- Deborah Gist should be named D.C.'s Deputy Mayor of Education
- D.C. Council schedules hearings on school closures
- High-ranking D.C. schools official leaving for N.Y.
- Gray, council AWOL on D.C. truancy
- A sad attack on Advanced Placement
Deborah Gist should be named D.C.'s Deputy Mayor of Education
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
October 22, 2012
Now that De'Shawn Write has resigned as the District's Deputy Mayor of Education Mr. Gray could do all of us involved in education reform a tremendous favor by naming Deborah Gist as the replacement.
Ms. Gist is a natural choice for the job. She is more familiar with the issues facing our public schools than anyone else in the country through her experience as the first State Superintendent of Education. In her role as Rhode Island's Education Commissioner she has been instituting some of the same strategies put in place in the nation's capital, such as tying teacher evaluations to student standardized test scores. She is a charter school supporter who cares not about where children are taught but rather whether the teaching is of high quality. Her efforts recently resulted in her being named one of four Brian Bennett Education Warriors by the group Democrats for Education Reform.
But I think the main reason she should be hired for this job is that Ms. Gist works extremely well with others while at the same time not being afraid of making the tough call. These are skills perfectly suited to the complex educational landscape now facing the nation's capital. I am certain there are few people out there who could come in hitting the ground running while treating all stakeholders with dignity and respect.
Of course, there is one other reason Ms. Gist should return to Washington. When she was here she had set the Guinness World Record for most kisses received by one person in one minute. That record now belongs to someone else. It is past time to win it back.
The D.C Council has scheduled hearings in November to consider closing some traditional schools. There is no time to waste.
D.C. Council schedules hearings on school closures
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
October 19, 2012
Mark your calendars: D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has scheduled two mid-November hearings to give the public a chance to comment on school closures in the city, a politically volatile issue sure to draw volumes of testimony.
The hearings are scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 15, from 4 to 8 p.m., and Monday, Nov. 19, from 2 to 6 p.m. in Room 412 of the John A. Wilson Building.
The hearing notice says that the council “expects that the Chancellor will have announced proposed school closings the week before the hearing,” giving the clearest sign yet of a firm date for Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson to put forth a list of recommended closures.
The council will also hear testimony on the School Boundary Review Act, which would require DCPS to regularly review and adjust boundaries and feeder patterns. The school system’s boundaries haven’t significantly changed in decades.
Folks interested in testifying have until Nov. 13 to sign up. The council expects to fit 50 witnesses into each hearing, and will schedule speakers according to the order in which their requests were received.
High-ranking D.C. schools official leaving for N.Y.
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
October 19, 2012
Deputy Mayor for Education De'Shawn Wright is leaving his post to become the highest education official in New York, the mayor's office announced.
His chief of staff, Jennifer Leonard, will fill his post through at least this school year as the interim deputy mayor.
"De'Shawn is a brilliant educational innovator and a tireless public servant, and our loss is definitely New York's gain," Mayor Gray said. "He has done a spectacular job serving the children, families and educators of the District of Columbia, and we will miss his extraordinary gifts sorely."
Wright's name became quite familiar to District parents and educators earlier this year when his office released a study recommending that three dozen schools be shut down or turned around, in the case of D.C. Public Schools, as charter schools. Although DCPS school closures are ultimately the choice of DCPS, Wright has guided much of that process and met with parent groups throughout the city.
The list of school closures is expected to be released in the coming weeks.
Gray, council AWOL on D.C. truancy
The Washington Times
By Deborah Simmons
October 21, 2012
What, precisely, is D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray doing to combat school truancy?
D.C. lawmakers have positioned themselves to receive answers Tuesday, when the Committee of the Whole and the Committee on the Judiciary are slated to hold an oversight hearing.
But let’s be frank.
Two of the largest beneficiaries of chronic truancy are school systems, which get to keep money whether students are in class or not, and supporters of the status quo, who claim more money is needed to ensure class sizes are manageable.
And know this, too: Enrollment figures are collected early in one school year to help determine how much money school officials want for the start of the next school year.
In sum, the school system always stands to gain while the chronically truant school-age children are likely to end up inside the criminal justice system.
Hence, the council's joint committee roundtable.
So lawmakers should fire up the hot seats.
The problem: According to the D.C. Office of the Inspector General, overall truancy rates rose from 16 percent to 20 percent in school years 2006-07 to 2008-09, then declined to 15 percent in 2009-10. Worst of all, school officials learned this year that the high-school chronic truancy rate is an abominable 39 percent, which means a student has at least 15 unexcused absences.
The excuses:It’s the parents and teachers. “Many of our parents aren’t able to be good parents, quite frankly, because we failed them as students.” That’s Chancellor Kaya Henderson speaking, and she also has cited classroom instruction that sometimes wants you to “pluck your eyelashes out.”
But hold on. There’s more.
