- D.C. leaders get set for battle over extra $190 million
- D.C. Councilman David Catania proposes selective middle school
- Local Editorial: Another reason charters are taking over D.C. [KIPP mentioned]
- Capitalists for Preschool
D.C. leaders get set for battle over extra $190 million
The Washington Examiner
By Alan Blinder
March 2, 2013
As the federal government moved Friday to slash spending by $85 billion, D.C. leaders quietly contemplated how to use an enormous windfall.
Armed with a forecast showing D.C. will take in $190 million more in the 2013 fiscal year than initially expected, Mayor Vincent Gray and lawmakers are preparing to stake claims to how the city should use the nine-figure sum.
In his State of the District Address last month, Gray painted broad strokes for his plans, including $100 million for affordable housing and pay hikes for the city's more than 30,000 employees.
"The mayor made his priorities very clear," said Gray spokesman Pedro Ribeiro, who also noted the administration is "looking at lots of other things."
But lawmakers, with their individual passions and constituencies, are also pitching their own ideas as Gray readies his supplemental budget proposal.
"I'd like a $30 million allotment for technology for our charter schools and our traditional public schools," said at-large Councilman David Catania. "Technology budgets don't fit neatly into traditional government budgeting, but it's critical to the evolution of education and the improvement of education."
And Ward 7 Councilwoman Yvette Alexander wants Gray to devote cash to deploying professional lobbyists to Capitol Hill to press the District's case for statehood.
"Look at how it works at the [John A.] Wilson Building," Alexander said. "You've got a gazillion activists that come in, and then when the lobbyists come in who represent the interests of the people, that's what gets the deals done."
News of the extra cash came weeks after the District announced a $417 million surplus, all of which Gray, citing D.C. law, put into the city's savings account.
Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry said he wouldn't support adding any of the $190 million to the city's emergency fund.
"I'm not going to put one cent of money in the reserve," Barry said. "I want to use every dime on people." For Barry, that includes additional low-income housing programs and job-training programs.
While lawmakers and the administration may be offering competing visions, both sides said they hope to avoid a repeat of 2012's budget battle, which included a stream of personal criticisms.
"We need to implore the chairman to lead the way and look at the efforts that are good for the entire city and not our pet projects," Alexander said. "We don't need to agree on anything unless it advances the entire city."
Ribeiro said Gray was "always willing to work with our partners on the council."
D.C. Councilman David Catania proposes selective middle school
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
March 4, 2013
A D.C. lawmaker is urging the city's public school system to create a middle school that admits students only through an application process.
Creating an application-only middle school and an application-only high school in Ward 7 or 8 could be one way to expand access to high-quality school options for students who live in those areas, D.C. Councilman David Catania, chairman of the Council's Education Committee, suggested at a council hearing.
The District already has several application high schools, including some of the city's top-performing schools -- like Benjamin Banneker Academic, School Without Walls and McKinley Technology high schools, where students consistently outperform the rest of the District on standardized tests.
But there are no such high schools in Wards 7 and 8, home to some of the District's lowest-performing schools, including nine of the 15 underperforming, underenrolled schools that DC Public Schools plans to close.
DCPS has no application-only middle schools.
"As I look at our communities in [Wards] 7 and 8, there is a morning diaspora where many families get up and take their children to schools west of the [Anacostia] River," Catania said. "I want to put on the table the idea of an application middle school for 7 and 8 and an application high school in 7 and 8 for those kids who don't have the ability to transport themselves to Hardy or to Deal or to any of the excellent middle schools that exist west of the river."
An application middle school could also help the District's traditional public schools attract parents who would otherwise turn to public charter or private schools, Catania said.
"It could certainly help to change the perception that a lot of charter school parents have ... that there aren't any competitive schools in D.C.," said DC School Reform Now Executive Director David Pickens. Though DCPS has at least three high-performing middle schools, there are more strong charter school options, he said.
An application high school east of the Anacostia could counter falling enrollment numbers at schools there and prevent the school system from having to close more Ward 7 and Ward 8 schools, said Ward 7 Councilwoman Yvette Alexander.
However, she suggested DCPS create a science, technology, engineering and math-focused middle school before creating an application middle school. "Because we have a STEM-focused elementary school, [Beers Elementary], I would like that to go through middle and high school," she said.
DCPS spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz did not respond to questions about whether the school system has looked into Catania's suggestion.
Local Editorial: Another reason charters are taking over D.C. [KIPP mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
March 4, 2013
On Monday, The Washington Examiner's Rachel Baye reported that the D.C. Public School system is negotiating with the Washington Teachers' Union to implement longer school days and a longer school year. WTU President Nathan Saunders expressed openness to the idea but said such a change will come at a price to the school system -- higher pay for educators and more hours for "professional development." Meanwhile, Baye noted, some D.C. public charter schools, which have greater flexibility and freedom from union interference, have already gone ahead with longer days and longer hours.
It is good to see DCPS try something new, and to innovate based on the proven success of charter schools such as those run by KIPP DC. Basic student proficiency within the DCPS system remains abysmal, and charters continue to outperform them despite being shortchanged on facilities funding.
