FOCUS DC News Wire 1/22/14

 

 

The D.C. Public Charter School Board revealed that today at 11 a.m. its executive director Scott Pearson will be testifying before Councilman David Catania and his education committee regarding the situation regarding Options Public Charter School. His remarks have been posted on-line and there is some extremely interesting information contained in the material.

 

First, on tonight's PCSB monthly meeting agenda is a discussion of the revised rules for contract and charter school board meeting minutes submission. Mr. Pearson explains that based upon the numerous comments received about these procedures the Board will conduct another public comment period and take a final vote at the February meeting.

 

Second, the PCSB is searching for a replacement for Options should the board take a final vote to rescind the school's charter effective at the end of the 2014 to 2015 term. Toward that effort the PCSB has hired Tami Lewis, who used to spearhead Special Education services for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education to work with OSSE, the Special Education Cooperative, DCPS, and charter schools to come up with a viable plan. The solution, according to Mr. Pearson, could very well include another charter taking over the existing Options site to form a new middle and high school that would serve emotionally and physically disabled students.

 

Mr. Pearson also indicates that all PCSB employees have taken ethics training as a result of the numerous conflict of interest activities alleged to have been conducted by the organization's former chief financial officer Jeremy Williams.

 

Finally, the charter oversight body has hired PriceWaterhouseCoopers to review the Board's methods for contract and financial reviews for the schools under its authority. But the bombshell is that PWC is also inspecting contracts over the past 24 months to see if other Options-like problems exist. My inquiry about whether similar problems have taken place at other charters has never been answered.

 

My next question is why the only way we have to learn these things is by reading written testimony submitted to the D.C. Council?

 

 

The Washington Teachers’ Union has filed a class-action grievance with D.C. Public Schools in the wake of the recent disclosure that 44 teachers received erroneous performance ratings last year, including one who was wrongly fired as a result.

 

WTU President Elizabeth Davis filed the grievance last week on behalf of all teachers who have ever been judged through IMPACT, the school system’s evaluation system. The grievance, which calls the evaluations “arbitrary and capricious” and lacking in transparency, seeks the right to investigate all D.C. teacher evaluations since 2009. It also seeks detailed information about how the school system calculates teachers’ ratings.

 

Davis said the union’s goal is to find out if more than 44 teachers — including any of the hundreds who have been fired for poor performance since 2009 — were affected by miscalculated IMPACT scores.

 

“Until we have all of the information that we requested, we’re not going to assume that no other teachers were affected,” Davis said, adding that the union will “do whatever we need to do in order to achieve remedy” for teachers who received inappropriately low ratings.

 

Chancellor Kaya Henderson called the grievance “absolutely baseless.”

 

“We’ve been transparent about the error and we’ve made corrections to ensure no teacher was adversely affected,” Henderson said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Unfortunately, the WTU seems more intent on playing politics than working with DCPS to support and grow our teachers. Our city deserves better.”

 

A neutral hearing officer will decide whether the grievance is warranted and the union’s requests should be granted, union officials said. That decision would stand unless either party requests an outside arbitrator, in which case the arbitrator would make a final, binding decision.

 

Unlike in many jurisdictions, the evaluations in the District are not subject to collective bargaining because of a law that gives D.C. school officials sole authority over how teachers are judged.

 

Then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee introduced IMPACT in 2009 as a centerpiece of the effort to improve the city’s long-struggling public schools. It was among the first evaluation systems in the nation to link teachers’ job security and pay to student test scores, making it a flash point in the national education debate.

 

Teachers receive one of five ratings: ineffective, minimally effective, developing, effective or highly effective. Those rated ineffective are fired, as are those rated “minimally effective” two years in a row or “developing” three years in a row.

 

Supporters say IMPACT is essential for school improvement, ensuring that excellent teachers are rewarded and inferior ones dismissed. Critics see a misguided and unfair system that overemphasizes students’ test scores.

 

The debate has largely centered on IMPACT’s use of test scores to quantify the “value” that a teacher adds to student achievement. That calculation — which involves a complex algorithm and accounts for 35 percent of a teacher’s overall rating — was the source of the evaluation errors in the 2012-13 school year.

 

Mathematica Policy Group, a contractor responsible for calculating the value-added scores, made a coding error that resulted in the 44 incorrect ratings, half of which were too high and the others too low.

 

School system officials announced the errors in December. At the time, they said that they were seeking to compensate teachers who mistakenly received low ratings. Officials paid $15,000 bonuses to three teachers whose scores were revised upward and offered back pay and reinstatement to the teacher who was wrongfully fired.

 

 

With classes canceled across the Washington region for Tuesday’s snowstorm, some school districts are preparing to add days to the academic calendar to make up for this school year’s winter closings.

 

In Virginia, Maryland and the District, students are required to attend school for 180 days each year, and school districts must add days to the academic calendar in the event that inclement weather cancels classes. Although most school systems build in buffers, schools in Fairfax County and the District, for example, already are adding days to the school calendar one month into winter.

 

In Fairfax, Tuesday’s cancellation was the fourth this school year. After forecasters called for snow showers to continue into the late evening Tuesday, administration officials decided to cancel classes Wednesday. Fairfax administrators already have decided that the school system will have classes Feb. 17, the Presidents’ Day holiday, to make up for Tuesday’s snow day. An additional makeup day is set for April 7, a teacher workday.

 

Jeff Platenberg, assistant superintendent for facilities and transportation in Fairfax, acknowledged that it can be a hassle for some parents to take leave from work to stay home or make last-minute plans for a babysitter when school is canceled. But student safety is always the priority, he said.

 

“An inconvenience is strictly that — it’s an inconvenience,” Platenberg said. “Every decision, I’m thinking: What’s in the best interest of our students?”

 

Melissa Salmanowitz, a spokeswoman for D.C. public schools, said that the city’s school year will be extended in June for the two school days lost to snow. D.C. schools did not close this month when a cold snap brought near-zero temperatures to the region.

 

Virginia requires school districts to offer a minimum of 990 instructional hours each year, which is the equivalent of 180 teaching days with 51 / 2 hours of academic instruction daily. Phil Kavits, a spokesman for Prince William County schools, said the district began the school year with about eight extra days built into the schedule because of a slightly longer school day — 5 hours 45 minutes — leaving the district with a few days to spare.

 

“But we have to keep a close eye on this at the rate we are going,” Kavits said.

 

Loudoun County, with a minimum of six hours per school day, builds in an even bigger cushion, with 15 extra days, said schools spokesman Wayde Byard.

 

“Even during Snowmageddon, we did not have to make up days,” Byard said, referring to the blizzard that shut down the Washington area in 2010. Loudoun also decided to close schools Wednesday because of the accumulation.

 

Alexandria has just three extra school days factored into its calendar. Tuesday’s school closure was the fourth this school year, said spokeswoman Kelly Alexander. She said the School Board will have to approve a plan for making up the lost time.

 

Prince George’s County schools spokesman Max Pugh said that the scheduled last day of school, June 5, might be moved back to make up for three days of canceled classes. But those extra days might not end up being used, Pugh said, as the state can grant “waivers” and forgive the lost time.

 

Schools in Arlington and Montgomery counties were scheduled to be closed Tuesday for teacher workdays.

 

Dana Tofig, a spokesman for Montgomery schools, said there is room in the calendar for one more weather-related shutdown before extra academic time is needed.

 

After three snow days earlier in the season, most of Arlington’s schools are still on schedule. But some elementary schools that have early-release days have begun adding hours to make up for lost time.