- D.C. Mulls Change to High School Graduation Requirements
- Exclusive interview with John “Skip” McKoy, chairman Public Charter School Board [FOCUS DC, Harmony PCS, Democracy Prep PCS, Rocketship Education PCS, Somerset Prep PCS, BASIS PCS, Options PCS, DC International PCS and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS mentioned]
- DCPS and charters are sparring over joint planning, but the real question is how to preserve neighborhood schools [Rocketship PCS, KIPP DC PCS, and Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS mentioned]
D.C. Mulls Change to High School Graduation Requirements
The Washington Informer
By Dorothy Rowley
July 29, 2014
The DC State Board of Education is leaning toward implementing a more competency-based graduation system for public high school students, officials say.
"We've actually been in meetings to expand the requirements, but the changes won't occur immediately," said Mark Jones, Ward 5 board member. "Although we'll remain at 24 credits for the standard diploma credits, we'll probably have to make some adjustments, such as with physical education and maybe language and science."
Jones said plans also call for adding two credits to enable students to earn a diploma of distinction. That program, which would offer students an opportunity to take Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, would aim to increase employment prospects and have colleges and universities more favorably view participants for admission.
"I'd like to see the board vote on it in August and then see if the school system will implement it, which would probably take a couple of years," Jones said. "It certainly would not take place this school year because [school officials] would not be prepared."
For decades, students have been required to take at least three years of history, two years of government courses, as well as obtain credits in the core subjects of English, math and science. They also had to obtain credits for foreign language, health and physical education.
Currently, in order to receive a diploma, city high schoolers must earn 24 credits, 12 of which must be in English, math, science and social studies. Graduating seniors must have also completed 100 hours of community service.
However, Board of Education officials proposed last year adding a thesis project to the graduation requirements and dropping the U.S. government course in favor of extracurricular electives such as music performance and sports.
"There are a couple of changes that parents and others might want to pay special attention to," said Cathy Reilly, executive director of the Northwest-based Senior High Alliance of Parents. "In world languages, students must go through two units of the same language and they can get high school credits for language courses taken in middle school online or through direct study that can be verified," she said. "In social studies they no longer have two years of world history but just one year, one year of U.S. history and a half-year of D.C. and U.S. government, along with other credits that can be selected by the student."
Reilly said that board officials are reducing student electives from 3.5 credits to 2.5 credits and increasing both physical education and health by a half-credit.
"There's been a lot of pushback if increasing the physical education would actually give students more exercise," Reilly said. "But this also poses a lot of challenges to schools that don't have full gymnasiums."
OSSE spokeswoman Victoria Holmes said the agency would be happy to receive formal recommendations from the school board, but hasn't taken a stance on changes to the required course credits.
"We hope to take up this issue, along with a fresh look at all of the graduation requirements, during the next academic year," Holmes said.
Eboni-Rose Thompson, chair of the Ward 7 Education Council, said the proposed changes might be ideal for forging ahead, but everything hinges upon how well the proposal is implemented.
"We haven't taken a position, but we've done a lot of work around the graduation requirements and it's a difficult thing, because the state board is kind of taking ownership of the conversation on competency and how many credits are needed," Thompson said. The board's proposal "seems to affect so many other things that they have no authority [over]."
Thompson said she believes the board has tried to consider all implications, but she isn't sure if OSSE and DCPS will be on the same page as far as the execution of the changes are concerned.
"I just think that it looks the same as it does in theory," Thompson said. "I'm really kind of worried about that, and while I don't think it's malicious, I want to know what it means — especially for Ward 7," she said. "Overall, there are just some questions about how the board fits into our educational landscape in D.C., anyway."
Exclusive interview with John “Skip” McKoy, chairman Public Charter School Board [FOCUS, Harmony PCS, Democracy Prep PCS, Rocketship Education PCS, Somerset Prep PCS, BASIS PCS, Options PCS, DC International PCS and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
July 30, 2014
It has been a little over a year since I sat down for a conversation with the chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board about the progress being made by his organization so I felt fortunate to once again have the opportunity. Mr. McKoy was eager to bring me up-to-date. “The first thing I would point to is the maturity of the Performance Management Framework. We have created the Alternative and Early Childhood PMF’s in which the staff did a great job with the development of these tools. We have also adjusted the accountability targets. All of this has been challenging work that has been completed utilizing a highly professional process engaging school leaders as much as possible.”
