FOCUS DC News Wire 2/27/13

 

D.C. clamps down on low-performing charter schools, approves Rocketship [Rocketship, Septima Clark, Achievement Prep, Howard Road Academy, and Imagine Southeast mentioned] 

The Washington Post

By Emma Brown

February 26, 2013

 

One struggling D.C. charter school will shrink at the end of this academic year, another will be acquired by a high-performing school and a third will close if it fails to show improvement over the next several months, the D.C. Public Charter School Board decided Monday.

 

At the same meeting, the charter board voted unanimously to allow California nonprofit Rocketship Education to open as many as eight schools that would serve 5,200 District students by 2019.

The decisions reflect the board’s efforts to clamp down on low-performing schools while opening doors for charter operators with a record of success.

 

“Part of the genius of the charter model is it does allow for a certain innovative churn, where you close low performers and thereby create space for new innovators to come in and try new models,” said Brian Jones, the outgoing chairman of the charter board. Board members elected John “Skip” McKoy, who has been the board’s vice chairman, to succeed Jones.

 

The board authorized Rocketship to open two schools with 650 students each, but the organization could expand to eight schools should existing campuses perform as well as promised.

Rocketship, which relies on a combination of face-to-face instruction and online learning, operates seven schools in San Jose that have won national attention for their success teaching children from low-income backgrounds.

 

Among the schools to be closed is Septima Clark in Anacostia, the city’s only all-boys public school, which enrolls more than 200 elementary students. Septima’s board of directors proposed that the school be acquired by Achievement Prep, a nearby well-regarded co-ed middle school. On Thursday, the citywide charter board approved that plan.

 

Most of Septima’s students will be guaranteed a seat at Achievement Prep, which is expanding into the elementary grades. In return, Achievement Prep will assume Septima’s assets, which amount to more than $1 million.

The acquisition is the first of its kind in the District and could be a model for future takeovers as charter officials seek to ease transitions for students in schools slated to close. But it has sparked turmoil at Septima, with founder Jenny DuFresne resigning as the school’s head to protest what she said was a lack of transparency on the part of the board of directors.

 

Parents also have mounted fierce resistance, saying Septima’s board of directors was acting unfairly, unnecessarily and behind closed doors when it decided to shutter the school.

“We as parents decided that Septima Clark was the best for our boys,” said Ayana Osborne, a mother of two Septima students, who argued that the school had made great strides even with its willingness to accept boys with difficult behavior and other challenging needs.

 

Septima’s students made larger test score gains last year than any other charter in the city, but only about a third of its students were proficient in math and reading. Such results endangered its long-term prospects and made it difficult to secure a bank loan for a permanent facility, according to Septima’s board of directors.

 

Jay Costan, Septima’s board chairman, said that he and his colleagues had no choice but to close the school but that he hopes the shift to Achievement Prep will give most of Septima’s boys a pathway to a good school without having to enter a lottery. “We made a commitment to give these boys the best education possible, and when we took a hard look at it, we realized that we weren’t doing that,” Costan said.

 

Howard Road Academy, another school east of the Anacostia River that was in danger of being closed for poor performance, will instead shrink, shuttering two of its three campuses and giving up grades one through eight to focus solely on early childhood education.

 

A third school, Imagine Southeast, will need to show significant gains to keep its doors open.

 

Imagine Southeast, an elementary and middle school enrolling 600 students, is part of a nationwide network of charters operated by Imagine, a for-profit company based in Arlington County.

It had been a candidate for closure because of its failure to meet academic achievement expectations and other goals.

 

To stave off closure, the school’s leaders agreed to stop serving grades seven and eight and to bring in educators from other Imagine schools who have a record of improving schools. Imagine Southeast also agreed that if it fails to hit achievement benchmarks this year or next, it will turn management of the school over to another charter operator.

 

Henderson outlines plan to retain D.C. students after closing 15 schools 

The Washington Post

By Emma Brown

February 27, 2013

 

Ever since D.C. Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced plans to close 15 city schools, activists and politicians have peppered her with different versions of the same question: How will she persuade students from closed schools to stay within DCPS instead of fleeing to charters?

 

Now Henderson has outlined part of her answer: A “Transition Marketing and Recruitment Plan” intended to ensure that at least 80 percent of students from closed schools re-enroll in DCPS receiving schools.

The chancellor submitted the four-page plan to the D.C. Council’s education committee in advance of a Friday hearing in which student retention is sure to come up.

“We are mounting an aggressive recruitment strategy at each receiving school in coordination with the closing school leaders to retain and attract students and families,” Henderson wrote in a letter to Council Member David Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the education committee.

 

The school system is in the midst of finding a graphics and communications firm to help mastermind the marketing, Henderson wrote, but has already begun work on the effort.

Every communication from the closing school to families should have “an encouraging message to re-enroll in DCPS,” for example, and principals from receiving schools are being asked to attend meetings and events at those closing schools so parents can get to know them.

 

Schools’ staff and PTA members will be trained on how to market themselves through messaging, marketing kits and old-fashioned neighborhood canvassing.

