- Public Charter School Board pulled out of boundary discussions
- Catania Rejects School Boundary Changes, Says He'll Delay Implementation
- Catania Resolves to Delay School-Assignment Changes
- Anxious about the new school boundaries? Here are some things to consider.
- Not much bang for D.C.’s education bucks
- Does education reform have to be impersonal?
Public Charter School Board pulled out of boundary discussions
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
August 26, 2014
Scott Pearson, the executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, explained to me yesterday that his organization ended its participation in the Mayor's effort to update public school boundaries over a proposal to set aside seats for at-risk children.
The plan, as detailed in an article by WAMU's Martin Austermuhle, would require schools with less than 25 percent at-risk kids to give admission preference to this group of students for up to 25 percent of a school's seats. Mr. Austermuhle quotes Mr. Pearson as commenting:
"This recommendation was formulated in the final weeks of an eight-month process, there were no consultations with affected schools or communities and there was no analysis of impact. So it really had nowhere near the level of thoughtfulness and consideration that the other recommendations in the report had."
The article also points out that currently 72 percent of the over 36,000 students enrolled in charters are classified as low income.
This was really a logical reaction by the PCSB's executive director. Charters owe their success to the fundamentals of school choice. It is the competition for students that has raised the bar for the quality of teaching in these alternative schools. Anything that impacts admission based upon criteria other than the selection of a school by parents must be strenuously opposed.
We need to add resistance to a guaranteed admission for at-risk kids to a guaranteed admission for neighborhood students. But Mr. Pearson should have actually pulled out of these discussions long ago. There is one more guarantee that thankfully never made it into the final boundary scheme.
Mayor Gray floated the idea that some traditional elementary schools should develop a guaranteed feeder pattern relationship with charter middle schools. This was an effort to improve the regular school system's offerings for junior high school. But again, as is the case with at-risk and neighborhood admission preferences, this relationship would have acted as a poison pill to the purity of a marketplace for education since parents would not be selecting a school based upon the fit for their child. Students would end up in a charter based only on where the child went to elementary school.
It is past time for politicians to stop their meddling in a system that for the first time in the history of public eduction in the United States is closing the academic achievement gap.
Catania Rejects School Boundary Changes, Says He'll Delay Implementation
WAMU
By Martin Austermuhle
August 25, 2014
D.C. Council member and mayoral candidate David Catania today rejected a proposal adopted by Mayor Vincent Gray that would redraw the city's school boundaries and reconfigure its feeder patterns.
In a statement, Catania, who chairs the Council's committee on education, said that he could not support a plan that changed where some children go to school without also addressing the quality of the school they will attend.
"I have maintained all along that I cannot support a plan that moves students from higher performing schools to lower performing ones. Yet the final recommendations do just that. In addition, the recommendations are silent as to how we intend to improve those lower performing schools," he said.
The plan, debated over 10 months by a special commission and adopted last week by Gray, would redraw the city's 40-year-old boundaries to account for population shifts and schools that have closed. It would also alter the feeder patterns that determine a child's path through the public school system, impose requirements for a certain number of seats for at-risk students at high-performing schools and open four new middle schools across the city.
Proponents have said that the plan is needed to address overcrowding in certain school and under-enrollment in others and give parents predictability in school options. According to city officials, roughly one-third of the city's public school students will be affected; the majority of the impact would be felt by middle school students, 40 percent of which would be assigned to a new school.
But Catania said that parents cannot be asked to send their children to lower-performing schools, and that specific plans for improvements in school quality are needed first.
"In order to secure the confidence of our public school families, we must focus on the issue of school quality in tandem with the proposed recommendations so that all our students — regardless of where they live — can succeed. Among other things, we must work with the community to create open and transparent school-specific quality improvement plans," he said.
Catania said that he would seek to delay implementation of the changes, though it remains unclear how much he could do to change them if he's elected to succeed Gray. "There are a range of options," said Brendan Williams-Kief, Catania's chief of staff, though he said they were currently under review.
City officials say that the school lottery set to open in December will take into account the new boundaries, and any delays or changes to the plan made after Gray leaves office could force the lottery to be halted. But people with knowledge of the issue say that some of the changes could affect DCPS attendance policies, which could require Council review.
Catania's stance puts him at odds with D.C. School Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who endorsed the changes in an interview with WAMU 88.5 last week.
