- Unimpressive DC CAS Scores [FOCUS, Cesar Chavez Capitol Hill PCS, Friendship PCS, St. Coletta Special Education PCS, DC Prep Edgewood Middle PCS, KIPP DC College Preparatory PCS, and Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
- D.C. students’ proficiency rates inch upward on annual city tests
- Modest D.C. test scores gains are still gains
- D.C. charter school educates parents alongside children [Briya PCS mentioned]
- A more harmonious phase for DCPS, charter schools? [DC Scholars PCS mentioned]
Unimpressive DC CAS Scores [FOCUS, Cesar Chavez Capitol Hill PCS, Friendship PCS, St. Coletta Special Education PCS, DC Prep Edgewood Middle PCS, KIPP DC College Preparatory PCS, and Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
August 1, 2014
The D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education released the 2014 DC CAS results yesterday and the numbers are stunningly underwhelming. But you don't have to take my word for it. Just take a look at the comment about the scores from the always upbeat and enthusiastic DCPS Chancellor as detailed by the Washington Post's Emma Brown:
“'I have to be honest with you and say I’m disappointed' that the growth wasn't greater."
Overall in the District of Columbia math proficiency for all public school students is 54.4%. For reading the overall proficiency rate is 49.9%. This breaks down for DCPS as having a math proficiency rate of 51.5 and for reading the percentile is 47.7. For charters the math proficiency rate is 59.6% with reading being 53.4%. All of these numbers are basically unchanged from the previous year.
The D.C. Public Charter School Board put out a list of the schools showing the greatest overall gains from last year and a few caught my eye. Cesar Chavez Capitol Hill Campus is up 17.1 points, Friendship PCS increased by 13.2 points, and St. Coletta Special Education PCS improved by 8.3%.
On the top 10 list of charters for overall proficiency I noticed DC Prep's Edgewood Middle PCS at 86.3 percent, KIPP DC College Preparatory at 83.2%, and Washington Latin PCS upon whose whose board I serve at 77.9%.
FOCUS's extremely bright Steve Taylor had some fascinating observations about the statistics:
"The most interesting public charter school news is the widening gap between how well public charters and DCPS students who qualify for free or reduced price school lunch are doing. The gap is now over 15 percentage points in math and almost 13 percentage points in reading. To put this into perspective, if DCPS were able to match DC charters' performance with economically disadvantaged students, about 2,000 additional poor children within the district would be able to read and do math on grade level.
Among African American students, charters now outperform DCPS by almost 17 percentage points in math and 12 percentage points in reading. Again, if DCPS were able to match charter performance, there would be about 2,000 additional African American students able to read and do math on grade level. For special education students the gap widened to almost 10 percentage points in math and over 5 percentage points in reading. Again, if DCPS were able to match charter performance, there would be about 250 additional special education students able to read and do math on grade level."
Still I go back to the fact that our overall proficiency rates are stuck around the 50% mark. Maybe we need a School Reform 2.0.
D.C. students’ proficiency rates inch upward on annual city tests
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler and Emma Brown
July 31, 2014
Average student proficiency rates on the District’s annual standardized tests inched up in 2014, increasing 1.4 percentage points in math and less than one percentage point in reading, results that city leaders called steady-if-slow progress in improving academic prospects for the District’s children.
Even with the uptick, there were some unsettling data points: Proficiency rates among students learning English as a second language declined in both subjects and in both traditional and charter schools. Latino students’ reading proficiency rates also dropped in both sectors, while the traditional school system saw reading proficiency fall among its economically disadvantaged students.
“I have to be honest with you and say I’m disappointed” that the growth wasn’t greater, Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said at a news conference Thursday morning outside Stanton Elementary School in Southeast Washington, citing the hard work she sees teachers and students investing in schools each day. “We need to pick up the work; we need to turn it up.”
Citywide, 54 percent of students scored high enough to be considered proficient in math in 2014, and almost half — 49.9 percent — were considered proficient in reading. The city’s wide achievement gaps did not narrow: 44 percent of African American students were proficient in reading, for example, compared with 92 percent of white students.
The incremental overall increase comes one year after city leaders announced four-point gains in both subjects. They hailed those results as “historic” and said they showed that the District’s approach to improving schools — including the advent of mayoral control and the rapid growth of charter schools — is working.
On Thursday, Henderson and other city leaders highlighted longer-term, double-digit increases in proficiency rates across the District since 2007, when the mayor took over the schools. And they emphasized out-sized gains at individual schools.
