- Two Charter Schools Recommended for Closure [IDEA and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS are mentioned]
- Two More Charter Schools on the Chopping Block [IDEA and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS are mentioned]
- Charter Schools Must Succeed or Close
- Gingrich, Romney, Obama--Education Triplets
- States Expand ‘Disadvantaged’ Category to Address Racial Gap
Two Charter Schools Recommended for Closure [IDEA and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
December 22, 2011
Two long-time public charter schools are candidates for closure because of poor academic records and management issues, the D.C. Public Charter School Board said Monday night.
The board voted to place Community Academy PCS, opened in 1997, and Integrated Design Electronics Academy (IDEA), opened in 1998, on the path to revocation of their operating charters. A final decision will come early next year after the schools have a chance to address the specific deficiencies at public hearings.
Community Academy, which serves more than 1,800 students in grades PS-8 on six campuses — five brick-and-mortar and one online—is the more complicated of the two cases. The Butler campus on Thomas Circle NW in Ward 2 received a top ranking in the board’s new performance management system. But four of the other five (located in Wards 4 and 5) are in some form of corrective action or restructuring under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
A report by charter board staff said the school’s board of trustees was not engaged in academic issues and that paid employees were serving as trustees, a potential conflict of interest. A charter review team also noted that classroom instruction did not consistently follow the curriculum. Charter board members said they were particularly concerned about the Rand campus, a PS-5 school on Riggs Road NE, where only 25 percent of third graders were proficient or advanced in reading on the 2011 DC CAS. The school scored just 19.5 percent on the charter board’s performance system.
Community Academy board chairman Francis Smith said new leadership and other changes were in place at Rand. But charter board members were not persuaded, and they voted to begin revocation proceedings.
The problem is that the school’s charter covers all six campuses, meaning that revocation would force them all to close, including Butler. It’s difficult to believe that the charter board would take such a step, and while board chairman Brian Jones said after the meeting that he would not rule it out, it’s clear that he’ll push for Community Academy to make its own decision to fold the Rand campus.
“It’s in the leadership’s hands to do the right thing,” Jones said.
IDEA, a Ward 7 middle and high school with a tech emphasis, has produced a decade’s worth of poor test scores. Anywhere from 55 to 70 percent of students have been below proficiency levels in reading and math on the CAS. The school also began an adult education program without getting clearance from the charter board. Overall, its performance rating was 29.3 percent in the middle school and 30.9 percent in the high school.
Board of trustees chairman Joseph Stull said the data doesn’t fully reflect the ways in which it supports students, many of whom come from at-risk backgrounds. But he acknowledged that it has been a struggle.
“We haven’t broken the code yet,” he said.
“That does not engender great confidence,” said Jones, before the board voted to begin revocation.
Two More Charter Schools on the Chopping Block [IDEA and Dorothy I. Height Community Academy PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
December 21, 2011
The D.C. Public Charter School Board is moving to shutter two more charter schools, including one of the oldest in the District, after closing 12 in the last three years for floundering finances and struggling academics.
Following a vote to pursue revocation, the board is sending letters detailing perceived failures at the Integrated Design Electronics Academy in Deanwood and the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy, which has five campuses.
"We've reached an inflection point -- we've established ourselves as a credible alternative to D.C. Public Schools, but at the same time realized we've tolerated low performers in our portfolio for too long, and we have to be aggressive," said charter board Chairman Brian Jones.
Twenty-three percent of charter school campuses that have opened in the District have closed, topping the national average of 15 percent, according to data released Wednesday by the Center for Education Reform.
The largest share of D.C. closures, at 43 percent, has been for financial troubles. Mismanagement shuttered 27 percent, while 30 percent closed because of academic concerns -- the reason IDEA and Community Academy are now vulnerable.
Open since 1998, IDEA is one of the oldest charters in the District. But fewer than 40 percent of students are proficient in math or reading, and just over half of students graduate. Both its middle and high school grades ranked in the bottom rung on the board's recent campus ratings.
Norman Johnson, IDEA's executive director, says his charter was approved to serve students who may have issues with the law or truancy, making the ratings unfair. "I don't think any school is completely producing the results it should," Johnson said. "We want to do better and we're working on a plan."