Young people will also be pressed into service on behalf of their schools: At each receiving school, a group of kids will create a “2-3 minute, imaginative and energetic video welcoming students and parents from neighboring schools.”

 

Finally, schools that hit enrollment targets — and teachers who persuade students to re-enroll in a closing school — will win rewards. The school system is in the midst of meeting with potential donors to support those rewards.

 

The chancellor has also promised that the school closures will allow her to strengthen programs within schools, but further details won’t be available until budget season. Many parents say that substantive and positive changes within schools will be more powerful than any marketing effort.

 

Activists at Garrison Elementary, for example — where the PTA has launched a full-bore effort to boost enrollment after barely escaping closure — say that the school needs a renovation and foreign-language immersion programs to attract and retain local parents.

 

“While every other DCPS [school] is hemorrhaging children to charters, dual-language DCPS [schools] are almost impervious to retention issues,” said Garrison parent Vanessa Bertelli during a recent council hearing, pointing out that schools that offer foreign languages tend to have long waiting lists. “So why is DCPS not jumping at the opportunity to caputre these students by filling the gap between demand and offerings?”

A number of other questions about the post-closure transition need to be worked out in the coming months. The chancellor has outlined which of her senior staff members would be responsible for each of those issues. She also has released an FAQ for staff at closing schools, who are not guaranteed a job next.

 

The school system is aiming to enroll 46,836 students next year, an increase of nearly 3 percent over current enrollment. This year the school system grew by less than 1 percent to 45,557 students.

 

Examiner Local Editorial: D.C. 'dropout factories' on the rise

The Washington Examiner

Examiner Editorial

February 26, 2013

 

The good news in "Building a Grad Nation," a just-released study on graduation rates by the Alliance for Excellent Education, is that over the past decade the number of "dropout factories" decreased 29 percent nationwide, the first such "significant, sustained improvement" in 40 years. The U.S. is now on pace to reach a 90 percent high school graduation rate by 2020, a feat now achieved only in Wisconsin and Vermont.

 

The bad news is that here in the nation's capital, "the number of 'dropout factory' high schools ... shot up in the past decade, defying state trends nationwide," as The Washington Examiner's Matt Connolly reported Monday.

At the end of the 2010-2011 school year, the first in which states were required to use the same formula to calculate graduation rates, only 59 percent of D.C. students who started off as ninth-graders in 2006 earned a diploma. That's the lowest graduation rate in the nation, and far below the national average of 78.5 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Sign Up for the Opinion Digest newsletter!

 

The District was losing ground even as graduation rates elsewhere, particularly in the South, were "rocketing" upward during a decade in which rising standards made it even more difficult to earn a diploma. As Connolly reported, D.C. had two "dropout factories" in 2002. Ten years later, there were 13.

 

A diploma is the culmination of 12 or more years of formal education. It's no coincidence that during that same 2010-2011 academic year, the percentage of D.C. graduates (59 percent) was identical to the percentage of eighth-graders testing proficient in math. Only 50 percent tested proficient in reading. Research has consistently found that reading proficiency by the end of third grade is a key indicator of high school graduation, but half of current D.C. sophomores have not acquired this basic skill. Twenty percent of D.C. students are chronically truant, another key indicator of students bound to drop out.

 

Another cohort of District youngsters remains at great risk of joining the undereducated, unskilled 16-to-24-year-olds "disconnected" from both school and work, and thus disproportionately represented in the city's crime and single-parent statistics. Many of them were raised by parents who were also cruelly let down by an education bureaucracy that spends more and does less than nearly any other school system in the nation.

But this colossal waste of tax dollars is nothing compared to the unconscionable toll this ongoing systemic failure continues to inflict on the lives of generations of D.C. residents.

 

Biggest study ever says KIPP gains substantial [KIPP mentioned]

The Washington Post

By Jay Mathews

February 27, 2013

 

KIPP, previously known as the Knowledge Is Power Program, has had more success than any other large educational organization in raising the achievement of low-income students, both nationally and in the District. But many good educators, burned by similarly hopeful stories in the past, have wondered whether KIPP were for real.

 

We just got a big dose of data on that. Mathematica Policy Research has released its five-year investigation of 43 KIPP schools — the largest study ever of any charter school network. It concludes: “the average impact of KIPP on student achievement is positive, statistically significant, and educationally substantial.”

 

The $4 million study was paid for by the Atlantic Philanthropies, which focuses on improving the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. It will not be the last word on KIPP and other organizations that employ strong principals, creative teacher teams, extra time and strong rules of behavior. But the report provides more data for those of us arguing about this, and sheds new light on what works and doesn’t work at KIPP.

I have studied KIPP for 12 years, and written a book about it. I agree with the many educators who think its gains are real and important. I also respect those who don’t agree, who think that KIPP results can’t be sustained, that its numbers are inflated by statistical quirks, and that only unusually strong teachers can handle its demands.

 

The Mathematica people are total geeks, devoted to drilling down to the minutia of educational change. It takes a careful reading to understand everything they are saying in “KIPP Middle Schools: Impacts on Achievement and Other Outcomes.” The central point is: KIPP teachers excel in reading, math, science and social studies, as proven by comparing their students to similarly disadvantaged children who do not attend KIPP.

