- New Tech Prep charter raises the bar on STEM [Friendship PCS mentioned]
- District studies roots of dropout crisis and promises it will work to fix it [Maya Angelou PCS mentioned]
- D.C. Says It Now Knows Why Forty Percent Of Students Don't Graduate
New Tech Prep charter raises the bar on STEM [Friendship PCS mentioned]
The Washington Times
By Deborah Simmons
September 25, 2014
Donald Henson had a vision — make that two visions. The first fortuitously led to the other.
The first occurred several years back, when Mr. Henson discovered there were no D.C. license plates in a Northern Virginia parking lot filled with science and technology experts and other professionals.
That sight led to vision No. 2: Build a high-tech school for D.C. kids, and they will come.
Well, that vision will produce the first graduates of the Friendship Technology Preparatory Academy in 2015.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the brand-spanking-new schoolhouse was held Wednesday, and prior to that students attended classes in an adjacent school building. And what an eye-stunner the new building is. (Disclaimer: I served as emcee for the ceremony on Wednesday and toured the school.)
Every square inch of Tech Prep is state-of-the-art, focusing on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) — including environmental science — as no D.C. school has done before it.
An $18 million price tag. Two biology labs. Two chemistry labs. A robotics lab. A rooftop greenhouse. Innovative teachers. Inquisitive students. Parent-infused leadership and faculty.
Even the kitchen facilities are top-notch.
While there’s no chalk dust flying about classrooms, the technology, whiteboards and projectors left more than one parent saying, “Nothing like when I was in school.”
This is what they want for their children, and their children deserve it: a high-quality teaching and learning environment.
Two generations ago, Tech Prep was unthinkable. D.C. had just gained home rule authority in 1974, and academic achievement was sliding while political one-upmanship was a sign of the times. By the 1980s crack and its senseless violence grabbed headlines while academics slid off everyone’s radar screens.
After the turn of the century, public schools had become warehouses, while charters began sprouting up everywhere and being maligned for competing. Sure, McKinley Tech was brought online, but today, as the city closes traditional schools for any drummed-up reason, charters surge ahead.
Indeed, Tech Prep is even located in an auspicious community — an up-and-coming neighborhood where mentally ill patients of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, drug dealers, panhandlers and ne’er-do-wells used to ply the area because no one was watching.
Now its Southeast neighbors are the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security, and IT industry projects are on the horizon. The potential for partnerships is high, and the location — near Metro stations, major roadways (I-295 and the Beltway) and a gateway corridor (MLK Jr. Avenue) — means transportation is a good draw as well.
As for academic competitiveness, Tech Prep has a role model, so to speak, in Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County, where Mr. Hense had that first vision that I mentioned.
TJ, as it is commonly called, just this month was named the nation’s best magnet school by Newsweek (again) and is a perennial high-ranking high school with U.S. News & World Report. TJ is a mecca for geeks and nerds, and we need to send up prayers that Tech Prep students and faculty do as well, if not better.
I got a glimpse of what’s going on in a Tech Prep robotics class, where teacher Joshua Brown, a Howard University grad with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, and several pairs of students were bent over texts and working with their hands. A student explained their assignment as I nodded and smiled — then giggled outside the classroom, thinking “The Big Bang Theory: Next Generation.”
To be sure, parents, faculty and other supporters need to flank Mr. Hense and Tech Prep right now. Anti-school choice and anti-charter elements are on the prowl this election year. They think charters take top-drawer students and money from traditional schools, and they say charters are winning the enrollment numbers race. Their goal is to strangle public charter schools with as much red tape as possible.
What they should realize is that Mr. Hense is showing them the way with Tech Prep, and that all charter schools ask for is a level playing field for charter students.
We’ll have to wait and see if Tech Prep makes the best-of lists in the next couple of years. What’s certain right now is that Tech Prep is a game changer, raising the bar on teaching and learning.
District studies roots of dropout crisis and promises it will work to fix it [Maya Angelou PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
September 26, 2014
For every course an eighth-grader in the District fails, that student becomes six percentage points less likely to graduate from high school on time. And for every 10 times a student is absent the same year, that student is four percentage points less likely to make it to the finish line.
A report released Friday identifies such early risk factors that can derail the city’s public school students from a path to graduation. Based on trends, a sobering 40 percent of today’s ninth-graders will not graduate in four years The report tries to determine who drops out of the city’s public schools, why students get off track and what kinds of programs and schools are best at helping them persevere.
