FOCUS DC News Wire 1/23/14

 

 

District lawmakers appear poised to pass legislation meant to address large and enduring discrepancies between boys’ and girls’ sports opportunities in the city’s public schools, disparities that triggered two recent civil rights complaints and years of frustration among parents, athletes and activists.

 

The bill, introduced by D.C. Council Member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) and cosponsored by all 12 of his colleagues, would require traditional public and public charter schools to report how much they spend on boys’ and girls’ sports. Schools also would have to publicly disclose the number of male and female participants and the quality of their equipment, fields and facilities.

 

“We’ve been having this conversation for a very long time,” said McDuffie, the father of two young girls. “We need to get past the conversation stage and get to the action stage.”

 

Advocates for girls’ sports embraced the measure during a council hearing Wednesday, calling it an important step toward living up to the promise of Title IX — the federal civil rights law that ensures gender equity in scholastic sports — and ending decades of complacence about lack of opportunity for girls in public school athletics.

 

“We shouldn’t let our student athletes struggle with inequities that are visible and reversible,” said Katherine L. Garrett, the mother of two girls in the District’s public schools, who offered a litany of ways in which girls’ teams have been treated poorly: soccer games canceled because fields weren’t prepared, basketball games canceled because referees weren’t available and uniforms with numbers made out of duct tape.

 

The bill also would require the mayor to create a five-year plan for ensuring equity citywide, as well as Title IX coordinators at each school and a new NCAA coordinator to ensure both boys and girls are being groomed for potential play in — and scholarships to — college.

 

Janice Dove Johnson, a parent who founded the Sankofa Project to push for athletic equity in the District, said she has seen too many girls lose out because they don’t have access to sports in school. “Failure to pass this bill will cause our D.C. female scholar-athletes to continue to be left behind, and hundreds of thousands of scholarship dollars left on the table,” she said.

 

Neena Chaudhry, legal counsel for the National Women’s Law Center, said the bill could move D.C. from being one of the worst Title IX offenders to a model of fairness. “Passing this bill would really show that the District is finally committed to leveling the playing field for girls,” she said.

 

Chaudhry said that only a handful of states collect such detailed participation and spending information to monitor equity between girls’ and boys’ sports teams.

 

Last summer, the National Women’s Law Center filed a federal Title IX discrimination complaint against the District’s school system, citing disparities between the percentage of girls enrolled in a school and the percentage playing sports.

 

The participation gaps in high school ranged from a low of 5 percent at majority-female Banneker to 26 percent at Ballou and Roosevelt, according to 2010 data the law center obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. That complaint is still under investigation.

 

A second Title IX complaint against District schools filed in May 2012 was resolved in October when the city agreed to begin collecting and publicly sharing the number of girls participating in sports. The city also agreed to expand girls’ sports team rosters where there’s interest and to take “ongoing steps” to develop girls’ interest and ability in sports.

 

School system officials said Wednesday that the settlement has sparked progress. Most high schools now have female sports liaisons, who are responsible for encouraging and supporting girls’ sports, and the system is planning to measure girls’ interest in athletics by administering a survey in February to students in eighth grade and above, said Chief of Schools John Davis.

 

If girls express interest for opportunities that aren’t available, the school system is prepared to pay for more offerings, he said. About 17 percent of high school girls played sports last year, compared to 25 percent of boys, he said.

 

“We know that we still have much more to accomplish,” Davis said.

 

Clark Ray, director of the state athletic association for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), represented the administration of Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) at the hearing.

 

“We applaud the bill’s focus and intent and believe that the legislation’s requirements are well-aligned with the efforts that OSSE, and the District as a whole, has recently embarked upon,” Ray said.

 

 

Charter Schools vs. Community Schools

 

An audience member objected to the way charter schools were developing, especially the way the students with the most involved parents ended up in charter schools, and the rest ended up in community schools.

 

"This is the problem of not being able to put the toothpaste back in the tube," Bowser said.

 

Bowser said she expected to continue to see a lot of charter schools attempt to open, but not always serving the people who needed them.

 

"We ought to be able to limit the number of charters that open and be able to direct what part of the city they open in," she said.

 

She continued: "You also probably know I have the unpopular idea that charter schools have to educate kids in their neighborhoods." 

 

Bowser recalled that she had a big argument with journalist Tom Sherwood on this issue on WAMU's "Kojo Nnamdi Show". However, her opinion was unchanged.

 

"I do think we have to have a neighborhood preference for charter schools," Bowser said.

 

 

The District’s traditional public school system is in negotiations to run Options Public Charter, a school for at-risk youth that faces possible closure in the wake of allegations that its former managers diverted millions of tax dollars meant for students.

 

The discussions, which officials disclosed at a D.C. Council hearing Wednesday, are part of a larger effort to allow Options to remain open until the end of the 2014-15 school year, giving the city more time to figure out how to best serve the school’s students, said Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board.

