FOCUS DC News Wire 8/27/13

 

 

More than 80,000 students headed back to school in the District on Monday, but it was a bumpy start for a few of them after two early morning school bus accidents.

 

No one was seriously injured in the accidents, but nine students, a school bus driver and a school aide were evaluated after reporting minor injuries, according to the D.C. fire department. A spokeswoman for D.C. Public Schools said the buses involved were headed to charter schools, but she was unable to confirm which schools.

 

Officials, including D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and Mayor Vincent C. Gray, kicked off the school year by visiting a number of schools Monday, dropping by classrooms throughout the day to greet students and administrators.

 

Mr. Gray said he was impressed with the energy and optimism he saw in the students he met — specifically noting the commitment among students at Sela Public Charter School, the District's first Hebrew-language immersion school, which opened this year in Northeast.

 

“It’s interesting to talk to kids who on the first day of school are already learning Hebrew,” Mr. Gray said.

 

Classes also started Monday in Montgomery County. Prince George’s County schools opened last week, and classes in Northern Virginia don’t begin until after Labor Day.

 

At the DC Scholars Public Charter School in Southeast, Mr. Gray and an entourage of administrators toured several classrooms, listening to a lesson in a fourth-grade classroom on great white sharks and watching an orderly group of kindergartners pass by the adults in a hallway to take sips from a water fountain.

 

“To go to school after school and see them engaging like it’s the second week and not the first day, it’s tremendously uplifting,” Mr. Gray said. Thirteen public schools were closed at the end of last school year, but major rehabilitation was completed at several others. Adding to the excitement of the first day back to school were the major renovations completed at seven schools — including a $100 million upgrade to Cardozo Senior High School in Northwest and the opening of the new Dunbar Senior High School in Northwest. But as students arrived for their first day at the $122 million Dunbar facility, police were still investigating a burglary there that occurred over the weekend.

 

A window was smashed and the school was entered between 11 p.m. Friday and 2 a.m. Saturday. Three Dell computers were stolen, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. No description was available of the suspects, police said.

 

Police were also still investigating the two school bus accidents. A multiple-vehicle collision involving a bus occurred around 9 a.m. at the intersection of Pierce and North Capitol streets in Northeast, according police and fire officials. A fire department spokesman said three students were evaluated at the scene.

 

Police could not provide more details of the incident Monday or say how many students were on board the bus at the time.

 

A second collision between a bus and another vehicle was reported around 9:15 a.m. at 14th and Monroe streets in Northeast. Six students, the driver and a student aide had minor injuries checked out by emergency workers at the scene, said Tim Wilson, spokesman for the fire and emergency services department.

 

 

HOUSTON — Tyler Dowdy just started his third year of teaching at YES Prep West, a charter school here. He figures now is a good time to explore his next step, including applying for a supervisory position at the school. Mr. Dowdy is 24 years old, which might make his restlessness seem premature. But then, his principal is 28. Across YES Prep’s 13 schools, teachers have an average of two and a half years of experience.

 

As tens of millions of pupils across the country begin their school year, charter networks are developing what amounts to a youth cult in which teaching for two to five years is seen as acceptable and, at times, even desirable. Teachers in the nation’s traditional public schools have an average of close to 14 years of experience, and public school leaders and policy makers have long made it a priority to reduce teacher turnover.

 

But with teachers confronting the overhaul of evaluations and tenure as well as looming changes in pension benefits, the small but rapidly growing charter school movement — with schools that are publicly financed but privately operated — is pushing to redefine the arc of a teaching career.

 

“We have this highly motivated, highly driven work force who are now wondering, ‘O.K., I’ve got this, what’s the next thing?’ ” said Jennifer Hines, senior vice president of people and programs at YES Prep. “There is a certain comfort level that we have with people who are perhaps going to come into YES Prep and not stay forever.”

 

The notion of a foreshortened teaching career was largely introduced by Teach for America, which places high-achieving college graduates into low-income schools for two years. Today, Teach for America places about a third of its recruits in charter schools.

 

“Strong schools can withstand the turnover of their teachers,” said Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America. “The strongest schools develop their teachers tremendously so they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years.”