“It’s not an easy road,” Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) said. “It requires steadiness and it requires resolve, but I think the progress we made over the past few years . . . shows we ought to continue the course we have charted to improve public education.”
With the city’s move to exams that are aligned with the Common Core State Standards next year, this is the last time that D.C. CAS scores will be used to evaluate the city’s students.
Performance on the new tests — known as PARCC — will not be comparable with student performance on the city’s past tests; it will be difficult to measure long-term progress — or decline — until several years from now. Proficiency rates are widely expected to drop in the District and elsewhere as states transition to new curriculums and new exams.
District officials spoke beneath a tent pitched outside Stanton Elementary, which is under renovation to modernize and expand its building to accommodate more students.
The Ward 8 school was among the lowest-performing in the District several years ago, and a Philadelphia-based charter school operator, Scholar Academies, was brought in to turn the school around.
Though Stanton’s math proficiency dipped this year, its scores have improved and its culture has been transformed since Scholar’s arrival, making it one of the more promising school-improvement efforts in the city. It also served Thursday as a symbol of cooperation between charter and traditional schools at a time when the two sectors are at odds over funding, planning and other issues.
Gray called it “a wonderful example of the kind of innovation that is taking place.”
Traditional and charter schools posted similar increases in proficiency rates in 2014, although charter schools, as a group, continue to outperform the traditional school system.
Among charters, nearly 60 percent of students were proficient in math, an increase of one percentage point since 2013; 53.4 percent of students were proficient in reading, up about half a percentage point.
Among traditional schools, 51 percent of students were proficient in math, up 1.6 percentage points, and close to 48 percent were proficient in reading, up about one-third of a percentage point.
Since 2007, proficiency rates among all D.C. students have increased 23 percentage points in math and 14 percentage points in reading.
While math performance in the traditional schools has steadily increased during the past five years, reading performance has been uneven.
For African American students, reading proficiency rates are down from a high of 41 percent in 2009 to 39 percent this year, and rates for students learning English are down from a high of 47 percent in 2009 to 36 percent in 2014. Poor children and children with disabilities also have seen reading proficiency rates fall since 2009.
Henderson attributed the declines in part to ongoing churn in traditional schools, as more students leave for charter schools or depart the city.
“We have lost a number of high-performing African American kids and radically increased the number of low-performing students,” Henderson said. “The miles we have to travel are sometimes further year in and year out.”
She said the school district has been emphasizing efforts to improve reading instruction. “If we are going to be successful, we have to all be experts in teaching reading,” she said.
Schools officials said an infusion of new funding for at-risk students should help principals provide new supports to struggling students. In charter schools, proficiency rates among black, Latino and poor children are higher than they were five years ago.
Jesús Aguirre, the District’s state superintendent of education, applauded high school teachers and students for making some of the most significant gains this year. Tenth-grade math proficiency rates rose by 4.1 points in traditional schools and 7.4 points in charter schools, and reading proficiency rates increased 3.8 points in traditional schools and three points in charter schools.
Students also took science and writing exams. Citywide science proficiency grew nearly three points, to 45 percent, while writing proficiency dropped a point, to 50 percent.
Modest D.C. test scores gains are still gains
The Washington Post
Editorial Board
August 1, 2014
AFTER THE historic improvement in D.C. student test scores last year, the modest gains from this year’s testing seemed anticlimactic. Indeed, even D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said she was “disappointed” that the system didn’t demonstrate greater growth. But no matter how small the gains, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that public education in the District is moving in the right direction and should not be derailed.
Results from the standardized D.C. CAS tests administered in March and April showed proficiency in reading and math inching up for both traditional- and charter-school students. In the traditional school system, 51 percent of students are proficient in math, up 1.6 percentage points, and nearly 48 percent are proficient in reading, up 0.3 percentage point. Nearly 60 percent of charter-school students are proficient in math, up one point since last year, and 53.4 percent of charter students are proficient in reading, up 0.4 percentage point.
The gains, announced Thursday, become more meaningful when viewed as a measure of how far public education has come in the District. Consider that in 2007, when mayoral control of the public schools was implemented, just 27.9 percent of students in the traditional-school system were proficient in math. So it’s something of a milestone that more than half of the system’s students are now proficient in the subject. Charter school students performed above the District average in math and reading for the ninth straight year.
