NEWS
- D.C. Public Schools starts academic year with four new schools [Children’s Guild PCS, Monument Academy PCS, Washington Global PCS and Kingsman Academy PCS mentioned]
- Charter schools must back fill empty seats [Achievement Prep PCS and DC Prep PCS mentioned]
- D.C. Bilingual celebrates new school year in former Community Academy building [D.C. Bilingual PCS and Friendship PCS mentioned]
- Why some in education believe truancy deserves much more attention
D.C. Public Schools starts academic year with four new schools [Children’s Guild PCS, Monument Academy PCS, Washington Global PCS and Kingsman Academy PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
August 24, 2015
After closing three dozen schools in the past seven years for declining enrollment, D.C. Public Schools started the new school year by opening doors to four new schools.
School officials said the change reflects growing confidence in the schools, with projected enrollment surpassing 49,000 this year, up 10 percent from four years ago.
“We have more students, more teachers, more schools, more and better academic offerings, and more extra curricular offerings. It’s an exciting time,” said D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson at H.D. Woodson High School on Monday morning.
She said she wanted to kick off the school year at Woodson in Northeast Washington because it’s “emblematic” of the school system. People often underestimate the high school, she said, but it’s boosting enrollment — by 2 percent this year — and its performance with increasing graduation rates.
The chancellor announced the introduction of two new career academies, Information Technology and Engineering, that will begin accepting students at Woodson in the 2016-2017 school year. Officials said the academies will give students in one of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods a way to pursue high-wage jobs in the growing fields.
The school system is introducing more than 90 additional elective courses in high schools this year, due to a new requirement and budget priority that every comprehensive high school should offer at least 20 elective courses and at least six Advanced Placement courses. The new programming has brought a bump in staffing. The school district hired 750 new teachers this year, up from about 500 in previous years, Henderson said.
Three of the schools that opened Monday had been closed in recent years. A newly built Brookland Middle School sits on the site of a former elementary school that was closed in 2008. The building reopened with an arts and world languages focus and a new $58.5 million campus.
Van Ness Elementary closed in 2006 when two public housing complexes nearby were razed. Families in the newly rebuilt Navy Yard neighborhood advocated for their own school. The building is reopening with an early childhood center this year and plans to continue adding grades in future years. River Terrace Elementary in northeastern Washington closed in 2012 for low enrollment, and it is reopening as a special education campus to serve students enrolled in Mamie D. Lee and Sharpe Health.
Dorothy Height Elementary School in Petworth was formerly Community Academy Public Charter School, but that school lost its charter last spring after tax records revealed in court showed that a founder had paid himself more than $1 million a year. The school system is taking over operations for the campus, but officials said the principal, as well as many staff members and students, are staying on through the transition.
At Woodson High School on Monday, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser touted her new Kids Ride Free program on Metrorail. In the past, students have been able to ride the bus for free but not Metro trains. “We believe nobody should have to pay to get to school,” she said.
Opening day of public schools in the District has historically been a closely watched test for school system leaders’ competence. For many years, schools opened late or were in danger of opening late because of maintenance problems or other organizational challenges. This year the process was overseen by a new chief operating officer, Nathaniel Beers, who replaced Lisa Ruda, who left in July.
Henderson said that overall, the process went smoothly. “I was in bed at 10 last night,” she said.
Some students from Wilson High School did not have course schedules mailed to them by Friday. But Henderson said school officials printed them out for families to pick up Saturday morning.
Monday was also the first day of school for many public charter schools in the District. Four new charter schools are also scheduled to open, including Children’s Guild, which offers tailored instruction for special education and accelerated students; Monument Academy, a residential boarding school for children who have experienced stress and trauma; Washington Global, a middle school with an international and research-based academic focus; and Kingsman Academy, a school for students who are over-age and behind in credits.
Charter schools must back fill empty seats [Achievement Prep PCS and DC Prep PCS mentioned]
Parentshaveschoolchoicekidswin.com
By Mark Lerner
August 25, 2015
Last week Natalie Wexler had a piece in Greater Greater Washington in which she revealed that a couple of high performing charter schools such as Achievement Prep and DC Prep Edgewood do not accept students after the sixth grade. This is not what we as a movement should be doing.
Now don’t get me wrong. I understand that at the high school level some charters, due to their specific curriculum, may not be able to accept kids at later grades because it would then be impossible to obtain the necessary classes to graduate. But at the elementary and middle school level there is really no excuse not to enroll pupils that want access to the quality programs our portfolio of institutions offer.
Those of us involved in this alternative sector often claim that charter schools are public schools just like the traditional ones. We offer this moral statement as a strong justification for funding and space on an equal level to that of DCPS. But if we are not going to take in students the way that the regular schools do than this ethical argument goes right up in smoke.
I know well the problem that charters have in enrolling additional kids mid-year. Currently, there is no additional funding for teaching these students. As I have argued before, this is a problem that desperately needs to be fixed. But failing to add pupils at the start of the school term, before the October count, because they may have not benefited from starting a program from the beginning, is not what this school reform endeavor is about.