But negotiations over the length of the school day also underscore the DCPS system's lack of flexibility, which is one factor in its persistent failure, and in its current decline in student enrollment as parents choose charters instead.
Saunders must be careful offering concessions on the length of the school day. Former Chicago Teachers Union President Deborah Lynch was ousted from her job last decade by CTU members. Lynch's offense was that she agreed to add just 15 minutes to Chicago's then-shortest-in-America school day in exchange for a seven-day reduction in the school year and large pay increases for her members.
The Chicago example, and the relative success of D.C. charter schools compared to the DCPS schools they compete against (the ones outside Wards 2 and 3) both serve as examples of how ill-suited the classic unionized model is in a field like education. Strict work rules and strict seniority pay, all defined in adversarial contract negotiations between management and labor, might have worked well for the assembly-line workers in Detroit who for decades epitomized the union ideal.
But teachers are not assembly-line workers, nor are children widgets. Teachers deserve to be paid well, but their commitment to the children they serve depends largely on their willingness to be flexible. And the choice that parents are making now -- as they put an ever-increasing percentage of the city's public schoolchildren into charter schools -- is a reflection of these realities.
Capitalists for Preschool
The New York Times
By John E. Pepper, Jr. and James M. Zimmerman
March 1, 2013
IN his State of the Union address, President Obama called for making preschool available to every 4-year-old in America, opening a welcome discussion on whether and how to make the investments needed to realize this vision.
As two longtime corporate executives who have been engaged in education for decades, we have no doubt about the answer to this question. Children who attend high-quality preschool do much better when they arrive in kindergarten, and this makes an enormous difference for their later success. The data on preschool is overwhelmingly positive. Although some studies suggest that the positive impact decreases over time, this is mainly attributable to differences in the quality of preschool and of the schooling that follows — not a deficiency in preschool itself.
The effectiveness of quality early childhood education has been affirmed by many business-related groups, including ReadyNation, a coalition of business leaders, organized in 2006.
The Institute for a Competitive Workforce, an affiliate of the United States Chamber of Commerce, found in a 2010 report that “for every dollar invested today, savings range from $2.50 to as much as $17 in the years ahead.” Research by the University of Chicago economist James J. Heckman, a Nobel laureate, points to a 7- to 10-percent annual return on investment in high-quality preschool.
Local examples of the impact of early childhood education abound. In greater Cincinnati, a program called Success by 6 has raised the proportion of children testing as “ready to read” upon entering kindergarten to 57 percent, from 44 percent in the 2006-7 academic year. Of those children, 85 percent still read at (or above) age level at the end of third grade — compared with only 43 percent of the children who do not test as “ready to read” when they start kindergarten.
In short, early educational interventions really matter, and have long-term consequences. Children who are not proficient in reading by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school than children who read at or above grade level — and 13 times more likely, if they live in poverty. A child’s brain grows to roughly 85 percent of its full capacity in the first five years of life. These are also the years when a child’s sense of what is possible is being formed.
The connections from preschool to reading proficiency to high school completion — a bare-minimum requirement in today’s economy — could not be clearer.
And it shouldn’t take scientific research to reach this conclusion. Families who can afford quality preschool don’t generally consider long-term cost-effectiveness when they enroll their children. Indeed, among affluent families in which both parents have full-time careers, there is strong demand for quality learning environments as early as age 2.
To be sure, the debate over preschool is also partly a debate over inequality. Our nation is becoming divided: an America of well-off, well-educated families, who can afford pre-K education, and struggling families who are living in poverty or close to it (often, even while holding down full-time jobs), have modest educations, living in challenged circumstances, and can’t.
Do we really think it is fair to predetermine children’s chances for success in life based on what ZIP code they live in? Doesn’t every child deserve as close to the same chance to develop her or his abilities as any other child?
Universally available prekindergarten is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. Raising lifetime wages (and thereby tax revenues) and reducing the likelihood that children will drop out of school, get involved in crime, and become a burden on the justice system more than make up for the costs of early childhood education.
Other countries have realized this. China reportedly has set a goal of giving 70 percent of all children three years of prekindergarten education — far ahead of the modest one year proposed by President Obama — by the year 2020. Our greatest deficit in this country — the one that most threatens our future as a nation — is our education deficit, not our fiscal one.
Some will ask where the money will come from, at a time when states and localities are even more strapped than the federal government. While there are a variety of financing proposals, we do not believe higher taxes will be necessary in every jurisdiction.
Rather, we believe the right approach will be to rebalance and optimize the money we are spending now. The amount of money being spent on early childhood education is so small currently that we are confident it is possible to achieve the efficiencies needed to shift money from other areas of investment.
Last year, only 2 percent of Ohio’s general-fund budget went to early childhood education. We believe that, with proper planning, that amount could be doubled without compromising other financing streams.
We have spent most of our careers in business and have come to support quality prekindergarten for all children, especially those whose families cannot afford it, because we know these programs work. The only question is how to bring them to a huge scale. Our nation’s future demands it. If there ever was a nonpartisan issue, this is it.