced Monday, the Washington Examiner reports.
Charter school demand continues to rise in the District. The Public Charter School Board announced earlier in the month that 22,000 students were on public charter waitlists this year, up from about 15,000 last year.
The Washington Post
Editorial Board
May 21, 2013
ONE OF THE FIRST things D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) did after taking over the newly constituted education committee was host a dinner aimed at establishing a new tone of collaboration for those involved in D.C. public education. The dinner was held on a night when D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson had long been scheduled to be out of town. That was an early tip-off to Mr. Catania’s notions about cooperation. It has become increasingly clear since that March dinner that Mr. Catania wants an oversized role in education that substitutes his judgments for those from people who are charged with leadership of the schools. That’s worrisome; one reason the District’s public schools fell into such disrepair was interference from politicians who felt they knew better.
We applauded the decision by D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) in January to establish a stand-alone committee to focus on education; we saw Mr. Catania as capable. So it was alarming to see the education committee this month under Mr. Catania’s direction make decisions on the mayor’s recommended 2014 budget that cross the line between proper legislative oversight and potentially harmful interference. Among the questionable recommendations: curtailing the ability of officials to move forward on school boundary revisions, micromanaging individual school budgets and reordering capital funds.
Particularly troubling was the decision to cut money for the modernization ofMalcolm X Elementary School, a move that threatens a proposed and innovative partnership between the school system and one of the city’s top performing charters. Asked the rationale for this cut, Mr. Catania told us it was at the behest of Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), and we would have to get the explanation from him. Not exactly an answer that gives one confidence in how education policy is made.
Some of the decisions, as Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) pointed out in a letter to Mr. Mendelson, seemed “puzzling” and “contradictory.” The council, for example, has made a priority of combating truancy but the committee voted to cut money that would have gone to specialists and improvements in data collection. The administration has been criticized for a lack of coordination between charter and traditional schools but the budget of Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith, generally seen as having the ability to cross the divide between the two sectors, was targeted for deep reductions. Mr. Catania showed no effort to conceal a disdain for Ms. Smith.
Mr. Catania rejected any notion that the actions, which he stressed were taken by majority vote of his committee, amount to micromanaging or meddling or that politics (he’s beenmentioned as a possible candidate for mayor next year) are a factor. “The council is not a rubber stamp, ” he lectured us about the checks and balances of government.
The full council takes its first vote on the budget Wednesday. It should reconsider the committee’s recommendations and step back from the kind of micromanagement that was so destructive in the past.
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
May 22, 2013
This morning the editors of the Washington Post call for the D.C. Council's Education Committee to stop meddling in the affairs of the public schools. In issuing this warning they have finally caught up with me.
Weeks ago I sounded the alarm bell that the Education Committee's Chairman Catania was encroaching on the powers given to the Mayor under the School Reform Act. I listened at a public forum as Mr. Catania threatened to personally rework the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula more to his liking and jettison schools choice's main tenant that money follows the child. His moves remind education watchers of the bad old days when jurisdiction over the schools was splintered between the Mayor, D.C. Council, and the Board of Education. We know all too well where that arrangement took us.
One area that is particularly worrisome is that Mr. Catania will try, through the power of the purse, to restrict the number of charters or dictate where they are located. This, at a time when the sector guardedly celebrates the turning over of 16 shuttered DCPS facilities for their use.
Freedom to innovate and accountability has led to significant quality improvements in both the traditional and charter school systems. Our kids cannot afford for us to move even one step backwards.
The Washington Examiner
By Matt Connolly
May 21, 2013
D.C. public schools spent $18,475 per student in fiscal 2011, more than any state outside of New York, according to census data released Tuesday. Among the country's 100 public school systems with the most students, Montgomery and Prince George's counties placed fourth and ninth. Montgomery spends $15,421 per student, while Prince George's pays out $13,775. New York City's schools topped the list at $19,770, while Baltimore placed third at $15,483 and Howard County fifth at $15,139.
"Many of the school systems in the top of that list are from Maryland, where there's a strong investment in education statewide," said Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Dana Tofig. "The data shows what we know -- the citizens of Montgomery County invest in public education, which is a good thing, and I think they've gotten a good return on that investment." Per-pupil spending in the smaller Arlington County and Alexandria was greater than that in both Maryland counties, at $16,375 and $17,759, respectively. Fairfax County spent $12,499 per student in 2011 -- well above the $10,560 national average but behind its neighbors.
Alexandria was the only local school district in which per-pupil spending rose from fiscal 2010. Montgomery and Prince George's spending dropped despite a Maryland law requiring school districts to spend at least the same amount per student from one year to the next. While the drops came during a recession that crippled county budgets, school systems can apply for waivers if the county's financial situation "significantly impedes" such spending. Tofig said a record number of Montgomery students, with more requiring pricier services like free lunches and English as a Second Language classes, makes for tighter budgets. "There are more students coming to us with specific needs, so we're going to have to continue to invest wisely," he said, adding that the county's surging enrollment will continue to climb in the next five years.