"What I find ironic is when people say, ‘We’re not moving fast enough on education reform in this city.’ But here’s a key way to help that, but we want to slow this down. We are urgent, we are thoughtful, we are doing this in a way that’s respectful to families, so we have to keep our foot on the gas," she said.
Catania hasn't said whether he would keep Henderson if he's elected.
Carol Schwartz, another mayoral contender, said last week that while she would have wanted the process delayed so the next mayor could weigh in, she had resigned herself to the fact that Gray went ahead with the proposed changes. "I understand Mayor Gray’s desire to move ahead on what is and would be difficult choices for any mayor at a time when he, as a non-returning mayor, could take politics out of it," she said.
Muriel Bowser, who is also running for mayor, has not yet expressed her opinions on the plan, though she has in the past expressed skepticism over portions that would limit access to schools west of Rock Creek Park for families living east of it.
Catania Resolves to Delay School-Assignment Changes
CityPaper
By Aaron Wiener
August 25, 2014
Four days after Mayor Vince Gray unveiled his plan to overhaul the city's school-assignment policies for the first time in more than 40 years, one of the two leading candidates to succeed him is taking a stand against the changes.
David Catania, who chairs the D.C. Council's education committee and is running for mayor as an independent, just released a statement signalling his opposition to the plan, which would redraw school boundaries and simplify the system for determining which schools students are eligible to attend.
"Our students need more than predictable pathways through elementary, middle, and high school," Catania says in the statement. "They must have high-quality schools at every level, in every neighborhood. I have maintained all along that I cannot support a plan that moves students from higher performing schools to lower performing ones. Yet the final recommendations do just that." Residents of some neighborhoods, like Crestwood, which will lose access to highly regarded Deal Middle School and Wilson High School, have criticized Gray's solution to the longstanding problem of convoluted pathways to sometimes overcrowded schools.
Catania also argues that Gray's plan does little to improve underperforming schools, and that its scheduled implementation in the 2015-2016 school year is too fast. As a result, he says, "I intend to take action to delay implementation of the recommendations until at least school year 2016-2017."
As for how Catania might delay implementation—not an easy proposition for either the D.C. Council or the new mayor—Catania spokesman Brendan Williams-Kief says, "We’re evaluating what those options might be." With the exception of one clause on charter schools, the plan is not subject to D.C. Council approval, although Catania could attempt legislation opposing Gray's schedule.
"The Council can come up with any legislation that they want," says Gray spokeswoman Doxie McCoy. "But the clock for our plan has started already."
Catania's main rival in the mayoral race, Democratic nominee and Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser, has yet to take a position on Gray's plan.
Anxious about the new school boundaries? Here are some things to consider.
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
August 25, 2014
Last week DC Mayor Vincent Gray accepted the new school boundaries and feeder patterns proposed by the advisory committee that has been working on the issue for the past 10 months. While some residents have legitimate concerns about the change, it may not prove as bad as they fear.
Even after the committee backed away from the more radical proposals it floated in April, the plan still managed to disgruntle many residents who found themselves rezoned to less desirable schools. The charter community is ticked off as well, angered by the committee's recommendation that charter schools with more affluent student bodies reserve 25% of their seats for "at-risk" students.
But Gray, immunized from popular disapproval by his lame-duck status, has taken a statesmanlike position. As he said in his letter to the committee, "there will never be a good time to make changes to our assignment policies." Unless, perhaps, you're about to leave office.
The conventional wisdom, of course, is that the next mayor will undo the whole thing. While neither of the leading candidates has weighed in specifically on the proposal Gray has adopted, both have said they would prefer to delay the boundary overhaul.
But undoing the plan may take some doing. One senior government official told WAMU's Martin Austermuhle that Gray's adoption of the proposal will set into motion a process that will be difficult to reverse. The official cited the fact that the school lottery scheduled to begin in December would have to be started over again when a new mayor takes office in January.
And the Post's Mike DeBonis has suggested that Gray has done his successor "a huge favor" by making a decision that is politically unpopular but necessary. It might be convenient for the next mayor to say that his or her hands are tied.
As DeBonis points out, the current system has led to overcrowding in some schools and underenrollment in others, while many students are assigned to multiple schools. And putting off the change until all DC's schools are "high-quality," as some have advocated, is likely to mean that changes in the assignment system would be held in abeyance for a decade if not longer.
