- District Seeks Return of Chartering Authority [Scholar Academies PCS is mentioned]
- DCPS Seeks Authority to Create Charter Schools
- D.C. Truancy Report’s Absence Raises Ire
District Seeks Return of Chartering Authority [Scholar Academies PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
February 23, 2012
D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray and Chancellor Kaya Henderson are discussing a plan to restore the District’s power to create public charter schools as part of an effort to raise the quality of education in low-income communities.
The measure, if adopted, could accelerate the already robust growth of publicly funded, independently operated schools that serve 41 percent of the city’s 77,000 students across 98 campuses. The D.C. Public Charter School Board is currently the only entity that can authorize the opening of a charter school. The District government relinquished chartering power in 2007 when the mayor took control of the traditional school system from the old D.C. Board of Education.
Officials cautioned that the idea of adding the District as a second charter authorizer is at a preliminary stage, and that the mechanics of adopting such a change remain unclear. Gray has directed Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright to explore the legal and procedural issues surrounding the measure.
It also comes at a time of intense discussion about the future shape and direction of public education in the city. A major new study commissioned by the city concluded that the District needed thousands of additional “quality seats” in schools serving poor neighborhoods. It recommended turning around or considering the closure of more than three dozen schools and the recruitment of high-performing charter organizations as one way of improving educational quality.
Henderson voiced unconditional support for chartering authority Thursday at a D.C. Council hearing.
In response to a question from Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), Henderson said the traditional school system would benefit by giving schools the kind of freedom that charters enjoy.
“What we know is that autonomy leads to innovation and success,” Henderson said. She added that she viewed restoration of chartering authority not as a means of competing with the charter board but as way to collaborate and move with dispatch to place good schools in underserved neighborhoods.
Too often, Henderson said, the city’s two education sectors have worked at cross purposes. In some cases, she said, new charter schools “starve” nearby traditional public schools, or ultimately starve each other. She did not offer specific examples, but she said the net effect was that the city was “funding two failing systems.”
“I think we’re at a moment in time,” Henderson said of the city’s school reform effort, when “we need to look at not competing but collaborating.”
As an example, Henderson cited Stanton Elementary in Ward 8, which is in its second year of operation by Philadelphia charter operator Scholar Academies under a contract with the city. While the charter group struggled last year, Henderson said the school has shown significant improvement.
“We are not going to turn Stanton around in one year,” Henderson said. “However, the progress I have seen makes me confident that Stanton can serve as a model for improving our schools.”
Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said he had no objection to the District becoming a charter authorizer, as long as it led to the creation of quality schools.
“It’s actually considered by many to be best practice to have multiple authorizers,” Pearson said, explaining that it gives charter applicants more than one venue for winning approval.
But he added that while there some examples of school districts that have done well as authorizers, many do not.
“You tend to have two big risks with a school district being an authorizer,” Pearson said. “The first is that its priority number 25 and they don’t give the care and attention that it needs.” Critics say that was a shortcoming of the old Board of Education as an authorizer.
“The second risk is that they put many more controls and conditions and oversight on the schools than than an independent authorizer would.” Pearson said the result is a ”faux charter school.”
D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D) said he was receptive to the idea, but made no commitments. “I do not have plans to introduce any legislation that would give DCPS chartering authority at this time,” he said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “I will bring all of the relevant parties to the table before making any final decisions regarding whether this is an appropriate role for DCPS.”
One especially sensitive political issue surrounding charter authorization is the city’s relationship with unionized teachers. Most charter schools are non-union. Washington Teachers Union President Nathan Saunders said that he doesn’t reject the idea out of hand, but that the union has to be in the mix.
“If the mayor believes this is a way to abandon unions, then it could be disastrous,” Saunders said. “We are very interested in working to make schools competitive and we think we can offer a superior product.”
Henderson’s predecessor, Michelle A. Rhee, and then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty also floated the idea of reclaiming charter power. But the plan, raised in the midst of a contentious contract fight with the teachers union, did not gain traction. Henderson said that she has received inquiries from charter operators, both currently working in the city and elsewhere, interested in partnering with the D.C. school system. She declined to name the operators.
Henderson said she envisioned charter groups taking over distressed schools such as Stanton or starting new ones with authorization from the District.
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
February 23, 2012
D.C. Public Schools is pursuing the authority to create charter schools and turn existing schools into charters, the schools chancellor said Thursday.
"The reason I would pursue my ch6789[
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Henderson added that charter-school planning has not been "planful." Most operate in neighborhoods where the DCPS school is underperforming.
"First [charters] starve the DCPS school, and then they ultimately starve each other, and that's not a good use of all our resources," Henderson told D.C. Council members at the annual DCPS performance oversight hearing. "I think we'd be able to encourage charter providers to go where we need them most and fill in gaps we can't accomplish."
Council Chairman Kwame Brown said he already has "some rough-draft things written up."
Currently, chartering is the exclusive authority of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. Charter schools enroll 41 percent of the District's public school students, and have outpaced DCPS in both test scores and enrollment growth.
