- Could D.C. learn from New York's charter school facility task force?
- KIPP gives the old college try to its graduates, watching over their success [KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
- EDUCATION BRIEFS: Howard University Middle School Students, Faculty Honored [Howard University PCS mentioned]
Could D.C. learn from New York's charter school facility task force?
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
March 27, 2014
New York Mayor de Blasio revealed the other day that he has created a task force to come up with solutions regarding the co-locations of charter schools in traditional public school buildings. The move comes shortly after Mr. de Blasio reversed a decision by the Bloomberg Administration to allow three new charters from Eva Moskowitz' Success Charter School Network to open in New York City schools. Five others were allowed to proceed as planned. The creation of this body is being viewed as a method for the Mayor to soften his criticism of these alternative schools.
Education reformers in the nation's capital should pay close attention to the recommendations of this group. After 17 years the charter school facility issue is far from settled here. The $3,000 per child facility allotment, which has not been increased in years, gives the impression that all is well on this front, while charters continue to operate in buildings better suited for warehouses than classrooms and DCPS receives hundreds of millions of dollars to build shining pedagogical palaces. To add insult to injury the pending Mayoral election has meant that the spigot has been turned off regarding turning over shuttered traditional school sites to those desperate for permanent homes.
Across the country the movement is facing the same problem. The recently released ranking of charter school laws by the Center for Education Reform demonstrates that states uniformly provide little or no funding for charter school facilities. So the short answer is that no one has figured out how to equitably treat charters the same as regular public schools when it comes to bricks and mortar.
Let's hope that New York figures out something that the rest of us have missed. Until then we will unfortunately have to waste precious time and money searching for space instead of educating our children.
KIPP gives the old college try to its graduates, watching over their success [KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
March 26, 2014
Notre Dame de Namur University, founded in 1851, sits amid lush lawns and big pines in an affluent neighborhood of Belmont, Calif., about two miles from the little house where I grew up. My younger son and I sneak onto the campus to play Frisbee golf when visiting my mother and brother. I assumed from the look of the place that it catered to rich kids, but I was wrong.
More than half of its students are the first in their families to go to college. NDNU is playing an unusual role, along with 41 other colleges in 13 states and the District, getting graduates of KIPP, the nation’s largest and best-known charter school network, through college. KIPP and several other educational organizations have thrown out the old philosophy of letting students struggle on their own to develop college survival skills. Instead, they are partnering with colleges that promise to show students how to study and help them handle crises with mentors and advisers.
KIPP founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin were not pleased when their organization reported in 2011 that only 33 percent of KIPP graduates old enough to have graduated from college had actually done so. “We aspire for our students to earn four-year degrees at the same rate as students from the nation’s highest-income families, giving them the same opportunity for self-sufficiency,” they said in a statement.
A new survey shows the KIPP percentage has jumped to 44 percent, plus another 5 percentage points for those who completed a two-year degree. The average college graduation rate for low-income Americans is 10 percent.
KIPP has been particularly active in the District, where it has 12 schools. The local colleges partnering with KIPP are Trinity Washington University, with 16 former KIPP students; Maryland, with 11; and Georgetown, with five. KIPP-partnering colleges nationwide include Franklin & Marshall, Penn, Brown, Vanderbilt, Rice, the University of Texas at Austin, Duke, Spelman and Morehouse.
Under the partnerships, colleges agree to make college affordable for KIPP students, 86 percent of whom are from low-income families. They also provide guidance and resources: College officials are assigned to keep in touch with them, and the students have campus activities and mentors to support them.
In the past several years, according to Jason Murray, NDNU vice president for enrollment management, the college has aggressively sought funds for low-income students. It won federal designation as a Hispanic-Serving Institution. That reputation drew the attention of KIPP, which has seven schools in the Bay Area. Seven KIPP graduates attend the college. Murray said the school has committed to raise that number to 15, and it has scholarships.
Other high-performing charter networks, including YES Prep and Achievement First, have been developing college partnerships, as have the Big Picture and Cristo Rey school networks. All have benefited from the pioneering work of the New York-based Posse Foundation, which began creating partnerships in 1989 with colleges willing to take groups of students needing extra support.
Assessing the success of such efforts is difficult. KIPP is one of the few organizations with the resources to do it. Its 44 percent college graduation rate is based on the 244 graduates it found among the 559 students who completed eighth grade between 1998 and 2003 at the first two middle schools established by Levin and Feinberg, in the South Bronx and Houston. The calculation allows four years to complete high school and six to complete college, the standard for college graduation statistics.
KIPP now has 141 schools in 20 states and the District, with a total of 50,000 students. Next year it will begin counting college degrees awarded to students who finished eighth grade in 2005 at three other middle schools, including the KIPP DC: KEY Academy. The number of students who must be counted will get very large very quickly, but the KIPP people say they intend to do that, with the help of colleges such as NDNU.
EDUCATION BRIEFS: Howard University Middle School Students, Faculty Honored [Howard University PCS mentioned]
The Washington Informer
March 26, 2014
Mayor Vincent C. Gray reaffirmed his commitment to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education on Monday, March 24, when he recognized students and faculty at Howard University Middle School of Mathematics and Science Public Charter School in Northwest for outstanding academic achievement and overall contribution in the STEM disciplines.
During the ceremony, students and educators received “Striving for STEM Excellence” awards. The event kicked off with a cheer from the school’s cheerleading squad and a host of distinguished visitors who included corporate and public school partners applauded the school’s faculty and students for their outstanding efforts.