About one-third of Montgomery's 149,051 students receive free or reduced-price lunches, up from 26 percent five years ago. In Fairfax, nearly 27 percent of the schools' 179,253 students receive free or reduced-price lunch, up from 21 percent five years ago. Experts say those numbers will keep rising in the near future. The District topped the nation in per-pupil spending last year, having unseated New York. A spokeswoman for DC Public Schools said officials were reviewing the census data. Since most school districts have a similar number of administrators who are normally their highest-paid employees, administrator salaries have an outsize effect on the per-pupil spending rates of smaller systems like D.C. and Arlington, according to Education Sector senior vice president and former Fairfax County school board member Kristen Amundson.
High-performing districts like Montgomery and Arlington pay teachers well, she said, while lower-performing ones like D.C. and Prince George's keep salaries up to try to attract a better crop of educators. "What you're seeing in part [is] the fact that Montgomery County has continued to give teachers raises for the past couple of years and Fairfax hasn't done that [for] a while," Amundson said. "Personnel costs typically amount to about 85 percent of a district's budget, and teachers are generally a big chunk of that."
Instructor salaries and benefits made up 63.5 percent of Montgomery's $2,223,096 in 2011 spending, compared with 60.7 percent of Fairfax's $2,198,463, according to census data. Both led the region in spending on instruction.
While D.C. spent the smallest percentage on teachers in 2011 -- 54.1 percent of its $970,843 in spending -- the District's many under-capacity schools keep per-student costs high. "When you're operating a number of facilities not at peak capacity, you end up with high costs and not much to show for it in terms of student achievement," Amundson said. "They're running old, antiquated, underutilized buildings -- they're probably just spending more keeping boilers running." D.C. officials are planning to close 13 schools next month and two next year.
Education Week
By Catherine Gewertz
May 21, 2013
The big clock in Dowan McNair-Lee's 8th grade classroom is silent, but she can hear the minutes ticking away nonetheless. On this day, like any other, the clock is a constant reminder of how little time she has to prepare her students—for spring tests, and for high school and all that lies beyond it. As an English/language arts teacher in the common-core era, Ms. McNair-Lee is part of a massive nationwide push to turn millions of students into powerful readers and writers. The District of Columbia, where she's taught for 11 years, was quick to adopt the Common Core State Standards. But putting them into practice demands a heavy lift: With their emphasis on mastery of complex text, the standards require far stronger literacy skills than most students here—and many in the 46 states that also adopted the common core in English—currently possess. Serving mostly disadvantaged children, the school system in the nation's capital faces an especially steep climb as it implements the new standards.
"Every day when they come to class, there is so much they don't know," Ms. McNair-Lee said one day last winter. "Every day, I'm trying to fill in those gaps. Some days I feel like I just can't do enough." Mikel Robinson is one of the students she is trying to support. The 14-year-old has had an uneven year in her class. His work shows promise, but too many assignments are incomplete or missing; he bombs too many tests. Ms. McNair-Lee watches over Mikel as much as she can with 128 students revolving through her day. But she agonizes about him as his teetering grades hover just at the edge of her reach. How well the school district can reach Mikel is an open question as it brings the common standards into the classroom. And it's one that resonates nationwide, where students like Mikel sit at millions of desks in schools that are trying to do the same.
In districts of all sizes, teachers are scrambling to get their arms around the new guidelines. The demand for good curricular resources and professional development outstrips their availability. The response here to those dynamics has been to bet big on the common standards, with a full-bore K-12 English/language arts implementation that features some of the most leading-edge instructional resources and far-reaching professional development in the nation, experts say. "The district has done this more comprehensively than most places in the country," says Michael D. Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which analyzed the district's emerging common-core program. "DCPS is in full tilt, whole-hog."
The school system brings key assets to the work: optional model instructional units and lesson plans, and thousands of new books; coaches who work with teachers in nearly every school; professional development that reaches all teachers and administrators at least five times a year. Stuart-Hobson Middle School, where Ms. McNair-Lee teaches, brings strengths of its own to the common-core challenge. It's one of the highest-achieving of the district's 13 middle schools; it is blessed with extra staff for academic intervention and social-service support.
Ms. McNair-Lee, who chairs the school's English/language arts department, brings a rare level of familiarity with the standards. She studied them in depth for a graduate-level urban-literacy course she teaches at a nearby university. Through a teaching fellowship, she is attuned to the policy and instructional debates sparked by the common core.
And she knows her students exceptionally well, since she taught them as 7th graders and "looped" up to 8th with them this year. The story of putting vast new changes on the ground can show off a system's strengths, but can also showcase its limitations.
Mr. Casserly's report pointed out a pivotal trickle-down challenge facing the district as it puts the common core into practice: "how the reforms conceived at the central-office level are put into place in schools and classrooms." Also daunting: the "significant" amount of professional development teachers need and the "enormous gaps" in students' skills and knowledge.
To be sure, the school district's work is tested daily by its own limits. It struggles to reach all 4,100 of its teachers in ways that will deeply affect their practice. Its army of coaches—a key conduit for its common-core work—varies in effectiveness. Stuart-Hobson administrators search for sure-footedness as they try to lead teachers to better practice. Teachers feel alternately inspired and overwhelmed by the size of the job they have to do. And students: They're all over the achievement map. The ones with stronger skills are doing well. Those furthest behind are inching forward with special help. Many of those in the middle, like Mikel, need more support than is available.
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