A recent study commissioned by the deputy mayor for education's office recommended that more than 30 failing DCPS schools be turned around or closed and replaced with charter schools. Unlike DCPS schools, students aren't guaranteed a slot in a charter school in their own neighborhood, as admission is granted through a districtwide lottery.
Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells suggested that DCPS could create charters that give preference to children living near the school.
Scott Pearson, executive director of the charter school board, said the board is open to working with DCPS to authorize charters, as is the situation in several states across the nation. Charter schools formed by the traditional school system stay under its purview.
But Pearson cautioned that such a move must be done carefully. "The first risk is that because it's an afterthought, it's not the main thing [the traditional school system does], they don't provide as good oversight, and I think we saw that in the past in D.C. with the Board of Education," Pearson said.
Before the charter school board, the D.C. Board of Education was the chief authorizer of charters. It relinquished power in 2006 as consensus pointed to lax standards and a failure to regulate the schools.
A number of D.C. Public Schools, such as Stanton Elementary and Anacostia Senior High, have programs run by charter operators even as the schools remain a part of DCPS.
Washington Teachers' Union President Nathan Saunders said he is encouraged by the success of such programs, but said he did not have enough information to know whether teachers would support DCPS having chartering authority. He said he believed teachers in the hypothetical DCPS charters would remain union members.
The Washington Times
By Tom Howell Jr.
February 23, 2012
A D.C. Council member says the city’s public school system violated the law by failing to submit an annual report on truancy, an urgent problem among city youth that has led to stricter monitoring and awareness campaigns across the District.
Council member Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat, told D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson at an oversight hearing on Thursday that 287 pages of truancy data were not compliant with a 2010 law that calls for a crisp report on the serious problem, especially among high school freshmen.
The complaint was among multiple lines of stern questioning that Mr. Mendelson — chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary — hurled at Ms. Henderson on the intersection of school policy and potentially illegal behavior, including the procedure for reporting charges of sex abuse.
Mr. Mendelson took the chancellor to task over the way schools officials handled allegations of sexual abuse among first-graders at Randle Highlands Elementary School, an incident first reported by The Washington Times in early January that led to a prominent Southeast community activist being barred from the school’s grounds.
But Mr. Mendelson started the day with complaints about the school system’s missing truancy report from 2010-2011, the first year for which the system was required to submit such a report.
“We had not prepared a formal report, but we have the data available, which is what we sent to you,” Ms. Henderson said.
Mr. Mendelson was not satisfied with the package of data and also accused school officials of taking too long to set up a pilot program to deal with truancy.
“There’s much more that needs to happen,” Mr. Mendelson said. “Are we just to lose generations while the school system takes another five years to roll this out?”
Ms. Henderson said that would not be the case — the pilot program faced legal hurdles on information-sharing before it could launch — and pledged to provide the information Mr. Mendelson requested.
Council member Tommy Wells, Ward 6 Democrat, picked up the thread during the wide-ranging session before the Committee of the Whole, which was led by council Chairman Kwame R. Brown and explored issues such as educational parity across the city’s eight wards and a burgeoning plan to allow DCPS to charter new schools.
Mr. Wells said teachers and principals place themselves at risk of fines if they do not report 10 or more unexcused absences to the city’s Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA).
“This will impact their careers if they do not report,” Mr. Wells said, noting the reporting is mandatory. “It will impact your principals’ careers.”
Truancy has been a major talking point for city leaders in recent years, who warn that students are truant in the early grades and form a habit that intensifies by high school.
Last year, the council’s Special Committee on School Safety and Truancy found “chronic” offenders skipped school for a variety of reasons, including unsafe routes to and from home, bullying, teen dating violence and lack of Metro fares.
In a separate inquiry to the chancellor, Mr. Mendelson accused DCPS of flouting mandatory reporting rules after a woman informed officials at Randle Highlands that a first-grader who is a classmate of her nephew claimed another student had touched his “private parts.”
Officials concluded the allegations were unfounded, but Mr. Mendelson said DCPS waited for more than two months to acknowledge that the CFSA contacted the school official who looked into the matter, and not the other way around.
“I think that the school system once again circled the wagons and covered it up,” Mr. Mendelson said.
Ms. Henderson strongly objected to that characterization, saying she took on the matter when it was reported, and a miscommunication from CSFA led to the confusion over the sequence of reporting.
Mr. Mendelson said school officials could jeopardize an investigation by taking matters into their own hands, including directly contacting parents.
Ms. Henderson agreed but noted the law states a principal should have “reasonable cause” to suspect abuse before reporting it.
Nonetheless, Mr. Mendelson said, he has broad concerns about a reluctance to report cases of abuse.
“There is enormous pressure not to report,” he said. “Look at Penn State. When it was reported, it was reported through a grand jury indictment, and there were riots.”
Ms. Henderson said the incident at Randle Highlands escalated unnecessarily because the woman who brought up the allegations, Geraldine Washington, excessively interfered in a situation that did not involve her child, prompting the school to bar her from the campus.
In turn, Mr. Mendelson noted he should be allowed to review such “barring notices.”
The council, he said, is allowed to see juvenile justice records, yet he was rebuffed in his request for details about barring notices issued by DCPS during this school year.
“There are only 14,” he said.
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