IDEA will request a hearing to fight the board's motion, Johnson said.
Community Academy officials did not return calls seeking comment. Its preschool-5 campus in Thomas Circle was designated a Tier I school, but its Northeast campus received a score of just 19.5, the third worst in the District.
The board can't scrap individual campuses, just charters. Jones said he hopes Community Academy will close its failing campus to avoid revocation.
Charter Schools Must Succeed or Close
The Washington Times
By Ben Wolfgang
December 21, 2011
Unlike their traditional counterparts, charter schools aren’t guaranteed an endless existence. And that, supporters say, is a good thing.
Of the 6,700 charters that have opened across the country since 1992, at least 1,036 have closed, according to a new report from the Center for Education Reform, a pro-charters D.C.-based education think tank.
Proponents cite the 15 percent closure rate as evidence that ineffective charter schools don’t last, and only institutions with strong leadership and a focus on student achievement remain viable.
“All too often, supporters and opponents of charter schools claim that bad charter schools don’t close,” said Jeanne Allen, the center’s president. “The truth is, charter schools that don’t measure up are closing. Regrettably, the same can’t be said for traditional public schools.”
To attract students from those traditional schools, charters promise families that their children will receive a better education, demonstrated by higher test scores. If the “bargain” with families is broken, the charter loses credibility and is usually left with no other choice but to close.
“The charter school bargain is just that — the operators have made a promise that they’ll be focused on performance,” said Brian Jones, chairman of D.C.'s Public Charter Schools Board, at a press conference in the District on Wednesday morning, when the report was released.
Mr. Jones said that since the first D.C. charter school opened 12 years ago, 27 have been closed after not living up to their end of the deal.
Three were shut down after the 2010-2011 school year. The previous year, five charters were shuttered.
“We’re not afraid to close schools,” Mr. Jones said. “That’s in the service of every family in the District.”
Nationwide, about 42 percent of charter closures occur for financial reasons, usually low enrollment stemming from the dissatisfaction of students and their families or negative word of mouth, the report states. About 24 percent close because of poor management, and another 18 percent are shut down by their authorizers — boards at the district or state level with the power to approve new charters or close failing ones — for the poor academic performance of their students.
The majority of the closings occur within their first five years, according to the study.
The closures are usually accompanied by new charters coming to life, learning from the mistakes of their peers. Four new charters opened in D.C. this school year, bringing the total to 53. Another 15 charter applications were submitted to the charter board, but were rejected.
Mr. Jones and other charter proponents concede that, despite the best efforts of authorizers and school administrators, some charters that initially appear promising will ultimately close.
“In order to take some risks, sometimes you fail,” he said.
Gingrich, Romney, Obama--Education Triplets
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
December 21, 2011
The battle for the White House 2012 has little to do with selecting an education president. That issue is almost never mentioned on the campaign trail. Some candidates don’t even bother to include it on their Web sites.
If school policy were a prime issue and we judged the three principal contenders of the moment — former House speaker Newt Gingrich, President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney — on that basis, the race would be dull three-way tie.
The president and the two Republicans each have some unique ideas for schools, but by and large they support the test-driven, school-rating, pro-charter-school policy that has ruled the United States for more than a decade, no matter which party controlled the presidency or Congress.
That depresses the many educators and parents who yearn for schools that don’t rate students and teachers on standardized multiple-choice tests, that emphasize improving students’ home lives more than increasing the number of charter schools and that are less eager to follow the lead of billionaire reformers.
In turn, the general agreement over education policy at the highest levels of both parties pleases the many educators and parents who think using standardized tests, weeding out weak teachers and giving parents more choices will help our schools break out of decades of apathy, low expectations and illogical policies.
Most U.S. politicians appear to have embraced the George W. Bush/Barack Obama commitment to evaluating schools by test scores, because the anti-test argument doesn’t work with voters. The only major contender for the presidency who sharply attacked the testing regime, Howard Dean, failed to win the Democratic Party nomination, although the major teacher unions embraced his message.
Many Americans are thrilled at the prospect of Obama and Gingrich — both unusually articulate campaigners — debating the big issues in a general election. If that happens, we won’t be hearing much about schools. The two men are in many ways education soul-mates. The charter school portion of Gingrich’s “21st Century Learning System” is very close to the president’s views, including their mutual enthusiasm for removing all caps on charter growth.