The PCSB chairman next talked about being able to bring experienced charter operators to the city. “This year we accepted applications from Harmony Public Charter Schools and Democracy Prep Public Charter Schools. In the past we approved Rocketship Education, Somerset Prep, and BASIS to open in Washington, D.C. I’m looking forward to them blending into our communities to offer families quality and diverse educational options.”
Mr. McKoy also highlighted his contention that the Board is getting better at identifying qualified candidates that will eventually become PMF Tier 1 institutions. The PCSB chairman listed the characteristics that increase the likelihood of a charter having a successful application.
First, he mentioned school leadership as being essential. “There has to be an active leader who is going to spearhead this effort. If this position is held by a part-time person or volunteer then the school decreases it chances of success. In addition, the person filling this role has to make a multiyear commitment.”
The second factor Mr. McKoy identified as leading to a successful application is having the founding members know as much as possible about the proposed curriculum. “The better they understand the instructional philosophy and key ingredients together with the major assessments the better they will do,” he explained.
The PCSB chairman also addressed the financial picture that is portrayed in the application. “The founding team should show an understanding that if they are presenting a charter that will truly be innovative compared to a traditional school, and this is what we want, then they must have an appreciation of the additional costs associated with a successful project.”
He added that it goes without saying that a charter must have detailed plans for how it will teach special education students and English language learners. “The applicant should also demonstrate a comprehension of the demographics of the nation’s capital, not just concerning race and income but in all areas,” Mr. McKoy related. Closely associated with this suggestion is the idea that the charter has knowledge of the education community. “The applicant has to show that it has contemplated on-going parent involvement,” the PCSB chairmen asserted.
Lastly, Mr. McKoy stated that new charters have to have completed research about where to locate. “New schools cannot wait until they are approved to begin operating to begin the search for a building.”
The PCSB chairman alluded to a couple of areas where applicants can run into trouble. “If they are going to talk about blended learning they should describe how this fits comprehensively into the rest of their program. Moreover, if schools are going to offer a multilingual curriculum then the justification for these courses should fall within their overall philosophy.”
Besides improvements in the way applicants are approved Mr. McKoy singled out as major accomplishments Board assistance in the creation of the D.C. International School, and within the scope of powers granted to his body through the School Reform Act, effectively dealing with charters that may have engaged in financial malfeasance. He is also proud of the unified lottery available to parents through My School DC.
I inquired of Mr. McKoy if in retrospect the issues regarding Options PCS and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS could have been prevented. “Well, hindsight is of course twenty-twenty,” he replied. “And we’ve learned good lessons. We will be seeking greater authority to require additional financial information, especially from charter management organizations. But in the end, the D.C. Attorney General carried out his investigative prosecutorial role and the system worked the way it is supposed to operate. People will be held accountable for their actions.” Mr. McKoy also commented that better training of board members of Local Education Agencies may have permitted better oversight.
I then requested that Mr. McKoy talk about the current goals of his organization. Again, the PCSB chairman responded without a hint of hesitation. “We would like to provide on-going assistance to Tier 2 schools. It would be great to be able to help without taking anything away from their autonomy. For example, we should ask if schools have been in contact with the D.C. Special Education Co-operative, the D.C. Association of Public Chartered Schools, Friends of Choice in Urban Schools or Charter Board Partners on appropriate issues. We can also suggest types of organizations that can assist in addressing Qualitative School Reviews (QSRs).
The PCSB chairman then talked about one of his personal aims. Mr. McKoy feels passionately that along with maintaining autonomy of the charter school sector it is critically important that parents have real school choice, meaning that each and every child should be able to have a quality seat. “Choice means nothing if all the choices are bad,” Mr. McKoy stated emphatically. We then got into a conversation about the coordination issue with DCPS that was raised recently around the location of Harmony PCS right across the street from Langley Elementary. “In the abstract, we should be able to look at a particular sector of the city and then forecast the education needs based upon the number of kids living there. If DCPS is not supplying adequate seats then charters should be encouraged to locate there. We will not hurt the autonomy of charters, but on paper we can determine if the public purpose of additional quality seats would be better served by a school deciding to open in a particular location.”
