FOCUS DC News Wire 1/21/14

 

 

Petula Dvorak is right to criticize plans to turn the historic Franklin School at 13th and K streets NW into a luxury hotel, corporate headquarters or a private museum [“The lesson in Franklin School,” Metro, Jan. 10]. But she missed an important fact: District law requires the city to offer surplus school buildings to public charter schools before developers.

 

Charters educate 44 percent of all District students enrolled in public school. They have an on-time graduation rate 21 percentage points higher than that of the traditional public school system. And charter school students outperform their ­traditional-school peers on standardized tests.

 

The District government has flouted the law for years by selling unfilled schoolhouses to developers for luxury condominiums or letting them rot rather than seriously consider their use by public charter schools. Franklin deserves better. A charter could make it a public schoolhouse once more.

 

 

Within six days this month, two teachers were robbed at gunpoint near one of the city’s more prominent charter schools, and thieves broke into the building and took computers.

 

The head of the Capital City Public Charter School, Karen Dresden, said Sunday that she doubted that the incidents were related and did not think either involved anyone connected to the school.

 

The robbery occurred about 6 p.m. Jan. 10 as the teachers walked to their parked cars near the school in the 100 block of Peabody Street NW, east of the Brightwood neighborhood.

 

Calling it “very unsettling for all,” Dresden said that “it is alarming when things happen close to home to members of our community.”

 

The robbery occurred at Oglethorpe Street and Second Place NW, police said. Dresden said purses were taken, indicating that the motive was money.

 

In the burglary Wednesday, thieves broke in through a window and took computers from a classroom, Dresden said. She said it was unlikely that it involved any keys possibly taken in the robbery.

 

She said the school has taken steps to upgrade safety and security.

 

 

I am the parent of a boy who, along with two of his friends, painted graffiti on an exterior wall of a Fairfax County public school a few years back. I am unaware of the punishments the other boys received, but my son was initially suspended and eventually excluded from attending that school. He was later reassigned to another school in the county.

 

At no time during the disciplinary process did anyone in our family point a finger at the school or the principal. It wasn’t their fault. Yet when the federal government last week unveiled new guidelines for trying to end racial disparities in school discipline, some of the conversation around the issue made it sound as though the schools and their staffs are at fault. A Jan. 10 Post editorial headline, “Discrimination in the principal’s office,” implied that principals are the problem and that they had better fix the “racially lopsided results” or else. I would respectfully suggest that this line of reasoning is a little lopsided.

 

Parents and students are responsible for bad behavior. In my son’s case, I took half of the responsibility for failing to provide sufficient parental guidance. My son assumed the other half for not making a better choice at 3 a.m., when his friends called him to “go have some fun.”

 

In announcing the new guidelines, aimed in part at avoiding punishment that keeps kids out of school, Education Secretary Arne Duncan expressed concern about students being “unsupervised” during suspensions. In fact, throughout my son’s suspension and every morning while he and I waited in our car for the county-provided bus to take him to his new school, he was not unsupervised but rather engaged in a conversation with his parents — his and every other student’s primary source of the adult mentorship the Education Department wants students to receive. We discussed why what he had done was unacceptable not only in school but also in any civilized society.

 

Granted, his choice that night did increase his risk “of economic and social problems,” as the guidelines pointed out, and he has endured the many consequences that followed. Those consequences were the result of my parenting and his choices, rather than a “racially lopsided” principal’s office.

 

Numbers can tell whatever story we want them to tell, especially when we color-code them. But when a student mouths off to a teacher, as I have witnessed in the Fairfax school where I am a sixth-grade teacher, the principal’s punishment is — as it should be — color-blind. A parent is the one who should have taught her child not to speak in this manner. And when a student decks another student in the face during gym class, as I have also seen, the principal’s punishment is also color-blind. Here, too, it is the parent who should have taught his child that this was not an acceptable action. Perhaps sending a courtesy copy of these guidelines to all parents of school-age children, regardless of color, would encourage new approaches to parenting that might assist schools and principals in preventing behaviors that simply cannot be tolerated.

 

I’m writing a newspaper commentary because my parents raised me to understand that this is an appropriate way to express myself. And if it gets me called into my principal’s office, I will not blame her or our school for the punishment I receive. Instead, I will follow my son’s example and take responsibility for my actions, apologize to those I have hurt and adjust my choices from that point forward. That’s what my son did, and he has come out on the other side as quite an incredible young man.

 

 

A proposal to improve Dunbar High School by converting it to an autonomous and selective school has generated widespread debate among teachers, students, alumni and community members. It’s a debate not only about the future of Dunbar, one of the District’s most storied public schools, but also about the city’s ability to serve all students.