They differ on one thing: letting parents use tax dollars to pay private school tuition, sometimes called the voucher issue. Gingrich and his party are for vouchers. Obama and his party are against them. This has been the sole education issue on which each party could rile up its base to strike back at the other, but it has not proved to work very well for either and is rarely mentioned.
Romney’s education platform is less clear than Gingrich’s. I couldn’t find an education section on Romney’s campaign Web site. But Internet compilations of the former governor’s views show he is pretty close to the pro-test, pro-charter mainstream. He also emphasizes teaching family values and economics in schools and providing more college scholarships for students who do well in high school.
Gingrich wishes to shrink the U.S. Department of Education so that it handles only the collection of data and research and identifying reforms that the states might find effective. He also supports innovations such as work-study programs that allow college students to graduate debt-free , as well as online schools available to all students from kindergarten on.
Little of this gets noticed in the campaign to select the Republican nominee. All of the candidates have intriguing ideas about how to fix our schools, but the debate moderators and voters in the streets prefer to hear about their plans for jobs, the budget, health care and social security.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Most voters say they want bipartisan approaches to issues. That is more or less what we are getting in education. Our discussions of schools are often unique in their depth and erudition. More about that Monday.
States Expand ‘Disadvantaged’ Category to Address Racial Gap
The Washington Times
By Ben Wolfgang
December 21, 2011
A number of states struggling with vast racial achievement gaps in schools may have found a way around the problem: Lump blacks and Hispanics with handicapped and poor children.
Nine of the 11 states seeking federal waivers from the No Child Left Behind law have proposed revised accountability systems, designed to track how an all-encompassing group of “disadvantaged students” stacks up against the student population as a whole, according to a new study from the Center on Education Policy, a D.C.-based education think tank.
The states — Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Tennessee — would still track racial achievement gaps on an annual basis, but that information would no longer be used for the same accountability purposes. Under current federal law, schools can be labeled failing if they fail to make progress in closing the gulf between white and black students, for example.
Compared to NCLB, the waiver proposals place far less importance on the gaps between two specific groups of students. Instead, the disadvantaged category — dubbed a “supergroup” by some education specialists — would be compared to the overall student population, and the plans call for schools to make progress each year in closing that disparity.
Critics of the proposals, the details of which differ from state to state, charge that states would take a giant step backward in their efforts to help the worst-performing students by implementing the new systems, and schools with the widest racial achievement gaps could simply mask their problems.
NCLB assigns “priority” status to schools which make little or no progress on closing achievement gaps. Under the revised accountability plans, Hispanic students, for example, could make major gains and help shrink the gap between the supergroup and the general student population, but black or disabled students could make little or no progress.
“Schools could get out of the priority status by improving some of those groups, but not all of them,” said Amy Wilkins, vice president for government affairs at the Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group.
The accountability provisions could be a sticking point with the Education Department, which may reject the plans and send them back to the states for revision. The department is expected to rule on the proposals next month.
States are defending their plans as being the most realistic ways to address racial disparities, and several Wednesday stressed that they’ll continue to keep an eye on how each individual group is performing.
“We’re calling the group our “high-needs students. It’s a systematic way for us to capture the students that need the most help academically without any bias to subgroups,” said Dennis Kramer, federal policy and research analyst with the Georgia Department of Education. “We do not want to assume that every student who is African-American is a disadvantaged student. We also have a number of low-achieving white students.”
Mr. Kramer said his state realizes that the plan, on its surface, could seem disturbing, and officials have made an effort to quell concerns.
“We’ve made a very conscious effort to reach out to the NAACP in Georgia, and a lot of other advocacy groups, to look at how this might be perceived,” Mr. Kramer said. “All of those groups have signed off on our waiver.”
In Colorado, education leaders are combining racial groups into a broader category because some schools simply don’t have enough black or Hispanic students, for example, to form an accurate picture.
Colorado is also establishing a “below proficient” designation, which can include students of any race.
“It’s a color-blind way of understanding performance,” said Bill Bonk, longitudinal growth consultant with the state Department of Education.