 

Most Options students have severe emotional or learning disabilities, or have been homeless or incarcerated. And most have experienced repeated academic failure: On average, students attended 21 / 2 secondary schools before landing at Options.

 

The city charter board voted last month to begin the process of revoking Options’ charter, arguing that the law requires revocation in cases of fiscal mismanagement. The board is scheduled to make its final decision in February, and should the school close, its approximately 400 students — nearly 200 of whom have the most severe special-education needs — would have to find another school.

 

“Finding appropriate and lasting placements for the students now served by Options is both necessary and a challenge,” said Josh Kern, the court-appointed receiver who has overseen the school since the lawsuit was filed in the fall. “I worry that outright closure of Options raises the very real specter of many students rotating among the District’s schools in search of an education.”

 

Nathaniel Beers, chief of specialized instruction for D.C. public schools, said the school system wants to help ensure stability for those students. But he also said the school system simply cannot absorb the hundreds of challenging students who would need a new place to go to class should Options close.

 

“If the school closed tomorrow and all the kids came to DCPS, we would have a crisis in our neighborhood schools,” said Beers, who added that many middle schools and high schools are already struggling to serve high numbers of special-needs students.

 

More than 180 students at Options are identified as having the most severe special-education needs. The school system has the capacity to serve only about 20 of those students, Beers said.

 

Options was thrown into turmoil in October, when lawyers for the D.C. Office of the Attorney General filed a civil lawsuit alleging that three former Options managers created a contracting scheme to divert more than $3 million from the school to two for-profit companies they controlled.

 

Pearson, speaking at the council hearing Wednesday, faced criticism from council members who asked why the charter board hadn’t considered the fate of Options students — among the city’s most troubled children — before voting last month to take the first step toward closing the school.

 

“You acted precipitously to close this school . . . without having any plan for what should happen to these children,” Education Committee Chairman David A. Catania (I-At Large) said.

 

Catania and colleagues David Grosso (I-At Large) and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) asked why Options had been allowed to continue operating — and was even granted a 15-year charter renewal in 2011 — given the school’s pattern of poor academic performance and documented failures in providing students with required special-education services.

 

Pearson said the renewal was granted shortly before his arrival at the charter board.

 

“I don’t think they did a particularly thorough job of that review,” Pearson said. But he acknowledged that if not for the school’s recent financial problems and the alleged contracting scheme, the school would probably still be operating as it had been.

 

Talks about the future of Options have included Kern as well as representatives from the city charter board and the school system. The charter board recently hired Tami Lewis, the former head of special education at the District’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education, to coordinate the discussions.

 

Pearson said that in the long-term, the charter board could decide to find another charter operator to run Options. Catania said he expects to receive a plan for the school’s 2014-15 operation, including a budget, by March.

 

The District must plan and budget for the possibility that some Options students would be best served at a private school, Grosso said. “We shouldn’t kid ourselves,” he said.

 

 

Yesterday's public statements before Councilman David Catania's Education Committee by D.C. Public Charter School Board executive director Scott Pearson and the D.C. Superior Court appointed Receiver for Options Public Charter School Josh Kern exposed a split in opinion between the two men as to whether the troubled facility should be closed. Mr. Pearson remarked that "In fact, at Mr. Kern’s request, we delayed the initiation of revocation proceedings to give him more time to assess conditions at the school. Yet despite Mr. Kern’s excellent work, we were unable to find any cause for PCSB to further defer revoking Options PCS’ charter, which we believe is required by a plain reading of the School Reform Act." Mr. Kern's written attestation presented at the same hearing states that "As I explained in my testimony to the PCSB, I do not believe revocation of the charter is required."

 

The debate over whether Options PCS needs to be closed is far from a philosophical one. Caught right in the cross-hair are an extremely at-risk population of students. As Mr. Kern explained, of the approximately 400 kids currently attending the school:

 

 

During Wednesday's session the Washington Post's Emma Brown tweeted that DCPS's chief of special education Dr. Nathaniel Beers commented that if Options closes and all kids go to already struggling DCPS neighborhood schools "we would have a crisis." His remark is a direct repudiation of PCSB's assertion, written regarding its recommendation to shutter the school dated December 10, 2013, that "Staff has discussed this possibility with DCPS, who have expressed confidence that, with enough notice, they could serve, and serve well, the Options students."

 

Mr. Kern has done an award-winning first-class job turning around Options in an amazingly short period. There is now no real reason to inject new instability when everyone associated with this school has already lived through the recent horrible instances of management malpractice. Options is not the same school it was in the past. The PCSB should reverse its vote to begin revocation proceedings and allow the school to remain open.

 

 

Some have criticized DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson for reported remarks that the school system should "outsource" middle schools to charters. Here's what she really said, which happens to be something that's well worth considering.