At the same time, I can understand why parents may feel apprehensive, or even panicky, if their children have been reassigned, say, from Wilson High School to lower-performing Roosevelt, or from Eastern to lower-performing H.D. Woodson—or even from Wilson to Eastern.
Such reactions don't mean they're bigoted or racist. Parents want what's best for their children. And no one wants her child to be the only one, or one of a handful, of any category in a school.
No doubt some parents will depart the system for charter schools or other school systems in the region. But I hope they'll consider the following factors before making that decision—and that DCPS will do whatever it can to ensure that they do:
Nothing is happening right away. While the proposals are set to take effect a year from now, no student who is currently attending her neighborhood school will have to switch. And students in 3rd grade or above will be able to stay in the same feeder pattern—as can younger ones with older siblings in the pattern. So there's time for middle and high schools, the sources of the most concern, to improve.
Your new school may be better than you think. It might be worth a visit, and DC Public Schools should make it easy for parents to tour a prospective school and sit in on classes. The quality of a school isn't necessarily reflected in its test scores. I've seen some impressive teachers and motivated students in relatively "low-performing" DCPS schools.
You may be able to band together with other parents in the same situation. In some neighborhoods, like Capitol Hill, parents have pledged to send their children to the local public school and sometimes worked together to improve a school even before their kids enroll. DCPS and individual school administrators should do whatever they can to encourage such commitments and work with prospective parents.
Your child may be challenged academically even in a generally low-performing school. No parent wants his child to be held back by classmates who require a slower pace. But AP classes are currently offered in all neighborhood high schools, and Eastern has just begun offering the rigorous International Baccalaureate Diploma program.
Indeed, one of the advisory committee's recommendations is that all neighborhood high schools should "ensure that specialized and selective programs are developed and supported." But that won't be enough to ensure that more advanced students are challenged. Schools will also need to limit those selective programs to students who can actually handle advanced work.
Right now AP classes in DCPS high schools are open to all, and DCPS requires students to earn at least two credits in an AP or IB course in order to graduate. (Students can also fulfill that requirement with a Career and Technical Education course, but many don't.)
While some argue that lower-achieving students benefit from taking AP or other advanced classes even if they don't perform well in them, they would probably benefit just as much if not more from a truly rigorous class pitched at a level they're equipped to handle. And they'll almost certainly hold back the students in an advanced class who are better prepared.
Some may object to this kind of sorting by ability as "tracking," and perhaps it is. But if the alternative is socioeconomic segregation on a school-by-school basis, tracking doesn't seem so bad. And it may be the only way to keep higher-achieving students in the system.
While middle schools generally don't engage in as much tracking as high schools, technology is making it possible for learning to become more individualized there, enabling each student to move at her own pace. The same is true at the elementary level.
No doubt some parents will object that all of this is easy for me to say, since I don't have a school-age child who has been reassigned. They certainly have a point. I can only say: I hope that if I did, I would be willing to take my own advice.
Not much bang for D.C.’s education bucks
The Washington Times
Washington Times Editorial Board
August 25, 2014
School buses are clogging the roads once more as students return for another round of reading, writing and arithmetic. In the District of Columbia, sad but true, they’re not learning much.
Measured head-to-head against every state’s school system, the D.C. Public Schools rank dead last. The survey by WalletHub, a personal-finance social network, crunched data from the Census Bureau, the National Center for Educational Statistics, the National Education Association and other sources to conclude that Washington’s parents are paying a lot and getting very small bangs for their bucks.
D.C. Public Schools schools rank 48th in the dropout rate, 51st in math-test scores, 51st in reading-test scores, 49th in children who repeat one or more grades, and tie for 34th (with Louisiana) for least-safe schools.
Performance is dismal across a dozen measures, ranging from dropout rates to math and reading test scores and rates of bullying. The only category in which the D.C. schools finished in the top five (in a positive way) was the student-to-teacher ratio.
The teachers unions and liberal politicians agree that all that’s needed to correct the nation’s educational ills is hiring more dues-paying teachers. It’s no surprise that this is the only category in which the District excels. There are 46 states with proportionally fewer teachers, and in every one of those states the teachers do a better job than in Washington.
Having more teachers for the classroom to provide more one-on-one instruction might well help, but it’s not the most needed improvement. Nor is having more money to spend. The most recent Census Bureau figures show that the District spends $18,475 to educate each pupil, second only to New York’s $19,076 outlay.