Pick an excuse for truancy — poverty, homelessness, transportation, hunger, domestic abuse, pregnancy, disability, family substance abuse, crime victimization, sexual abuse, inadequate clothing, unemployment, the economy, lack of access to health care.
Some real, honest-to-goodness reasons: Student tracking and interagency data-sharing regarding students are practically nonexistent, according to the inspector general.
In other words, the school system does a mighty fine job of counting heads at the beginning of a school year, but in order to ensure their coffers remain flush they do not necessarily need to know whether Raul, Ronica and Robert return to the classroom — until the start of the next school year.
What a sham.
The solutions: In August, the inspector general reiterated several recommendations to education officials, including exchanging information with police and child-welfare authorities, but school officials rebuffed the proposals.
The Committee of the Whole chaired by Phil Mendelson, includes all 13 members of the council. Yet when that panel meets regarding education, there is no guarantee that all its members are seated at the dais.
There are good reasons why all members, especially those seeking re-election, should be there.
Marion Barry of Ward 8 and Yvette M. Alexander of Ward 7: Two high schools with the highest truancy rates are represented by these two Democrats, and they need to ask representatives of the mayor what detailed plans are in place to address truancy, and what are the detailed results.
Vincent B. Orange and Michael A. Brown: This at-large duo needs to ensure that schools, child-welfare agencies and police are keeping track citywide with a zoom lens that takes a long-range approach. Oftentimes, lawmakers are given only a limited catbird’s view that takes the current budget or school year into account.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson: The council and the Gray administration do not need new data or old, worn-out excuses or reasons regarding truancy.
What they need are solutions.
As council chairman, Mr. Mendelson must ensure the administration stays on point and conveys a taut anti-truancy plan with measurable solutions.
In other words, make sure that, even beyond the context of the inspector general’s report, what, precisely, is the Gray administration doing to combat truancy?
A sad attack on Advanced Placement
The Washington Post
By Jay Matthews
October 21, 2012
Nearly all of us are experts about something — Yorkshire terriers, Redskins quarterbacks, California native plants, whatever. Even obscure subjects have fans.
My obsession is the Advanced Placement program, those college-level courses and tests for high school students. I have studied AP for 30 years. I am saddened, as all devotees are, by outbursts of misinformation about my topic. The most recent example is an essay on TheAtlantic.com by former AP government and politics teacher John Tierney, entitled “AP Classes Are a Scam.”
Without a shred of credible evidence — no data, no examples, no research — Tierney argues: “AP courses are not, in fact, remotely equivalent to the college-level courses they are said to approximate.” He seems unaware that AP classes and exams are designed by college professors to mimic their introductory courses, and that more than 5,000 college faculty have checked AP syllabi or graded AP exams to ensure it. Almost all colleges give credit or access to higher courses for good scores on AP exams.
At age 52, I took the AP U.S. history exam, and I just barely survived. I have spent hundreds of hours watching other AP classes and reviewing their exams. The courses are at least as rigorous as the introductory government and economics courses I took at Harvard.
“Two thirds of the students taking my [AP] class each year did not belong there,” Tierney says. “And they dragged down the course for the students who did.” I can’t judge Tierney’s teaching skills, but the successful AP teachers I have written books about say such statements often come from teachers who don’t understand how much they can help their students. The best educators find ways to raise the level of everyone in AP. They save kids from the limp courses that are often the only alternative to AP in high school.
Tierney should visit Fairfax County, which in 1998 adopted the AP-for-anybody policy he dislikes. The number of AP tests in Fairfax jumped from 10,234 in 1997 to 40,570 in 2011, a nearly fourfold increase. Those teachers proved that those new students did belong in AP. The number of students passing the exams increased 200 percent in that period, while the number of students in the system increased only 30 percent.
Tierney says “large percentages of minority students are essentially left out of the AP game.” The facts say otherwise. The number of black students earning 5s on AP tests — the top score — went from 796 in 1992 to 6,865 in 2012. The number of Hispanics getting top marks in that period went from 8,110 to 41,715. Black and Hispanic AP participation went from 11 to 23 percent of all test takers.
Much research shows students who do well on AP tests do better in college, but Tierney shrugs this off as “the same as saying that students who do best in high school will do better in college.” The research contradicts him. In a large Texas study, average students who got as low as a 2 on the AP test did better in college than similarly mediocre students who didn’t take AP courses.
A new study by the Center for Public Education goes further. It found that low-income, low-achieving students who took at least one AP course were 17 percent more likely to return for a second year of college than low-income, low-achieving students who didn’t take any AP courses.
Tierney suggests that the College Board charges too much for AP tests. I suspect many people feel the same way about tuition at Boston College, where Tierney worked for many years. But that has little to do with the quality of learning in AP or at BC.
There is much wrong with high schools today. It wastes time to take shots at college-level courses that are, I have learned from long study, the most beneficial challenges ever offered to American teenagers. If Tierney has something better, he should make it his favorite topic.