It occurred to me that what Mr. McKoy was describing was almost exactly what occurred with Harmony. The traditional elementary school has an academic proficiency rate below that of the city average. The Harmony network consists of high performing schools. Therefore, I offered, isn’t the site of Harmony exactly what the DCPCSB chairman was suggesting? Mr. McKoy replied. “On the surface it does, but I would have to know much more about Langley. I would want to know what the parents thought, what DCPS Chancellor Henderson thought about quality upgrades for Langley. Please remember that in my movie, we are talking about strategic thinking for where charters can fill quality gaps.”
I then asked Mr. McKoy if he was in favor of charters having a neighborhood preference. He replied, “I like the recommendation of the task force that looked at this issue which said that if a charter is replacing a DCPS school immediately after it has been closed then it should have the option of establishing some proportion of seats for neighborhood kids. One side of me says that this could be a tremendous help for students so that they can take advantage of a high performing program. But another side of me says that we better first understand the impact of this policy on the lottery as well as whether this will change the access to good schools for low income children. So, I would have to consider all of these factors before giving you a recommendation. There is no easy answer here.”
I brought up the fact that there are now 23 closed DCPS schools that are sitting vacant. I wanted to know if the PCSB chairman thought they should be turned over to charters. “I think we should be able to have a conversation with Kaya Henderson and Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith about the traditional schools reshuffling their deck. The end product of this work would be to identify at least some facilities that could be turned over for use by charters.”
The DCPS chairman then became philosophical in his remarks. “I love this city. I had an excellent education in Philadelphia and it is ridiculous that every kid here cannot have the same experience. In addition to the great cultural resources here, there are such great things happening right now in this town, with young people moving in and the presence, for the first time in history, of a real tech sector. What we have to figure out is how to service parents who long for the urban, mixed ethnics, cultures and classes, experience for their children, but who want that same experience to guarantee acceptance in universities like Stanford. At the same time, how does the same school take children that are three to four years behind grade level and get them caught up and beyond? Neither DCPS nor charters have yet figured this out with our full portfolio of schools.”
“I also wonder about two schools that both serve low income children that are radically different in their risk profiles but whose performance is assessed on the same metrics. For instance, one institution hypothetically can be serving poor children, but these kids have a relatively low risk of dropping out of the system. Then you have another school where the impact of poverty generates high toxic stress, constant violence, major residential noise, inadequate diets, total absence of helpful role models, thus these kids have a great likelihood of ending up on the street. I don’t want to unfairly penalize the school that has an enrollment of high risk students. I know we have taken a step with this through the development of the Alternative School Performance Management Framework. But, I want to learn more about why high risk kids under-perform and why some schools appear to still be able to advance student growth for “high risk” students.
Mr. McKoy concluded, “This is an exciting time to be part of the charter school movement. Much progress is being made. An extremely small number of schools having problems will not discourage support for charters. Credit for what we have achieved has to be given to the early founders like Donald Hense and Linda Moore; the second wave like Susan Schaeffler, Emily Lawson, Jennie Niles; and later leaders like Shantelle Wright, Maquita Alexander, and Jack McCarthy. We are ending middle class flight at the same time that we are improving education for the underserved. The future looks exceedingly bright.”
DCPS and charters are sparring over joint planning, but the real question is how to preserve neighborhood schools [Rocketship PCS, KIPP DC PCS, and Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS mentioned]
Greater Greater Education
By Natalie Wexler
July 29, 2014
DCPS wants the charter sector to engage in joint planning that would limit the number and location of charter schools. Charter advocates oppose the idea. Ultimately, the disagreement is not about planning, but about what kind of school system the District should have.
Seven years ago, the charter sector served only about 20% of DC's students. That figure is now up to 44% and poised to grow larger.