Schools in neighboring Virginia and Maryland spend $10,364 per student and $13,871 per student, respectively.
A broader WalletHub study released in April applied similar factors to evaluate the return on investment in terms of the quality of government services, based on how much residents pay the tax collector. The District placed near the bottom, in 48th place.
The race for D.C. mayor quickens after Labor Day, and the state of public education will be at the top of parents’ interest, as it always is. The candidates — Muriel Bowser, David A. Catania and Carol Schwartz — will all say that “something” must be done to improve the schools, but they’ll avoid saying what “something” is. The first thing the city council should do to improve the schools is to eliminate the focus on the demands of the teachers unions. That’s where the problem begins, and that’s where a cure, if there ever is one, will begin.
Does education reform have to be impersonal?
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
August 21, 2014
Do education reformers rely on "impersonal" solutions, as a recent New York Times op-ed argues? Not from what I've seen in DC. Teachers care about students, but the effects of their caring are hard to measure. And caring may not be enough.
Today's education reformers ignore the "inherently complicated and messy human relationships" that are at the core of education, says Berkeley professor David Kirp in Sunday's New York Times. Instead, he claims, they turn to ostensibly simpler and neater strategies that rely on competition between schools or the transformative power of technology.
Predictably, Kirp's piece has unleashed a storm of commentary and an avalanche of tweets. Those who place themselves in the ed reform camp have assailed the flaws and oversimplifications in Kirp's argument.
They note that few if any education reformers treat test scores as "the single metric of success," as Kirp asserts. They point out that Kirp overlooks the fact that many charter schools actually do get better results for low-income African-American students.
And they express bafflement at his claim that reformers focus on "markets and competition" to the exclusion of factors like talented teachers, engaged students, and a challenging curriculum. In fact, much of education reform (a term so broad and loaded it should perhaps be retired) is directed towards creating those very things.
I agree that, like many articles that get a lot of attention, Kirp's suffers from exaggeration and a lack of nuance. At the same time, though, he's hit on something, albeit with a blunt instrument.
The importance of caring
Kirp's basic point is that for education to be effective, schools need to foster personal "bonds of caring" between teachers and students. I imagine most if not all teachers and administrators, including those who consider themselves education reformers, would agree.
I've met teachers in DC's charter and traditional public school sectors who have not only formed personal bonds with students, but who probably would have done so even if some misguided "reformer" had explicitly tried to prohibit them. And I've seen those teachers chafe against a system that doesn't always acknowledge the importance of those bonds or reward their formation.
At a high-poverty DC public high school, one teacher told me about a student who had come to him with a request. Holding out the program from a funeral, the boy asked if the teacher could "fix" it. Eventually the teacher came to understand what the problem was: The boy's mother had told him that the deceased was his father. But the program failed to include the boy's name in the list of survivors.
The teacher recruited a more tech-savvy colleague to try to figure out a way to insert the boy's name so it would look like part of the program. In the end, the only way to do that was to retype the whole document, carefully matching its font and formatting. The teachers stayed far past the end of the school day in order to have the new program ready for the student by the next morning.
The teacher who told me this story was making a point: the DC Public Schools teacher evaluation system has no way of taking into account teachers' willingness to extend themselves on behalf of their students. And no doubt stories like this could be found many times over, in DC and elsewhere.
I'm sure students benefit in many ways from knowing their teachers care about them personally. And a teacher who doesn't care about her students as individuals probably isn't going to be very good at her job.
Caring may not be enough
But it's hard to know, and especially to measure, what effect those personal bonds have on students' ability to learn. Even the most caring teacher may not be equipped to teach effectively, possibly because of a lack of training or support.
And, surprisingly, in some instances personal bonds can actually get in the way of teaching. One study found that a computer program that gave students feedback on their writing actually produced more positive feelings, and more improvement, than feedback from a human instructor. Apparently students didn't take the criticism so personally when it came from a machine.
In a broader sense, of course, Kirp is right that personal connections between teachers and students are crucial. But, as with any one element of education, they're not sufficient. We also need to figure out ways to assess whether teachers are actually teaching and students are actually learning.
The tension, as always, is between the bright clean lines of standardization—whether in testing, curriculum, or teaching methods—and the messy individualization that's necessary when you're dealing with real people who vary greatly in their needs and capabilities.
We haven't yet figured out the right balance between the two, but people—including some who identify as education reformers—are definitely working on it.