 

Middle schools have been the subject of much debate, not just in DC and not just in recent weeks. We'll take a close look at this complex subject in future posts, but let's start with the exchange that triggered the recent controversy here.

 

Henderson made her comments on middle schools in mid-November, when the topic arose at a DC Council hearing on school boundaries and feeder patterns. Several Councilmembers and a number of those who testified identified middle schools as a weak link in the DCPS system, with families often leaving after elementary school.

 

According to the Washington Post, Henderson "suggested that perhaps the city should figure out how to funnel children to charter schools in the middle grades, arguing that 'they know how to do middle school really well.'" Councilmember David Catania, who was chairing the hearing, retorted that he was "not about to outsource middle schools to charters."

 

Since then, the exchange, as reported, has become fodder for tweets, sound bites, and mayoral campaign rhetoric. Most recently, candidate Andy Shallal said that, while he didn't want to "demonize" anyone, he did "take exception when the top educators say we cannot do middle school."

 

Henderson's comments in context

 

But let's take a look at what Henderson actually said, in context. (You can view her statements on the video below, or watch the entire hearing by clicking here. The relevant discussion occurs at about 4 hours and 17 minutes in.)

 

The exchange began after Councilmember Yvette Alexander complained that Ward 7's H.D. Woodson High School—which was rebuilt in 2011 with great fanfare as a school focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)—hasn't lived up to expectations. She also bemoaned the fact that many students in Ward 7, which she represents, go to schools outside their assigned boundaries.

 

Henderson pointed out that charter schools have siphoned off many students from the DCPS system, including more than 50% of those in Ward 7. This exodus was predictable, she said: if you give people choice, and create "a whole new set of schools that [are] better than DCPS, then people will want to go to them."

 

"Now," Henderson continued, "we have the opportunity to say, these are all of our schools. How do we equalize the resources across the sectors, or how do we have the sectors working together?"

 

Then she launched into the comments that appear to have landed her in hot water: "One of the things I take my hat off to the charter sector on is that they know how to do middle school really well, right? So if we can't do middle school well and they can do middle school well, then how do we funnel kids through those middle schools and then bring some of those folks to H.D. Woodson, if they have STEM middle schools, or whatnot? We've got to be creative."

 

Alexander didn't recoil at this suggestion. In fact, she said she agreed. And then Catania reminded Alexander that her time was up and went on to express his outrage at the idea of "outsourcing middle school."

 

Henderson's words, standing alone, could be interpreted as a statement that DCPS "can't do middle school well." But in context, it's clear that Henderson was focusing on the situation in Ward 7, and possibly Ward 8, where large numbers of students have already left the DCPS system for charter schools. She wasn't advocating abandoning, for example, Deal Middle School in Ward 3.

 

Still, Henderson's candor about DC's middle school difficulties was surprising, because she has generally been a staunch defender of middle school progress. After the hearing, in a written response to Catania's demand for a "middle school plan," Henderson pointed to improvement at several middle schools and even singled out Kelly Miller, the feeder school for H.D. Woodson, which has seen double-digit growth in its test scores recently. Why she didn't mention those developments at the hearing is a mystery.

 

But it's also true that Kelly Miller's test scores are still nowhere near those at high-achieving charter middle schools like those operated by KIPP and DC Prep. And let's take a calm, clear-eyed look at what Henderson really was saying, and ask if it was that outrageous.

 

Cooperation with charters, not just competition

 

Henderson's basic point was that we should stop putting charters in one box and DCPS schools in another. Instead, we should look at all our public schools—traditional and charter—as part of a common set of possibilities for educating DC children.

 

Some will disagree with that approach, either because they're opposed to the concept of charters or because they feel Henderson should be able to replicate the results that charters have had. But by this point, it's clear that charters are here to stay. And there are a host of reasons, many of them structural, for DCPS's failure to equal the success of some charters.

 

If all students in a given neighborhood were "funneled" into charters for middle school, it would at least eliminate one argument raised by some who are skeptical of the results achieved by charters: that they're successful only because they manage, one way or another, to avoid enrolling the students who are the hardest to educate.

 

And in an area of the District where many students are already enrolled in charter schools, maybe we should consider creating educational pathways for children that could lead through both sectors, if that's what would benefit them most.

 

Henderson is now working on the middle school plan that Catania called for. Whether she'll continue to advocate for such cross-sector cooperation remains to be seen. The advisory committee that is reviewing school boundaries and feeder patterns has also indicated it intends to look at that possibility.

 

Given the outcry that greeted Henderson's remarks at the November hearing, she and the advisory committee may both decide to back away from that idea. That would be unfortunate. It's time that we stopped pitting the charter and DCPS sectors against each other and started figuring out how they can work together for the benefit of DC's students.