“KIPP impact estimates are consistently positive across the four academic subjects examined in each of the first four years after enrollment in a KIPP school, and for all measurable student subgroups,” the report says. “A large majority of the individual KIPP schools in the study show positive impacts on student achievement as measured by scores on state-mandated assessments.”

 

Some of the data come from both students admitted to KIPP and those not admitted in random lotteries, a scientific way of making sure a study is comparing similar groups. Mathematica said it used a version of the nationally normed, low-stakes TerraNova test with items “assessing higher-order thinking skills,” including questions that required students to write answers, to show that the higher KIPP scores on state tests were not a fluke.

In the most intriguing and original part of the study, the researchers compared higher-performing to lower-performing KIPP schools to ascertain what characteristics had the most impact on learning. “Class size, teacher experience and professional development opportunities” were not associated with higher scores, the report said. Instead, achievement was greater in KIPP schools “where principals report a more comprehensive school-wide behavior system” and where more time was spent on core academic activities.

 

Compared to similar students in non-KIPP schools, middle-schoolers gained 11 months of learning in math, eight months in reading, 14 months in science and 11 months in social studies in their first three years at KIPP. KIPP has 125 schools, including some elementary and high schools, in 20 states and the District, but the study looked only at its fifth- through eighth-grade middle schools, the core of the network.

The report said student attrition from KIPP schools was no worse than from regular public schools in its neighborhoods, but KIPP teacher attrition was a bit higher than the national average.

Mathematica found that the schools had no significant impact on persistence and educational aspirations, based on surveys of students and parents. But KIPP students were more likely to report misbehavior such as losing their temper or giving teachers a hard time.

 

Was that because they were more prone to mouth off or more prone to admit they had mouthed off? Those of us immersed in the debate are grateful for a new issue, as we figure out just how good those KIPP teachers are.

 

Ayo Magwood Named 2013 Educator of the Year [Cesar Chavez mentioned]

Street Law, Inc.

February 22, 2013

 

Street Law, Inc. is proud to announce the recipient of its 2013 Educator of the Year Award: Ayo Magwood, a social studies teacher at Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School in Washington, DC. This award is sponsored by McGraw-Hill Education and presented annually to an individual who educates students in an exceptional manner and uses Street Law materials. The award will be presented at Street Law’s Annual Awards Dinner on April 17, 2013, in Washington, DC.

 

Ayo Magwood (nee Heinegg) teaches U.S. Government, D.C. History, and Senior Thesis to seniors at Cesar Chavez. Ayo is being celebrated for her innovative transformation of the curriculum at Cesar Chavez into a student-centered, concept-based course, in which students develop the knowledge and skills needed to be fair-minded, engaged citizens.   

 

 

Ayo revolutionized her school’s Senior Thesis class, in which students write a 15-page paper on a public policy of their choice. In her care, the course has evolved to engage students in deeper thinking and motivate them through real-world experiences and controversial issues. Ayo accomplished this by developing a curriculum approach based on "conceptual tensions" and Supreme Court cases. After several years of researching, experimenting, and reflecting on course’s curriculum, she realized that at the root of every public policy issue lies several constitutional, political, or philosophical conceptual tensions—individual rights vs. the common good; state vs. federal powers; equity vs. efficiency; liberty vs. security—and almost all of these debates are the subject of landmark Supreme Court cases. Thus she rewrote the course to address these tensions and court cases. Students went from memorizing and spouting a litany of facts about their public policy topic to using constitutional law to analyze public policy.

 

This year, Ayo rebuilt the school’s U.S. Government curriculum around the idea of conceptual tensions. In each unit, students first learn the historical, philosophical, and constitutional roots and contexts of each conceptual tension. Then they explore the tension through current Supreme Court cases. Instead of memorizing civic and government facts in a vacuum, students “pick them up” organically.

 

“I have seen students come alive in her classroom . . . even struggling learners have produced college-level work on complex topics,” said a colleague of Ayo’s work. “In addition to being well-prepared for competitive colleges because of this course, students are also well-prepared for the civil discourse and political discussion required in the adult world because of the interactive nature of Ayo’s pedagogy and curriculum.”

In all of her courses, Ayo strives to create and simulate real-life civic experiences for her students. They participate in simulated congressional hearings, mock Supreme Court deliberations, and civic discussions. They took to the streets before the 2012 presidential elections to register voters and educate them about voting rights, and prior to the local spring elections, they educated District residents about a local ballot initiative and the lack of budget autonomy and congressional representation. Ayo’s students also interviewed and videotaped local advocates and activists and created an "Advocacy & Activism in DC" oral history website.

 

Ayo is an alumnus of Street Law’s 2012 Supreme Court Summer Institute for Teachers, and she regularly uses Street Law’s Supreme Court case studies in the classroom. This semester, her class is participating in Street Law’s Legal Diversity Pipeline Program with volunteers from the DC office of Cohen Milstein.