- D.C.’s charter and public schools need to coordinate efforts in locating campuses [Harmony PCS mentioned]
- Tensions over DCPS-charter planning reflect different perspectives
- Just give charters the empty DCPS buildings [Harmony PCS, Two Rivers, Carlos Rosario PCS, and Shining Stars PCS mentioned]
- Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Over Closure Of 15 D.C. Schools
- Judge Rules D.C. School Closures Not Racially Biased
D.C.’s charter and public schools need to coordinate efforts in locating campuses [Harmony PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
Editorial Board
July 22, 2014
PLANS BY a well-regarded charter school organization to open a science-themed school in the District near a similarly themed traditional school has angered some school system officials. That’s not surprising since competition generally tends to make people feel threatened. But competition is also healthy, spurring extra effort and better performance. That, in fact, has been one effect of the burgeoning charter school sector on public education in the city, and it is why proposals to limit charter schools should be rejected.
The move by Harmony Public Schools, a Houston-based network known for its high-performing college preparatory schools, to open an elementary school with a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) focus across the street from Langley Elementary was criticized as an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars by D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson. “Either we want neighborhood schools or we want cannibalism, but you can’t have both,” she told The Post’s Emma Brown.
Ms. Henderson stressed to us she is not advocating cutting down on quality charters, only that there should be cooperation and collaboration so that the entire educational needs of the city are served. It is hard to argue against cooperation, but it must be a two-way street. The fact is that D.C. officials — despite some improvement under Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) — have not been as helpful as they could be in providing appropriate facilities for charters. Harmony officials detailed a frustrating search for space that is typical of the experience of other public charter schools, even though there are many empty or soon-to-be empty school buildings in the District.
We think the concerns about Harmony’s location are overblown. The building previously housed a parochial school and there are advantages when schools are located near each other. But the case certainly demonstrates the need for better communication between the two education sectors. It is absurd, for example, that Ms. Henderson learned of Harmony’s new home via Twitter and that Harmony superintendent Soner Tarim had no idea that Langley is also a STEM school. Why isn’t there a common view of which neighborhoods might best be served with charters? Shouldn’t there be a coordinated effort to locate schools there?
When the charter sector was seen as more of an educational boutique, the city could get away with it operating in a silo. But now that some 44 percent of public school students attend charters, a smarter approach is needed. On the table must be examination of whether charters should offer neighborhood preference and whether there should be modifications in the charter approval process.
That doesn’t mean putting a cap on charters. Preventing Harmony from taking up shop next door would not make the underperforming Langley — where fewer than half the students are proficient in reading and math — a better school. Indeed, we suggest that Harmony’s launch could help. Not only does it have a proven record of success in STEM education from which the traditional school could learn, but it also would provide it with an incentive to do better.
Tensions over DCPS-charter planning reflect different perspectives
Greater Greater Education
By Natalie Wexler
July 22, 2014
Recent calls for coordinated planning between the DCPS and charter sectors have led to the fraying of a once-cordial relationship between the two. But the underlying tensions aren't new.
Recently, the DCPS Chancellor and the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) have called for "joint planning" between the traditional public school and charter sectors that would place limits on the growth and location of new charters. The charter sector has adamantly resisted that suggestion.
To Chancellor Kaya Henderson and DME Abigail Smith, along with some DCPS parents, joint planning signifies rationality and an end to a wasteful duplication of resources. To many in the charter sector, the phrase smacks of bureaucracy, centralization, and dangerous inroads on the autonomy that has enabled them to thrive.
As someone with a foot in each education sector, I can understand and sympathize with both points of view. I'm a member of the board of a DC charter, and I've tutored in two DCPS high-poverty schools. I've contributed financially to both DCPS and charters. And I've had both formal and informal conversations with educators and officials in both sectors, from classroom teachers to top administrators.
DCPS's perspective
DCPS wants to ensure that the plans it's making aren't undermined by charter competition. Henderson would like to avoid situations where charter schools locate close to DCPS schools that have a similar focus, as will happen in one DC neighborhood this fall, and lure away students the system expects to serve.
Henderson has said that she would like to see a process that allowed officials of DC's Public Charter School Board (PCSB) to join with other DC policy-makers in identifying which neighborhoods most need new schools or specialized programs. The PCSB, which is the District's charter authorizer, would then use those priorities when it considers new charter applications.
The DME's recent proposal to redraw DCPS boundaries and feeder patterns has put a spotlight on the difficulty of making plans for DCPS without knowing how many more charters will spring up and where they will locate. The proposal, for example, calls for DCPS to open several new middle schools. But what if, after DCPS spends millions of dollars renovating or constructing these schools, new charter middle schools locate nearby?
