NEWS
- Exclusive interview with Martha Cutts, head of school Washington Latin PCS [Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
- Some DCPS schools have to cope with an influx of midyear transfers
Exclusive interview with Martha Cutts, head of school Washington Latin PCS [Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
July 28, 2015
I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down recently for an interview with Martha Cutts, the head of school at Washington Latin Public Charter School. Ms. Cutts sent a shock wave across the Washington, D.C. education community a couple of months ago when she announced that she is planning to step down making the 2015-2016 school year her last at the helm.
Ms. Cutts explained to me that she has been working in the field of education for the last 46 years. Most people already are familiar with the fact that she served as assistant head and head of upper school at National Cathedral School for 14 years. I asked her how she became involved in education.
“I always wanted to be a teacher,” Ms. Cutts replied. “My parents pulled me out of an extremely crowded fourth grade class in a public school in New Jersey. This was when the first wave of baby boomers was entering the public schools. They enrolled me in an extremely small girls’ private school at the beginning of the fifth grade. There were 22 students in my graduating class. I had wonderful teachers who influenced my decision to enter this profession. I ended up majoring in German in college and eventually teaching English in Germany for a year.” After that year abroad, Ms. Cutts attended Yale University in order to earn a Master of Arts in Teaching the German language and literature.
Over her long career and before joining Washington Latin, Ms. Cutts served as a teacher, coach, department head, director of admissions, division director, and head of school in the independent school sector. I inquired as to what her biggest takeaway was from these experiences. Ms. Cutts answered almost before the words came out of my mouth.
"The importance of small class size,” Ms. Cutts eagerly informed me. “Small classes, and I’m referring to ones not larger than 15 to 18 children, are important because they allow the teacher to give feedback to students and to spend quality time with them to an extent which is impossible in a room full of 30 kids.” But there were other lessons learned from her decades spent in her profession.
“Beyond just reasonably small class sizes, small schools are also crucial. When you have a small school it really becomes its own community,” Ms. Cutts related. “I loved my years working in girls’ schools. In my classroom would be the captain of an athletic team, the student government president, or the editor of the yearbook. Girls assumed they could lead as a result. The institution became a place for enabling the potential of these young women.”
The final lesson that Ms. Cutts wanted to make sure I made note of is the importance of hiring, respecting, supporting, and retaining strong faculty. “A great teacher can make a big difference in the life of a child,” the Washington Latin head of school asserted, “and having leaders who support them is critical to their ability to succeed.”
I then asked Ms. Cutts how she came to her present position. “In the fall of 2007 I had just completed a project for a school in South Africa and was asked if I would be interested in serving as the interim head of Washington Latin. I went to meet the staff at the original site of Washington Latin in Christ Church on Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. The fellowship hall that contained classrooms for all the seventh graders was referred to as the Thunderdome. It was pretty chaotic. Although the instructors were exhausted from having to practice their profession in this environment, I could immediately tell that these were some great teachers. I agreed to be the interim head of school for six months, and that was seven and a half years ago.”
Ms. Cutts recalled how difficult the struggle was at the beginning to stabilize both the finances and the hiring. Much of the growth became somewhat easier when in July 2008 she hired Diana Smith as head of the upper school. Dr. Smith came to Washington Latin with a similar independent school background, and, most importantly, the same philosophy of pedagogy.
Now that Washington Latin is regarded as one of the top charter schools in the nation’s capital, I asked Ms. Cutts for the secret of her success.
"There is no secret sauce,” she responded. “Everyone talks about good teachers as being the key. But you must have leaders who recognize how important the faculty is, who know how to select strong teachers, how to retain these instructors, and support them in their work and see them grow.”
