FOCUS DC News Wire 11/22/13

 

 

Charter school and District of Columbia school district officials have rolled out a universal enrollment system for students there, reports the Washington Post.

 

The new system will allow all students within the district to apply to both public and (most) charter schools of their choice through one common lottery that uses an algorithm to match each student with a single, best offer. It's a trend that helps eliminate the churn that otherwise occurs leading up to and even within the first few weeks of the school year when some students who are accepted to multiple schools decide where to go while others who weren't offered a space at all scramble to find a suitable spot.

 

Ram Uppuluri, a senior policy advisor for FOCUS DC (which stands for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools), said he hopes the move also instills more transparency and confidence in the lottery system.

 

"We have such high demand for charters here in the district with 20,000 people on waitlists for our charter schools last year. There can always be a suspicion, whether founded or not, that schools are being selective in who they let in," he said in an interview with Education Week. "This system allows you to take that suspcion completely off the table because [the lottery] is done in a wholly accountable way."

 

Other cities have moved to universal enrollment systems as well—most notably Denver and New Orleans.

 

Fourteen charter schools in the Washington area have decided not to participate in the program, according to My School DC, which is heading up the new lottery system.

 

Keeping the system voluntary for charter schools was a major sticking point for charter advocates, said Uppuluri, from FOCUS DC. "At the outset we felt as though we were really concerned that this would strip charter schools of essential elements of their autonomy," he said. "We tried to find ways to encourage the people designing the system to desgn it in a way that keep that personal nature of the relationship between student and schools in tact while providing the services to take administrative burdens off the schools," such as allowing charters to opt-in to the system rather than mandating participation. 

 

To apply, families may list up to 12 schools, ranked in order of their preference. Applications will be available starting Dec. 16 and are due by Feb. 3 for high school students and March 3 for early childhood, elementary, and middle school students for enrollment in the 2014-15 school year.

 

Unlike universal enrollment systems in other cities, students who do not get into their first choice school will automatically be placed on the waitlist of all the schools they ranked higher than the offer they received. For example, if a student receives an offer for his or her fourth-ranked school, he or she will automatically be placed on the waitlists for his or her top three preferences.  

 

The lottery algorithm will take into consideration certain preferences, such as where the student's siblings are currently enrolled.

 

In addition to eliminating the beginning-of-the-year shuffle, which will allow both families and schools to better plan for the school year, officials hope that by moving to one timeline with one application, it will make the otherwise burdensome enrollment process easier on parents.

 

 

Chosen wisely After a multiyear process, the city has chosen a “master developer” for its portion of the old Walter Reed campus, selecting the Hines/Urban Atlantic/Triden team from a pool of three finalist groups.

 

We’re pleased with both the process and the outcome. The chosen developers envision creating, over the course of about a decade, a series of neighborhoods in parklike settings, mixed in with a science center, an arts district, a senior village, and retail focused on Georgia Avenue. And, notably, the crew has a plan for the meantime: hosting festivals, farmers markets and arts events on the expansive site.

 

Officials invited and considered a huge amount of public input as they made their decision, and the two advisory neighborhood commissions in the immediate area also preferred the Hines team. The organizers even extended the period for public comment on the proposals after a summer meeting drew increased attention to the process. 

 

We believe that the careful effort and expansive public input spurred the competing development teams to look closely at what would be good for the city and community. And we think “The Parks at Walter Reed” will be a good fit.

 

Ward 4 D.C. Council member Muriel Bowser, who represents the site and the surrounding neighborhoods, is calling for the developers to fast-track a couple of uses for the campus. City officials hope to rework a site on Georgia Avenue at Butternut Street — home to a decrepit former hotel known as Building 18 — to house a new fire station, allowing Engine Co. 22 to move from its aging facility at Georgia and Missouri avenues.

 

And the Latin American Montessori Bilingual School and Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School plan to create programs at Walter Reed. The council member said construction should begin as soon as possible on both the educational and safety uses, since this work can be started prior to the formal land transfer from the Army. We agree that this should be a priority.

 

We’re looking forward to what’s to come: a vibrant new part of town with services, events and opportunities for residents from across the city.

 

 

A federal program that pumped a record $5 billion into failing schools is showing mixed results, with students at more than one-third of the targeted schools doing the same or worse after the schools received the funding, according to government data released Thursday.

 

The Obama administration has handed out $5.1 billion to states to improve academic performance at about 1,500 schools since 2009, the largest federal investment ever targeted at failing schools.

 

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement that the numbers point toward success.

 

“The progress, while incremental, indicates that local leaders and educators are leading the way to raising standards and achievement and driving innovation over the next few years,” Duncan said. “To build on this success in our disadvantaged communities, we must expand the most effective practices to accelerate progress for students and prepare them for success in college and careers.”

 

Others called the data evidence that the heavy federal investment is a bust.

 

“The promise was dramatic, lasting change in turning around the nation’s worst 5,000 schools,” said Andrew Smarick, a former federal education official and a partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a consulting firm. “You can’t help but look at the results and be discouraged. . . . We didn’t spend $5 billion of taxpayer money for incremental change.”

 

According to the data, students at about two-thirds of schools were more proficient on state reading and math tests in 2011-2012, compared to the year before their schools received the grants. But that progress was about the same made by students at all U.S. schools during the same period.

 

A significant number of schools that received School Improvement Grants — as many as half — were not included in the analysis for a variety of reasons, including missing data, the schools were shut down or the state tests were changed, making it impossible to compare scores over time.

 

If the data from those schools had been included in the analysis, the outcomes probably would have been worse, Smarick said.

 

A large chunk of the grant money came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The School Improvement Grants had been part of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 federal law. But stimulus spending increased the budget for the grants sixfold.

 

Under the Obama administration, schools could receive up to $2 million annually for three years. Any school accepting a grant had to agree to adopt one of four controversial strategies: Replace the principal and at least 50 percent of the staff; close the school and enroll students in another, better-performing school; close the school and reopen it as a charter school; or transform the school through new instructional strategies and other techniques.

 

But the strategy chosen by the school did not appear to make much difference in student proficiency rates, according to the federal analysis, as they all made about the same progress.

 

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said through a spokeswoman that the data show school improvement should be left to local leaders. “These tepid results underscore the limits of top-down mandates and the need for a new approach to education reform, one that allows state and local leaders to determine the best way to raise the bar in our schools,” Kline said.

 

The government released data for two groups of schools — those that began receiving grants in the 2009-2010 school year and those that began receiving grants the following year. A department spokeswoman said the most recent data from schools receiving the federal grants, which would reflect student performance in the 2012-2013 school year, will be released next year.