As a reminder, we fight like we do to create quality schools so that every young person in the District that can benefit from attending one of these facilities has exactly that opportunity.
D.C. Bilingual celebrates new school year in former Community Academy building [D.C. Bilingual PCS and Friendship PCS mentioned]
Watchdog.org
By Moriah Costa
August 25, 2015
Hundreds of parents, teachers and community members celebrated the start of the new school year at D.C. Bilingual on Friday in the former Community Academy Public Charter School building.
Parents walked with their kids throughout the new classrooms, while others played hopscotch and ate popcorn outside. A community member dressed as a jester and played a horn as he beckoned families to outside festivities.
It was the culmination of a citywide effort to find a home for the 1,600 students displaced when the D.C. Public Charter School Board voted to close CAPCS in February. The charter’s five buildings were divided between D.C. Bilingual, Friendship Public Charter School and the D.C. Public Schools. Students attending CAPCS were given preference to attend D.C. Bilingual or Friendship.
Seventy of those former CAPCS students opted to stay in their old building and attend D.C. Bilingual, a Spanish language immersion elementary school.
Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, praised D.C. Bilingual, calling it “a model of what a charter school should be like.”
He said the school was diverse, drawing students from all eight D.C. wards. This year over 90 percent of parents opted to come back to the schools, despite the move from its former Columbia Heights building to Fort Totten.
“The charter board, we look at that and we say, that tells us more than almost anything else about how families feel about their school,” he said.
He and other staff members of the board worked with the city and school staff in the past few weeks to prepare it for the first week of school. Pearson even spent one afternoon sanding down a window couch in a prekindergarten classroom that will be used as a reading area.
Transition from CAPCS
Daniela Anello, the principal of D.C. Bilingual, said the transition to the new building was tough. She said community meetings with parents in the months leading up to the opening of the school were emotional.
“(Parents) felt very frustrated because they didn’t understand the decision to close the school based on actions of stakeholders that didn’t necessarily play a role in their personal experience at the school,” she said.
Anello wanted to rebuild parents’ experience with schools and held many meetings and events to make the community feel welcome.
Sarah Nestor, a former CAPCS parent, said the transition to D.C. Bilingual was smooth. Someone from the city would contact her every other week to make sure she had chosen a school for her daughter, Malia Makey.
Nestor said while she was sad to see CAPCS close, she was excited her daughter was accepted into D.C. Bilingual as a first grader and would learn Spanish this year. But what really caught her eye was the reading and math scores of the charter’s students.
“My daughter is really good at reading and math, so I wanted to make sure that she went to a school that had that,” she said.
Charisma Hughes is also excited about the opportunity her son Jasiah will have to learn Spanish. Her family is originally from the Dominican Republic and she had tried to enroll her son in a language immersion school last year, but wasn’t matched with the school.
“I’m a lot happier now (than I was with CAPCS),” she said.
Anello said the experience she’s had with parents who opted to stay and attend her school has been positive.
“Now that they’re starting to get to know us, they respect us and they like us and they want to be a part of the work,” she said.
Why some in education believe truancy deserves much more attention
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
August 25, 2015
Recent battles in the edu-policy world have centered on standardized testing, teacher tenure, charter schools, vouchers and Common Core state standards. But debates over how to address poor student attendance — which is directly linked to low achievement and high dropout rates — have generated much less heat and light.
And that’s a mistake, according to the Center for American Progress, which is seeking to highlight truancy as an issue that deserves far more attention than it traditionally gets.
“Education has long been seen as the means to prosperity, but that only happens if students attend school regularly,” says a report that CAP, a left-leaning think tank that is associated with the Obama administration, released Tuesday.
The report comes as Attendance Works, a national and state initiative that advocates for effective attendance policies, is promoting September as “Attendance Awareness Month” — a chance for school to help parents understand the direct link between chronic absence, low achievement and dropping out of high school.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the size of the challenge because every state has a different definition of truancy and chronic absenteeism, and public data reporting is inconsistent. But it’s clear that attendance no small problem: An estimated 5 to 7.5 million of the nation’s 50 million students are chronically absent, meaning that they miss 20 days of class, or more than 10 percent of the school year.
Attendance problems are not confined to older teens skipping class. Younger children — as young as preschool — also miss school at high rates, often because of family instability or other factors out of their control.
Overwhelmed schools often struggle to deal with those problems, which have their roots far outside the four walls of the classroom. But the academic impacts of missed school are clear, whether absences are excused or unexcused.
Research has shown that when kindergartners and first-graders are chronically absent, they are less likely to read on grade level, whether the absences are excused or unexcused. A student’s attendance record as early as sixth grade is a powerful predictor of whether that student will eventually graduate from high school.
Many school districts and states have taken a punitive approach to dealing with truancy. Until recently, for example, Los Angeles Unified School District issued students $250 tickets for truancy violations.
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