Another key component to Washington Latin’s top tier ranking, according to the head of school, has been the development of a culture that supports the academics. “Everyone likes to talk about closing the achievement gap, but often they don’t talk about the culture that will allow this to occur,” Ms. Cutts emphasized. “We are tremendously proud of the education provided at Latin, including the culture shared between the students and adults. If you were to ask the first ten 10 kids you met on campus what was so great about this school, I bet 10 out of 10 would say the faculty. It is the time that the teachers spend with these pupils that makes the difference, the caring that they demonstrate, together with the support. These adults consistently go the extra mile. The school is small enough that they know all the kids. The class sizes are small enough that the faculty can interact with students in meaningful ways.”
Ms. Cutts continued, “It is the culture that invariably catches these kids before they fall. The teachers show the pupils that they want them to do well. The result is that the students almost naturally desire to help each other such as the high school students helping the middle school kids.
The head of Washington Latin also pointed to the charter’s diversity as a crucial and important part of the school. “Our public schools should reflect the racial and socio-economic integration of this city,” stated Ms. Cutts. All students benefit from the wonderful mix we have. It really is true that a rising tide lifts all boats. If more children of different races, cultures, and classes were learning together in the same classrooms, some of the problems we see in our society could be ameliorated. ”
Finally, Ms. Cutts listed the setting of high expectations as a key to high academic achievement. “We establish high goals both academically and behaviorally. We have a saying here that 'words matter,' and they really do. If we hear kids speaking inappropriately, we call them on it. Of course, the classical curriculum also contributes to discussions around moral questions that are embedded in the curriculum.”
With a student body of about 670 students in grades five through twelve, Washington Latin claims these impressive accomplishments: a high school which has been in Tier 1 on the DC Public Charter School Board’s Performance Management Framework since the tool was first administered four years ago; a re-enrollment rate of 98 percent; a wait-list of 750 students; and one of the highest graduation rates in the city. The 62 members of the Class of 2015 earned over $4.5 million in merit-based scholarships, and the four graduating classes have included five POSSE and two Trachtenberg Scholars.
Given the school’s development since its opening just nine years ago, I wanted to know from Ms. Cutts how she felt about her decision to step down. “It is the right time for me,” Ms. Cutts replied. “It was an extremely difficult decision. I really hate to break up the team. We never could have predicted we would come so far. I’m tremendously proud of what we have built. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve met many tremendous individuals, and I’ve been so fortunate to be a part of this extremely special charter school movement.”
Some DCPS schools have to cope with an influx of midyear transfers
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
July 27, 2015
Thousands of DC students switch schools midyear, especially at some high schools that are part of the DC Public School system. That has negative consequences both for the students who switch and the schools they enter.
A recent report from DC's Office of the State Superintendent of Education found that over 92% of DC students remain in the same school throughout the year, based on data from 2011 through 2014. Some have hailed that as proof that the system is fundamentally stable.
But that 8% of students who move midyear is more significant than it sounds, and DCPS schools take in a disproportionate number of new students as compared to charters. In fact, many students who transfer to DCPS midyear come from charter schools. Most of the new arrivals, however, come from other DCPS schools or other states.
Students who switch schools midyear are often already at risk, and transferring only exacerbates their difficulties. They're more likely to have low test scores and to qualify for special education than the DC population as a whole, according to the report. They're also disproportionately low-income, African-American, and male.
Schools that take in a lot of students midyear also face challenges. If a school has established clear routines and rules, late arrivals won't be familiar with them. Some may bring behavior problems that caused them to leave their previous school.
Teachers need to devote extra effort to bringing new students up to speed on what the rest of the class has been learning. Other students at the school can suffer as a result.
Clearly, there are powerful incentives for schools to deny admission to students after the school year has begun. But it's also obvious that it would be a bad idea to deprive thousands of kids of any education whatsoever.
Besides, in DC, only charters have the option of turning midyear applicants away. Neighborhood DCPS schools are legally required to take all comers, whenever they arrive.
DCPS has a net gain of students while charters have a net loss
According to the report, over 6,000 students entered or exited DC schools or changed schools within DC at least once during the 2013-14 school year. Both sectors lost students during the course of the school year, but charter schools were much less likely to replace them with new arrivals. By June, DCPS experienced a net gain of 2% of its enrollment, while charter sector enrollment had declined by 5%.