As the charter sector has grown rapidly, DCPS has faced significant challenges. The District now has the third-largest charter sector in the nation, enrolling 44% of the students here, and it's poised to grow larger.
When students leave DCPS for charters, they take money with them—around $10,000 per student, per year. You might think that DCPS's costs would go down commensurately. But there are fixed costs associated with maintaining under-enrolled school buildings. And it's hard to provide a full range of programs at schools with few students. Those are the reasons that prompted Henderson's decision last year to close 15 DCPS schools, in addition to the 23 closed by her predecessor.
As Henderson tries to plan to serve students in the future, not knowing where or when competing charters will pop up, she may feel like a bride reciting her wedding vows while the groom eyes the attractive bridesmaids standing nearby.
The charter sector's point of view
The charter sector, for its part, wants as few restrictions placed on it as possible. Leaders of high-performing charters in DC feel, justifiably, that their relative nimbleness and freedom to experiment has enabled them to devise ways of educating kids more successfully than DCPS. And they want to expand, rapidly, in order to bring the benefits of their innovations to more students.
They also argue that DCPS enjoys advantages that charters don't, particularly when it comes to buildings. DCPS is able to draw on hundreds of millions of dollars in government funds for renovated or new buildings, many of which are dazzling—and, in some cases, half empty. Charters receive far less to fix up, rent, and maintain their facilities and often have to draw on private contributions to do so.
More fundamentally, it's notoriously difficult for charters to find suitable space at all in DC, and charter leaders complain that DCPS has been slow to release its vacant school buildings for their use. While some have been leased to charters in recent years, securing one is a lengthy, uncertain, and time-consuming process. And there are still around 20 buildings DCPS is sitting on, hoping to use them again someday.
In fact, the charters point to the lack of available space as one reason that joint planning between the sectors wouldn't work. At the time they apply for authorization, prospective charter operators never know exactly where they'll be able to find a place to locate.
Charters are proud that, despite these obstacles, they've been able to compete and generally outperform DCPS, especially in raising the achievement of low-income students. Competition, they say, has improved the quality of education for all—including, to some extent, those remaining in DCPS.
And, unlike DCPS, charter advocates see no reason to limit that competition. If DCPS students leave for the charter across the street, so be it. Why, they ask, doesn't DCPS just make its schools better? Privately, they may attribute DCPS's lagging performance to incompetence and overspending on a bloated bureaucracy.
I can see legitimate points in both the charter and DCPS perspectives. But I also see what appear to me to be some blind spots as well. In a future post I'll elaborate on those and discuss how the two sectors may yet be able to work together towards their common goal of raising the quality of education for DC's students as quickly as possible.
Just give charters the empty DCPS buildings [Harmony PCS, Two Rivers, Carlos Rosario PCS, and Shining Stars PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
July 23, 2014
The editors of the Washington Post today finally react to the published highly misleading characterization that Harmony Public Charter School, in its search for a facility in which to open, simply plopped itself down across the street from a traditional school that serves the same academic focus and grades. The editors repeat the call for coordination with DCPS as to where all public schools should be located and even raise the question once again of whether charters should have a neighborhood preference.
Nonsense. It was documented here that Harmony went out of its way to coordinate its permanent site with both the D.C. Department of General Services and the Deputy Mayor for Education. When no assistance was provided and the school faced its first lottery it desperately had do something to figure out the total number of students it could enroll. Only then did it accept a building too small to hold the program it intended to offer to our students and their families.
The solution to the facility problem of Harmony, and the recent troubles Shining Stars Montessori had securing space, is to turn over the 23 vacant DCPS buildings to charter schools. This would provide room for all charters currently in need of classrooms and would resolve the issue for years to come. In addition, there is so much underutilized square footage in existing traditional schools that if co-location was also an option then we could finally once and for all stop talking about this subject.
By the way, last weekend me and my wife traveled to T Street, N.E. to see the home of Harmony PCS. It is located right in the burgeoning Eckington area. Well-kept row houses and apartments line the streets. New condominiums are being built which are attracting young people to the neighborhood. Union Market and Two Rivers PCS can be found only a few minutes drive away. You can walk to the new campus of Carlos Rosario PCS. On a quiet residential street we discovered Harmony, and yes, it is located directly across a narrow road from the Langley Educational Campus. Then right next door to the traditional elementary school is McKinley middle and high school. It is therefore becoming, as the CEO of Harmony Dr. Sonar Tarim described to me, an amazing educational campus in which administrators and teachers can learn from one another the best ways to implement a science, technology, engineering, and math curriculum.
Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Over Closure Of 15 D.C. Schools
WAMU
By Martin Austermuhle
July 22, 2014
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to stop and reverse the closure of 15 D.C. public schools over the last year.
In a 26-page ruling, Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court dismissed arguments by five parents that D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson had discriminated on the basis of race in closing the 15 schools, all of which were located east of Rock Creek Park.
Boasberg said that the five had not proven that the school closures, which Henderson said targeted under-enrolled schools and would produce annual savings of $8.5 million, were purposely aimed at minority students.
"No one is denying that the racial disparities in the recent closings are striking. In the closed schools, after all, a startling 93% of students were black and fewer than 0.2% (six students) were white. But here, the disparity appears to be caused by the location of the under-enrolled schools, not by intentional discrimination," he wrote.
He also dismissed arguments that the schools were closed to fund raises for white teachers and allow charter schools to take over the empty buildings, saying that those were political matters beyond his jurisdiction.
"Although Plaintiffs dislike charter schools, performance pay, and the increasing number of D.C. school closures, there is simply no real evidence that these policies are discriminatory," he wrote. "As a result, federal courts have no authority to intervene in these sensitive policy choices, and judges should not be the ones to render the final verdict on charter schools, school turnarounds, and teacher evaluations."
In May 2013, Boasberg rejected an initial attempt to stop the closures, which took place over two school years. An estimated 3,000 students were affected. It was the second round of closures since the D.C. Council granted mayoral control over the city's public schools; 23 schools were closed in 2008.
In a statement, Henderson applauded the decision.
"We sincerely appreciate Judge Boasberg's thoughtful decision to reject the claims in this lawsuit. Our decision to consolidate schools was made after careful consideration and conversations with the community, recognizing the best way to use the limited resources we have to support all of our students in all wards across D.C.," she said.
The group behind the lawsuit, Empower D.C., said it plans to appeal, arguing that regardless of intent, the school closures improperly and disproportionately affected minority students. It also says that the process did not take public input as required by law.
School officials say they may reopen some of the closed schools as part of a proposal to redraw the city's school boundaries and feeder patterns.
Judge Rules D.C. School Closures Not Racially Biased
The Washington Informer
By Dorothy Rowley
July 22, 2014
A federal judge has ruled that the closure of 15 D.C. public schools wasn't racially discriminatory, a setback for black parents who say they face such obstacles when attempting to actively participate in their children's education.
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg dismissed Friday a lawsuit brought by Empower DC, opining that issues of school privatization were best decided by the voters in the upcoming mayoral election, not by the courts. The white judge, who attended elite private schools while growing up in upper-crust Washington, acknowledged that the closures impacted Black students disproportionately, but denied there was evidence of a racial motive in the school closings plan.
Johnny Barnes, a lawyer representing Empower DC in the matter, said the ruling would be appealed.
"We were not surprised by this ruling, as the judge signaled his posture from the outset," Barnes said. "We however are not deterred and will appeal. The rise of school closures in Black communities, the undue influence of private funders who profit from school privatization — this is Brown vs. Board 2.0. There are disputed facts in this case and the judge should have allowed these facts to be considered by a jury."
The case Smith vs. Henderson was originally filed in early 2013, challenging the constitutionality of the decision by Mayor Vincent Gray and schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson to close fifteen public schools in black neighborhoods. The plaintiffs are members of Empower DC, a citywide community organization promoting the self-advocacy of low- and moderate-income DC residents that has led organizing efforts to block school closures.
"There is nothing more crazy-making then telling Black people, who are being disproportionately harmed and impacted by government policies, that there is no evidence of racial intent simply because no one in power was found to have made explicitly racially discriminatory statements," said Parisa Norouzi, Empower DC's executive director. "But that is the reality that our constituents face daily in D.C., as the city targets black communities for 'transformation,' aka displacement to make way for the new, wealthier and whiter residents moving into the city. Institutionalized racism is rampant in D.C. today, despite the presence of black elected officials."
Empower DC is inviting parents to share their stories of discrimination and help write a Parent Bill of Rights as a basis of affirming their role in their children's education.
"Through these latest closures DCPS has caused harm to 3,000 low income children of color, stripping them of the friends, teachers and staff which provided them support and made up their community," said Daniel del Pielago, the group's education organizer. "DCPS has done this without investing time or resources to ensure the well being of students after school closures and without making promised investments in the receiving schools. We must continue to organize against the planned closure of Sharpe Health and Mamie D Lee Schools, attended by our most vulnerable special needs students, to save them from the same fate."