Of course, the results also underscore just how much work is still to be done. No doubt 51.1 percent of students able to do math is better than 27.9 percent, but it is nonetheless completely unacceptable. Results showing English-language learners and Hispanic students struggling in both sectors, with declining proficiency rates, are cause for concern, as is the continuing gap in achievement between African American and white students.
New funding formulas are being implemented to target students most at risk, and Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and the D.C. Council have invested new dollars to help ratchet up the work. Other things that need to be done — such as providing more instruction time through an extended day — have encountered obstacles that need to be overcome. The next mayor will have his or her work cut out, but it’s encouraging that the pieces are in place to continue the positive momentum of school improvement.
D.C. charter school educates parents alongside children [Briya PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
August 3, 2014
The images in the book were bright and the words simple, but many of the women in the classroom hesitated as they sounded out each sentence.
“If you can’t read the words, can you talk about the pictures?” teacher Elizabeth Bergner coached. The goal for the women enrolled in Bergner’s adult-education class in the District is to learn English, but an equally important target is to help their children learn to read.
In a preschool classroom down the hall a few minutes later, the mothers had a chance to practice. They pulled their daughters and sons onto their laps and opened the book.
The District’s Briya Public Charter School enrolls parents and young children together in the same school, a novel effort to improve children’s prospects by building the skills of those who are closest to them. It’s an approach that an increasing number of researchers and philanthropists are promoting across the country as experts worry that investments in early childhood education or school improvement can only go so far.
“We spend a lot of money on poor children in our schools,” said Sharon Darling, president of the National Center for Families Learning. “But in reality, there are no poor children. They live with poor parents, and they are poor because they have poor skills. You can’t keep putting a Band-Aid on one part of the equation.”
Many modern school reforms emerge from the idea that schools can overcome the adversities children experience in their life outside of school. But dual-generation approaches — in which parents are pursuing education in tandem with their children — echo research that shows that a mother’s education is one of the strongest predictors of a child’s academic success.
Such programs provide support and training for parents to learn English, earn a degree or train for a better-paying job at the same time their children are taking their first steps or learning to read. Advocates hope they can give adults the ability to learn skills that will allow them to seek better jobs, earn more money and be more effective teachers for their children.
Building on the momentum of President Obama’s proposal to dramatically expand access to publicly funded preschool, advocates see an opportunity to consider investing simultaneously in parents. They cite brain research that documents the lasting negative effects of stress for young children living in poverty and economic analyses that show that even modest income gains for poor families can make a difference in the earning potential of their children later on.
Educators say it’s a far more complicated and expensive endeavor to educate adults and children together. Each group requires different training and expertise. And while children progress through preschool on a predictable timeline, adults juggling competing demands often take much longer to reach their educational goals.
But many say it’s a critical model in the 21st century, when the pace of economic inequality is overwhelming efforts to improve the quality of teachers and schools.
Almost half of children younger than 6 live in low-income families, and 1 in 4 come from families that meet the federal definition for poverty — $23,850 for a family of four. Demographic changes, including an increase in households headed by a single parent and a growing Hispanic population, are affecting poverty rates. And research shows it’s difficult for children born at the bottom of the economic ladder to move up.
Anabel Cruz emigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico, 14 years ago and earned a living cleaning houses. After she had a child, she found herself unable to work, financially stretched and depressed. A social worker referred her to Briya in 2006, where she enrolled her son in a program for infants while she started learning English.
“Since then, I never stopped studying,” Cruz said. She earned a high school diploma and had two more children. Next month, she plans to graduate with a certificate to work as a medical assistant and expects to earn at least $16 an hour, twice what she was making before she went back to school. With improved language skills and a boost of confidence, she became a PTA president at her children’s school.
She credits the parenting classes at Briya with helping her to establish routines at home, discipline her children in a positive way and read with them every day.
“We talk about the sweet spot of mutual motivation,” said Anne Mosle, executive director at Ascend, an Aspen Institute program promoting two-generation approaches across the country.
Young parents find it extremely rewarding to be able to help their child with homework or better understand their teacher, she said, and it’s equally affirming “when a child sees a mom graduate.”
The idea of educating parents along with children is embedded in Promise Zones that are being created in poor neighborhoods across the country, offering concentrated services including prenatal care and career training. It’s the rationale behind federally funded home-visiting programs for families with infants and toddlers, and it has long roots in other anti-poverty programs.
Head Start has encouraged family engagement and skills-building since its inception in the 1960s. Parents are incorporated into the leadership of the programs, and all centers require parents to sign agreements listing personal goals for securing better jobs or housing. Some centers go much further in helping parents pursue their goals.