The Public Charter School Board has already given its approval for 3 new schools to open in 2015, and two existing charters are likely to expand. One of the new schools is part of a network, Rocketship Education, that could enroll over 5,000 students here by 2019.
If current trends continue, what will DC's school system look like in the future?
Chances are it will never be composed entirely of charter schools. There are still no charters in affluent Ward 3, and parents there are generally satisfied with the quality of the traditional public schools.
But the day will soon come when over half the District's students are enrolled in charters. It's not hard to imagine a time when DCPS becomes a vestigial presence in most of the District—or even disappears.
Charter success
In some ways that might well be a positive development. Many DC charters that focus on minority and low-income students have outperformed DCPS schools serving a similar population. Last year, a Stanford University study found that charter students in DC gain the equivalent of an additional 99 days of learning compared to those enrolled in DCPS.
Not all charter schools achieve those results, of course. But the Public Charter School Board has recently closed a number of charters that are under-performing, or made it possible for successful charter organizations to take them over. And it has set a high bar for approving new charters, rejecting 5 of the 8 applications that came before it this year. As a result, DC's charter sector is among the best in the nation.
But one thing charters can't provide, at least as they're currently constituted, is a guaranteed slot in a nearby location. I've heard charter leaders say that the right to a low-quality neighborhood school is no right at all, and there's some truth to that. But many parents, at all socioeconomic levels, feel that a chance at a high-quality school on the other side of town isn't what they're hoping for either.
Neighborhood schools
There are other factors weighing in favor of neighborhood schools aside from parent preferences. From an efficiency and environmental standpoint, it makes no sense to have families and students crisscrossing town twice a day to get to school.
And a system that relies on choice almost inevitably ends up working to the disadvantage of the least sophisticated members of a community, who may lack the knowledge or the initiative to get their children into the most desirable schools. That's what seems to be happening in Chicago and other cities with an all-choice high school system. To some extent, it's already happened in DC.
Charter schools could go a long way towards resolving these problems by agreeing to give a preference to kids in their neighborhoods. But the charter community as a whole has opposed the idea, even when an individual charter simply wants to exercise that option.
So at this point, as far as neighborhood schools go, DCPS is the only game in town. Theoretically, competition from charters should spur DCPS to improve its low-performing schools, and some charter leaders seem puzzled by, or scornful of, DCPS's apparent inability to equal their success.
It's clear to me that DCPS is trying hard, and in some cases those efforts have borne fruit. But the very success of charters has made it more difficult for DCPS to compete.
DCPS's challenges
As the charter sector has grown, DCPS has seen its resources decrease, since some of its funding has followed students who leave for charters.
Perhaps more important, it's also increasingly been left with the students who are hardest to educate. I don't mean that charters deliberately skim off the better, more motivated students. Especially given the participation of the vast majority of charters in the common lottery, I doubt that's taking place. And it's also true that charters have their share of kids who are homeless or have learning disabilities or other challenges.
But low-income parents who take the trouble to apply to a charter are likely to be more invested in their children's education than those who just rely on the default setting. That can make a significant difference to a child's ability to achieve.
And some students, voluntarily or not, end up leaving charters for DCPS schools, often showing up at random points throughout the school year. Additional students enroll mid-year because they move into the area or switch from another DCPS school.
Having to absorb students, some of whom have behavior problems, well after the school year has begun can cause disruption for everyone. And it's something charter schools don't have to deal with. While some do continue to take students throughout the year, many high-performers, such as the KIPP GROW middle school or Thurgood Marshall Academy, choose not to.
Some charter leaders say their schools could overcome these challenges if they had to. But the fact is, they haven't had to, so we don't really know.
If neighborhood schools are worth preserving, the question is: how can we ensure that the only neighborhood schools we have—DCPS schools—not only survive but thrive?
Further rapid expansion of charters doesn't seem to be the answer. But imposing limitations on a hostile charter sector, under the guise of "joint planning," is also less than optimal. What's needed is genuine cooperation, so that the two sectors can achieve their shared goal of providing an excellent education to all of DC's kids as quickly as possible.
In a future post I'll consider how DCPS and the charter community might be able to move beyond the argument over joint planning and find opportunities to collaborate that each side could enthusiastically embrace.