Some have charged that much of the churn in DCPS is caused by students leaving charter schools midyear, voluntarily or involuntarily. The report shows that many more students do leave charters for DCPS midyear than vice versa.
In fact, over the three years studied, the number of students going from charters to DCPS was more than 12 times the number who have moved in the opposite direction. And over 30% of charters' decline in enrollment each year was due to students transferring to DCPS.
But it's also clear that students arriving from charters are only a fraction of the students entering DCPS schools midyear. More students switch schools within DCPS. For the three years covered by the report, 717 students on average switched from one DCPS school to another each year, while an average of 584 entered the system from charters.
And the number of students who entered DCPS from beyond DC's borders is greater than the number of transfers from charters and other DCPS schools put together: 1,783 a year, on average.
High school students move more than others
It's also clear that there's more movement at the high school level than in other grades. Students in 9th grade had the highest rate of churn in 2013-14, with 12.4% switching schools. At 10th grade, the figure was 8.7%. The only other grade level with a higher rate was preschool for three-year-olds.
That's in line with another study that found 30% of DC students switch high schools at least once. And high school is a particularly bad time to switch: a student's chances of graduating sink by 10 percentage points each time he transfers, according to the study.
A few DCPS high schools have the highest influx of midyear transfers, according to data gathered by the Washington Post. Cardozo High School, which takes in many immigrant students, had a 30% increase in enrollment during the year. Its net gain, after offsetting the increase with students who withdrew, was 18.4% of its student body.
Other high schools, including some application-only DCPS schools, were comparatively stable, losing or gaining less than 1% of their population. Meanwhile, 16 high schools, all of them charters, had a net loss of between 3 and 22.5%.
At Roosevelt High School, which had a net gain of 8.4%, there were 487 students enrolled at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year. By May, 47 had withdrawn, but 73 others had arrived.
New students may arrive with vastly different needs. At Roosevelt, the newcomers included a 17-year-old from Guatemala who was in school for the first time since 6th grade, a 9th-grader who had left a charter after she was caught with marijuana, and an 18-year-old who had dropped out of another DCPS high school after moving into a group foster home near Roosevelt.
A change in school funding may help but won't solve the problem
Clearly, officials need to take steps to reduce student mobility in DC. One possibility now under discussion is to change the way schools receive compensation. Currently, charter schools receive a set amount for each student enrolled on October 5th. If they gain or lose students after that date, they neither take in or lose additional money.
A system that compensates charters more accurately for the number of students enrolled throughout the year might give them an incentive to retain students. But it wouldn't help reduce the far greater inflow of students to DCPS from other sources. And it's not clear charters would be willing to admit a larger share of the students who arrive midyear even if they got compensated for them, given the disruption such transfers can cause.
There may be policy changes that could reduce the amount of transferring within DCPS, but it's not clear officials can do anything about the movement across state, and even international, lines. It would help, however, if DC could at least share data about students and their movements with Maryland and Virginia.
That would allow schools here to determine the backgrounds and needs of students who enter from those states, and it would enable DC officials to understand what happens to the many students who transfer to those states' schools from DC. That kind of data sharing is a possibility that OSSE is currently exploring, according to the report.
As the report concludes, we need more information about the underlying causes of student movement from school to school before we can try to reduce it. But even once we identify them, those causes may be hard to address.
Some have suggested, for example, that a system of school choice is part of the problem, because it's led to a cavalier attitude about moving from one school to another. And given that students who transfer midyear are disproportionately at-risk and low-income, poverty and housing insecurity may also be driving a lot of the mobility.
So it's likely that student mobility will be a fact of life at many DCPS schools for the foreseeable future. It would make sense to develop specific programs to help integrate new students at schools that receive large numbers of midyear transfers, as Cardozo has done for immigrant students.
And when we're comparing one school's level of achievement to another's, we should take into account whether a school has been acquiring additional challenging, and possibly disruptive, students—or whether it's been losing them.
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