A program run by the nonprofit Community Action Project in Tulsa — now considered a national model — helps parents enroll in community college and pursue jobs in health care. It pays tuition and supports parents with career coaches as well as cash incentives for good performance.
Darling, of the National Center for Families Learning, developed a dual-generation model to help poor families in Appalachia in the 1980s, putting parents on a bus with their young children so they could go to school together. Now her Louisville-based center supports similar programs on more than 40 Native American reservations and in schools in Lincoln, Neb., Springdale, Ark., and elsewhere.
Many efforts, including Briya’s, serve growing immigrant populations. Nationally, more than a third of Hispanic children — the fastest-growing immigrant group — live in families headed by an adult who did not graduate from high school.
The D.C. school started in 1989 with a grant from Even Start, a federal program for dual-generation literacy that was later cut. It partnered with Mary’s Center, which provides social services and health care to many of the students. In 2006, it became a charter school and expanded to three sites. It now serves more than 400 adults and about 150 children.
Briya offers child care for infants and toddlers, while parents learn English and parenting skills, earn a high school degree or pursue job training. Some parents enroll their children in a full-day preschool program for 3- and 4-year-olds that the city funds.
The school has posted promising outcomes. While the vast majority of children in its preschool enter below widely held expectations on a nationally recognized preschool assessment, nearly 100 percent meet expectations when they leave. Parents in the English classes also outperform national averages on language-acquisition tests for English learners.
School officials say they have two advantages uncommon outside of the District — a charter law that allows funding to flow to adult-education programs and some of the heftiest preschool investments in the nation.
Base per-student funding for the 2014-2015 school year in the District is $12,719 for 3-year-olds, $12,340 for 4-year-olds and $8,448 for adults.
School officials said that they verify that students are D.C. residents but that they do not request information about immigration status. District law prohibits schools from denying admission to students of any age based on citizenship.
In an adult intermediate-English class at Briya, the parents’ goals were taped to the wall on sheets of paper: “To get a good job.” “To help my children.” “To talk to the doctor.”
Jenny Velasquez said she has worked mostly as a house cleaner or a cashier since moving from El Salvador to the United States. She tried to enroll in English classes several years ago, when she lived in Virginia, but could not commit because she did not have reliable child care. At Briya, she has been learning English for the past two years, many days while her daughters, ages 5 and 2, are in a classroom down the hall.
She also recently earned a Child Development Associate credential and is looking for jobs at day-care centers.
Her older daughter is starting kindergarten this year, and Velasquez said she feels confident about her skills. “She’s ready,” she said.
A more harmonious phase for DCPS, charter schools? [DC Scholars PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Natalie Wexler
August 1, 2014
This morning’s announcement of a slight rise in standardized test scores wasn’t exactly earthshaking. More intriguing was the backdrop: Stanton Elementary in Ward 8, a DCPS-charter collaboration that DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson said today she’d like to replicate. It’s about time.
Henderson’s statement comes in the wake of signs that the cordial relationship between DCPS and D.C.’s charter sector is beginning to break down. Henderson recently called for joint planning that would control the growth of charters, raising the ire of the charter community.
And just yesterday, a charter advocacy organization sued the District for failing to comply with a legal requirement to fund charters at the same level as DCPS.
Both sides have justifiable grievances. But collaboration between the two sectors is the best hope of advancing their shared goal of improving education for all kids in D.C. as quickly as possible. For a while it looked like D.C. was on that path, and then things stalled. Do Henderson’s remarks at Stanton today signal that she’s ready to return to the idea?
For the past three years, a charter management organization, Scholar Academies, has been managing Stanton as a regular DCPS neighborhood school, serving an in-boundary student population. During that time enrollment and test scores have risen dramatically.
The big news today was that the school had moved out of “priority” status, meaning that it has shown significant growth over three consecutive years. (Disclosure: I serve on the board of a charter school that is also managed by Scholar Academies, DC Scholars.)
Even before today, Stanton had become something of a showpiece for DCPS. During a visit from Education Secretary Arne Duncan in February, Mayor Vincent Gray said of the school’s success, “We simply need to bottle this and figure out how to proliferate it all around the city.”
Today, according to a tweet from The Post’s Michael Alison Chandler, Henderson called Stanton “an amazing example of what happens when we work together,” referring to charters and traditional schools. And according to WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle, she said the Stanton-Scholar Academies model “could be taken to other struggling DCPS schools.”