The report emerged from Raise DC, a coalition of public, private and nonprofit groups that Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) convened in 2012 with the goal of developing solutions to improve opportunities for District residents from birth through age 24. The city’s high school graduation rate is one of five key areas for the partnership.
Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith said the District has invested significant resources in early childhood education in recent years, but that this effort turns more attention to older students.
“We want kids at the other end of the spectrum to know we haven’t forgotten them and it’s not too late,” she said.
School districts nationwide are doing similar analyses in their efforts to boost graduation rates. They are tapping into new data that allow them to track students over time and consider multiple sources, including test scores and information about attendance, behavior, course selection and grades.
A Montgomery County analysis found patterns as early as first grade that signaled a greater likelihood of dropping out, including whether students had been suspended or were performing below grade level. Arlington County invited data scientists from around the world to study its numbers and identify trouble spots or trends that could help schools intervene early.
D.C. Public Schools and individual schools have done some work on early interventions. But this report represents the most comprehensive, citywide analysis of high school dropouts, Smith said.
The report looks at the experiences and outcomes for first-time ninth-graders between 2006 and 2009, tracking more than 18,000 students in more than 40 high schools, both traditional and charter, including selective and alternative schools.
The study found that middle school performance played a significant role in whether students were on track to graduate. Some key risk factors in eighth grade predicted poor graduation rates: special education or ESL designation; being overage; low scores on standardized math or reading tests; high number of absences; and course failures.
Middle school experience was not “destiny,” though, the report said. Students also had different outcomes depending on what high school they attended.
One analysis looked at the graduation outcomes for students who performed at the top end on the city’s standardized achievement tests in eighth grade. It found that on-time graduation rates even for the highest-performing students varied widely by school, ranging from 31 percent to 100 percent.
The report found that about 25 percent of all high school students disengage at the start of their freshman year, earning few credits, racking up absences and never getting back on track. Half of these students are concentrated in seven high schools.
It also identified a small number of schools that have succeeded in graduating students considered at high risk of dropping out, but those high-performing schools enroll about 9 percent of the city’s highest-risk students.
The report does not identify the schools with the best or worst graduation rates. But school leaders from around the city have been invited to a summit on Friday to look at the data and begin digesting it. Also invited to Friday’s summit are nonprofit and foundation and business leaders who want to advance promising ideas.
Smith said the report is intended to spark conversations about possible policy solutions and share helpful practices that schools can adopt.
“The analysis is compelling and interesting, but it’s only as good as what we do with it,” she said.
Heather Wathington, chief executive of Maya Angelou Public Charter Schools and part of the leadership council for Raise DC, had an early look at her schools’ results and said the information was eye-opening. Starting this year, the school is requesting eighth-grade transcripts for all high school students who transfer in so they can better understand their risk factors and help them accordingly.
“We are an alternative school, but we believe in the future and possibilities,” she said.
D.C. Says It Now Knows Why Forty Percent Of Students Don't Graduate
WAMU
By Kavitha Cardoza
September 26, 2014
In D.C. public schools, 40 percent of ninth graders don’t graduate in four years. But thanks to a new report that looked at information from thousands of students, for the first time we now know a lot more about who these children are.
Celine Fejeran with D.C.’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education says they analyzed more than 18,000 students’ information and called the resulting data set “unprecedented."
"We actually can predict 25 percent of your chances of graduating before you even get to high school. That was a big 'aha' moment, this was really a wake-up stat for us," she says.
Of eighth graders who don't graduate on time, one-third were in special education classes, more than 75 percent of them didn’t pass reading and math tests and half of them missed more than a week of school.
But Fejeran says it isn’t just a student’s individual risk factors that matter. If you take the highest performing students in the city, their chances of graduating are “wildly different” based on where they go to high school.
"We’re finding some schools are graduating top performers at 30 percent and others are graduating top performers at 100 percent," she says. "So we know a lot about students before they set foot in high school but that’s not destiny because where they go to high school has the power to change that trajectory."
Half the students who fall off track as soon as they enter high school and have 58 days on average of unexcused absences are concentrated in just a few schools. But the deputy mayor's would not release the individual names of schools, nor schools that are performing far better than expected.
This information is helpful for principals who can now analyze their school specific information and reallocate resources to support these at-risk students.
D.C. officials will also open a "reengagement center" for youth younger than 24 who have already dropped and want to continue their education but don't know how.