 

The push for change, which a small group of alumni and parents quietly developed over the past several months, would give Dunbar more freedom to make decisions about whom it hires, how it spends its money and how it designs its academic offerings.

 

But the proposal, first reported last week in The Washington Post, would also transform a neighborhood school that is legally obligated to take all comers into an application-only institution that could choose its students. Such an arrangement most likely would give Dunbar, in the 100 block of N Street NW, the ability to choose not to serve the neediest neighborhood children.

 

It’s an idea that could jump-start a transformation of Dunbar, which was once known for educating the District’s elite black students and is now one of the city’s worst-performing schools.

 

But critics of the proposal say it would be a false transformation, built on the rejection of students who come to class with profound challenges — including poor reading ability, deficient math skills and difficult home lives — that need to be addressed.

 

“I would just hope that whatever solution they come up with, it’s something that takes into account every single student in the system and takes care of every kid in the school,” said Kat Calvin, who runs a nonprofit organization that works with Dunbar’s female students. “There’s always this temptation to write off certain children and say it’s too late for them. That’s never true.”

 

A Dunbar sophomore, concerned about what a major change might bring, said, “What should be the goal is trying to fix the problems that are here and ensuring that students are getting what they need.”

 

The alumni and parents who developed the proposal planned to pitch it to D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson as a way to restore Dunbar’s reputation for academic achievement, according to interviews and talking points obtained by The Post.

 

Henderson declined to comment, as did two of Dunbar’s most influential living graduates, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D). Former school board member Carrie Thornhill — a confidante of Gray’s and a 1961 Dunbar graduate who has been working on the proposal — also declined to comment. Principal Stephen Jackson did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Alison Stewart, who interviewed many alumni and school leaders for her 2013 book about Dunbar, “First Class,” said she sensed that many graduates felt sad, and sometimes frustrated, that the school no longer offers students the kind of experience it once did.

 

One graduate “expressed dismay that students who really wanted to learn and were there to learn had to do so in a sometimes disruptive environment,” Stewart wrote in an e-mail. She also said Dunbar, given its history, seems a natural choice to help meet the demand for more rigorous schools. “It is wise for administrators to take a look at the one-size-fits-all high school model, given there are . . . so many students in the system at so many different levels.”

 

The District has six selective high schools that enroll almost 4,000 students. Charter high schools enroll 6,400 students, and neighborhood high schools — many of which parents consider options of last resort — have about 7,000.

 

Some people worry that creating another selective high school at Dunbar would further concentrate the neediest students in the neighborhood high schools that remain.

 

Cardozo Education Campus, the neighborhood high school closest to Dunbar, has a large number of special education students (at least a third of its enrollment) and students learning English as a second language (at least a quarter). Many students arrive years behind grade level, and fewer than four in 10 graduate on time. What would happen to Cardozo if it was asked to take on Dunbar’s most difficult students?

 

“We already have selective schools,” said a Dunbar employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of retribution. “Adding another just makes the others vulnerable. The other schools automatically become permanent underclass hubs.”

 

Faith Hubbard, president of the Ward Five Council on Education, said she supports Dunbar’s push for more flexibility on budget matters, curriculum and staffing. But she, too, expressed concern about requiring students to apply in order to enroll.

 

“Wouldn’t it be even more a story of victory if you were able to do this with the students that you have?” she said.

 

Hubbard suggested that it might make sense to start an application-only program at Dunbar while reserving seats to accommodate neighborhood children. “If there were a particular program or two that was selective at the school, then that would be great,” she said, “because you could have a variety of kids learning together and encouraging each other to learn.”

 

Johnathon Carrington, Dunbar’s 2013 valedictorian, said he would like to see standards set for admission to the school. Students who skip class, misbehave and refuse to participate make it difficult to learn, he said. But he said admission standards, at least at first, should be based largely on students’ efforts, on their willingness to try.

 

“They should set the bar where it’s pretty reasonable for the students so they can apply themselves, and then, as years go, they should raise the expectations,” said Carrington, a freshman at Georgetown University who remarked that he often wonders how he got into such a prestigious university.

 

“I feel as though all the standards that Georgetown has, I didn’t meet all of them,” he said. “The future students of Dunbar — I don’t want them to feel that way. I want them to feel: ‘I worked hard in high school. I met all of the standards. I got into a good college and feel as though I should be there.’ ”

 

Questions about Dunbar’s future are sometimes difficult to separate from the future of the Truxton Circle neighborhood, which — like much of the city — has gentrified quickly in recent years, becoming noticeably whiter, younger and wealthier.