 

Studies have shown that on average, teacher turnover diminishes student achievement. Advocates who argue that teaching should become more like medicine or law say that while programs like Teach for America fill a need in the short term, educational leaders should be focused on improving training and working environments so that teachers will invest in long careers.

 

“To become a master plumber you have to work for five years,” said Ronald Thorpe, president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a nonprofit group that certifies accomplished teachers. “Shouldn’t we have some kind of analog to that with the people we are entrusting our children to?”

 

Teachers’ unions and others in the traditional education establishment argue that charter schools are driving teachers away with longer hours and school years, as well as higher workplace demands. (At YES Prep, for example, all teachers are assigned a cellphone to answer any student call for homework assistance until 9 p.m.)

 

These critics also say that schools and students need stability and that a system of serial short timers is not replicable across thousands of school districts nationwide.

 

“When you stay in a school or community, you build relationships,” said Andrea Giunta, a senior policy analyst for teacher recruitment, retention and diversity at the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union.

 

Baby boomers who went into teaching tended to stay in the profession for decades. But as they have retired, the teaching corps has shifted toward the less experienced. According to an analysis of federal data by Richard M. Ingersoll, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, the proportion of teachers with five or fewer years of experience rose to 28 percent in 2007-8 from 17 percent in 1987-8.

 

The restless generation of millennials is likely to accelerate the trend. Some charter school leaders say that some experienced teachers grow tired and less effective, and that educators need to embrace the change.

 

“My take is yes, we do need and want some number of teachers to be ‘lifers,’ for lack of a better word,” said Doug McCurry, a co-chief executive of Achievement First, a nonprofit charter operator with 25 schools in Connecticut, Brooklyn and Providence, R.I., where teachers spend an average of 2.3 years in the classroom. But, he said, he would be happy if “the majority of the teachers that walked in the door gave us five or seven really good teaching years and then went on to do something else.”

 

Other charter networks have similar career arcs for teachers. At Success Academy Charter Schools, a chain run by Eva S. Moskowitz, a former New York City councilwoman, the average is about four years in the classroom. KIPP, one of the country’s best known and largest charter operators, with 141 schools in 20 states, also keeps teachers in classrooms for an average of about four years.

 

 

 

Headlines have carried bad news about the District’s Cardozo Senior High for decades, directing attention to its low graduation rates, fistfights and shootings. But this year, as it opened Monday as the renamed Cardozo Education Campus, school officials are determined to reinvent the school.

 

The young principal replaced most of the staff and beefed up the administrative team to control student behavior. And the school just moved into its new $130 million home, a stunning gut-job renovation of a grand old edifice perched on a prominent ridge in Columbia Heights.

 

Gone is the crumbling interior, with dingy halls and windows that were stuck shut. Teachers hope that the new building, with its broad corridors, central staircase and skylights, will inspire students.

 

“There’s a different vibe in the air, and I really believe that it’s going to be a different year,” said Tanya Roane, who is beginning her second year as Cardozo’s principal. “Once we get the culture and climate right at Cardozo, academic achievement will follow.”

 

Cardozo embodies the challenge that traditional public schools — and neighborhood high schools in particular — face across much of the city. The school is in a gentrifying neighborhood filled with affluent young families, but enrollment is down from five years ago as parents have increasingly chosen selective magnet schools and fast-growing charters.

 

The school brimmed with optimism Monday. Volunteers offered an energetic welcome, chanting as students made their way up the front steps, down a red carpet and through an arch of purple and white balloons.

 

Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) paid a visit, telling a classroom of 12-year-olds that they were making history as the first sixth-graders at Cardozo, which expanded to middle school this year.

 

Chancellor Kaya Henderson said that the school showed promise under Roane’s leadership last year, when Cardozo was housed in temporary quarters nearby. “Now in a real building, she and her team will be able to make the magic happen,” Henderson said.

 

The 1916 building commands a sweeping view of the city, from the Washington Monument to the Capitol and beyond. For decades it held an elite all-white school, Central High, swelling to more than 3,000 students before enrollment began to dwindle in the 1940s.

 

In 1950, city officials closed Central to make way for Cardozo, an all-black school that had far outgrown its original building.