 

Students are “already living in a city that is changing under their feet,” said a member of the Dunbar community, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships at the school and who said Dunbar’s new, $122 million building has intensified the feeling among many students that they don’t belong.

 

“They’ve lived in the city longer than most of us, and it’s becoming a whole new place, a place that’s pretty loudly saying, ‘This is not for you,’ ” the Dunbar community member said. “And now they’re here in this school that seems like it’s for students that are better than they are. . . . And now all of these people are saying, ‘Yeah, we do want students who are better than you.’ ”

 

 

D.C. Public Schools officials have changed how they evaluate principals in response to complaints that the previous system — which rated more than half of the city’s principals below “effective” — was unfair and too tightly hitched to student test scores.

 

With the old system, an otherwise strong principal would have been rated below effective if test scores at his or her school stagnated or declined in either math or reading. Now, test scores and other student achievement measures will account for 50 percent of a principal’s annual rating.

 

Officials also have scrapped, at least for this year, a plan to freeze the pay of principals rated below effective. All principals reappoint­ed to their jobs next year will be eligible for annual raises, known as step increases.

 

“This was an issue of particular concern to our principals, so we decided to press pause,” said Jason Kamras, the school system’s chief of human capital. Kamras said the school system still believes in merit pay and will continue to award bonuses to principals rated “highly effective.”

 

The changes have drawn a range of reactions from principals, with some calling the ­changes mere tweaks and others praising the school system for seeking and listening to feedback.

 

“I am pleased with the outcome. We have a lot to be proud of,” said Atasha M. James, principal of Leckie Elementary in Southwest, who served on a task force that offered suggestions for changes. “The revisions address all of the issues raised by principals, and our input was taken seriously.”

 

The evaluations, based on a combination of supervisor observation and student achievement data, are the principals’ version of the IMPACT evaluation system that has been used to judge teachers in the city since 2009.

 

The 2012-13 school year was the first time that the evaluations were used to sort principals and assistant principals into performance categories: ineffective, developing, effective and highly effective.

 

Many principals said they were surprised and frustrated when they received their ratings by e-mail in September. D.C. schools officials had failed to explain how the principals were going to be evaluated, they said, and the ratings were a shock. Half of the system’s principals were “developing” and 8 percent were “ineffective” in 2012-13. Far fewer of the system’s teachers — 23 percent — were rated below effective that same year.

 

The ratings do not affect a principal’s job security, because all principals work on one-year contracts and can be dismissed for any reason at the end of a school year. But they do determine whether principals are seen as exemplary and offered additional leadership and mentorship opportunities, or whether they are seen as in need of improvement and greater scrutiny.

 

Kamras initially defended the principal evaluations. But he changed his tone as some principals and assistant principals erupted, with some threatening to leave the system and others speaking out against the evaluations in meetings with administrators.

 

“We made some mistakes,” Kamras wrote in an e-mail to The Washington Post in October. “We should have given our principals and [assistant principals] more information about the process earlier in the year. And we need to give even more thought to how to balance test scores and one’s leadership skill when evaluating principals.”

 

Kamras convened a task force of principals, assistant principals and instructional superintendents to suggest changes to the evaluation system. He said he and Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson considered that feedback as they made revisions.

 

The evaluations combine a school’s progress toward five student achievement goals — including proficiency rates on standardized tests in math and reading — with supervisor observations of a principal’s performance in six areas of leadership, including retaining talented teachers, engaging families and setting a vision for the school’s instruction and culture.

 

Last year, those factors were combined according to a complicated blueprint that made it difficult to understand how much each component counted toward final ratings. Now the factors are combined with a simple pie chart: mid-year observations count for 20 percent; end-of-year observations 30 percent; and the five student achievement goals count for 10 percent each.

 

Supervisors will have discretion to raise a principal’s rating based on a school's individual circumstances or challenges.

 

One principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal, said the changes do not fundamentally alter the underlying emphasis on test scores. The revisions reflect “absolutely no new thinking,” the principal said.

 

But others said that the school system was sincere about listening to concerns from the task force and that the new system is far more clear.

 

“I appreciate being able to calculate and understand my score more easily based on these changes,” said Cynthia Robinson, assistant principal at Seaton Elementary in Northwest. “DCPS leadership was very responsive to the concerns school leaders voiced about their evaluations.”

 

Kamras said that the school system is exploring more revisions for the 2014-15 school year, including the potential for including feedback from teachers in principal evaluations. The school system also is considering the possibility of multi-year contracts for principals, he said, a move that many D.C. educators and activists have advocated as a way to stem high turnover and give school leaders the time they need to make and sustain needed changes.