 

The building slowly fell into disrepair. Furniture broke and was not replaced. Rodents scurried in and out of holes in the wall. The swimming pool sat unused and dirty, and Cardozo basketball teams haven’t played a home game since 1954 because the old court was smaller than regulation size and its emergency-exit doors opened to a 60-foot drop.

 

“It felt like a prison,” said Dana Davis, a 2006 Cardozo graduate who toured the building in mid-August. “Now when we walk in, it feels like a school.”

 

Classrooms are loaded with technology. The new gymnasium is ready to host games. A swimming pool is on the way.

 

 

Students at C.W. Harris Elementary School in Ward 7 recently posted some impressive gains in standardized tests, showing improvements in math proficiency of 11.9 percent and reading proficiency of 13.1 percent.

 

The school isn't an outlier, though: Malcolm X Elementary School in Ward 8 reached 13.1 percent in math and 20.2 percent in reading, and Nalle Elementary School in Ward 7 saw 27.2 percent and 16.2 percent jumps in math and reading, respectively. Four other schools showed similar big gains.

 

What do they all have in common? Longer school days. Now some D.C. officials are saying that more schools should follow suit.

 

This week D.C. officials proudly announced that students in D.C. public schools had posted the largest single gains in math and reading tests—3.6 percent in math, 3.9 percent in reading—since 2008. But one subtext of the good news was the fact that seven of the eight schools that offered extended instruction during the 2012-2013 school year saw their test scores grow more dramatically than their counterparts—10.6 percent in math and 7.2 in reading.

 

Those results were not lost on D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who sees the extended school day at the seven schools that posted high scores as an example of what works—and what should be taken to more schools citywide.

 

“Our goal is to scale the successful things that are happening. With the extended day piece, it is definitely our desire to extend the day at many more schools,” she said Wednesday.

 

Longer school days have gotten attention among many school reformers, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who in 2010 called for public school students to stay in school for up to 12 hours a day.

 

“Most people realize that our current day is based on the agrarian economy, and we don’t have too many kids working out in the fields nowadays. Schools in countries that are beating us are going to school 25-30 days more than us. If you practice basketball five times a week, you’re gonna be better than the people who practice three times a week," he said.

 

“We need some flexibility that would allow us to change the tour of duty for teachers," said Henderson, noting that not only could the day be longer, but teachers could come in and leave at different times and new class schedules could be adopted.

 

Despite the seeming evidence that a longer day produces better results, changing the length of the school day or school year in D.C. wouldn't be as easy as telling teachers and students to stay a little later in the day. The existing contract between D.C. and the Washington Teachers’ Union limits the work day to seven-and-a-half hours, less than what many education advocates say is ideal for troubled urban districts.

 

In pushing for a change earlier this year, Henderson had found an ally in Nathan Saunders, the union’s president, and the two had discussed a new contract that would include a longer school day. Saunders recently lost his re-election bid, though, and was replaced this week by Liz Davis, a former teacher who said Saunders wasn’t standing up for teachers.

 

In an interview with WAMU 88.5, Davis remained noncommittal about longer school days, saying that she first has to see what the research says about its effect on student performance.

 

"We are looking into research and data that supports the notion that a longer school day will yield the types of results that we want from students. If the chancellor has seen that research, I would be happy to read it," she said.

 

Davis adds that her focus will be on a "more productive school day for students" and less emphasis on testing.

 

But even if longer school days aren’t worked into a new contract, Council member David Catania (I-At Large), who chairs the D.C. Council’s education committee, may have an alternative. A bill he introduced in June would allow individual schools to apply for waiver from municipal regulations and other agreements if they can prove that student achievement would rise as a consequence.

 

These "innovation schools" would be modeled partly on the city's charter schools, which operate with more independence and have generally posted higher proficiency and graduation rates. At the end of the 2013 school year, composite proficiency in charter schools hit 55.8 percent; in public schools, by comparison, it only got to 48.4 percent.

 

If longer school days do come to pass, the next consideration would be their cost. According to school officials, the average annual cost of extended school days at each of the eight schools that adopted them over the last school year was $300,000.