- Activists: D.C. school-closure lawsuit could come by end of March
- Graduation proposals don't make the grade [Friendship PCS Op Ed]
- DC Public Charter School Board tries to reduce 'zero tolerance' policies [Friendship PCS, KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
- Examiner Local Editorial: DCPS achievement gaps widens
- Charter applications deadline this Friday
- E.L. Haynes adds new high school building [E.L. Haynes PCS mentioned]
- DCPS launches teacher recruitment campaign
Activists: D.C. school-closure lawsuit could come by end of March
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
March 15, 2013
Opponents of D.C. school closures said Thursday night that they plan to file a lawsuit against the city before the end of the month.
Speaking at an anti-school-closure rally at Temple of Praise in Southeast Washington, attorney Johnny Barnes declined to say whether he plans to file the lawsuit in local or federal court.
“We’re going to surprise them when we file the week of [March] 25th,” he said. “This legal team will fight, and we think we’ve got a compelling case to make.”
Barnes and the community group Empower D.C. have joined forces to fight Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s plan to close 15 city schools. It’s a civil rights battle, they argue: The closures are clustered in low-income neighborhoods east of Rock Creek Park and the Anacostia River, and disproportionately affect African American children, poor children and students with disabilities.
“We’re going to go to court, and we’re going to let them know that our children matter just as much as theirs do,” said Julianne Robertson King, a member of Barnes’s legal team.
School closures in other cities have prompted vigorous protests, civil disobedience, even arrests. But in the District, the outrage appears to be more muted than elsewhere and more muted than it was here in this city in 2008, when then-Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee closed 23 schools, prompting fierce resistance and political blowback.
Approximately 100 people showed up for the rally Thursday, leaving many pews empty in the Temple of Praise sanctuary.
“We’ve gotten to the point where we just don’t feel these issues anymore,” said Cinque Culver, a Ward 7 civic leader who led an unsuccessful fight in recent years to keep River Terrace Elementary open. “That’s why this room isn’t packed. . . . People are tired.”
But those who attended were passionate. Two dozen students from Ferebee-Hope Elementary, a Southeast school slated for closure, welcomed the crowd with cheers and chants.
“Shame on Mayor Vincent Gray, don’t take our public schools away,” they sang. “Hey hey, ho ho, Kaya Henderson has got to go.”
Previous closures have not resulted in improved academic outcomes for children, longtime D.C. schools activist Mary Levy told the crowd.
Joy Hicks-Parker, a mother of four, said her daughter has attended two schools that were closed and now is a student at Shaw Middle at Garnet-Patterson, which will be shuttered in June.
“I’m tired of fighting for schools to stay open,” said Hicks-Parker, who, like many families affected by the closures, is African American. “I don’t want school closures to be a racial issue,” she said. “But they are.”
Graduation proposals don't make the grade [Friendship PCS Op Ed]
The Current Newspaper
By Donald L. Hense
March 13, 2013
Recently, I testified at a public meeting hosted by the District’s State Board of Education about new public school graduation requirements proposed by the board. The idea is to add new graduation requirements, so as to better prepare our children for acceptance to college.
The board’s goal could not be more important.Sadly, however, the proposed requirements do not reflect what urban youth need to prepare for college and careers.
What is proposed is raising the credit requirements— and the number of hours set aside for earning them— for high school students. This would involve additional credit requirements for physical education and performing arts. A minimum of three hours and 45 minutes of physical education per week would be mandated.
Also envisioned is that students must earn a minimum of 26 credits to graduate, up from 24 currently, to include extra physical education credits and extra performing arts courses. Additionally, students must write a thesis.
While these additional requirements might sound like a benefit to students who we want to see better prepared for college, in fact they have little relationship to the real world. I have come to realize that the goal we share with the board can be achieved only if schools have the freedom to create real-world opportunities.
Operating a public charter high school, at which 75 percent of our students are economically disadvantaged, taught me the importance of early exposure of students to certifications, college credit and careers. Without being required to do so, we have for nine years offered Early College, the first to do so in the District. Students earn two years of college credit with a relentless focus on coursework and character attributes necessary to succeed at college.
In addition to courses in core academic areas— mathematics, science, history and economics, literature and language arts, and humanities — we operate career
academies in arts and communications; engineering and technology; and health and human services, which includes business administration.
We have found it essential to offer the same academically rigorous college preparation that is routinely available to students who attend suburban public, academically selective, magnet and private schools. Accordingly, we encourage students to take Advanced Placement courses. More than 2,500 students have taken these classes since 2004.
In this belief in academic preparation, we are at one with the board. In fact our graduation requirements, by choice, exceed those proposed by the board. To ensure that our graduates can attend the college of their first choice, our students have earned more than $38 million in college scholarships in the last four years, to pay tuition and room and board.
Our students’ need for more career skills prompts us to welcome the board’s stated belief that D.C. should move away from assessing students’ suitability to graduate based on the number of hours spent on coursework. Removing this antiquated, 107-year-old mode of assessment could pave the way for a system that assesses students according to their competence in subjects. A standards-based system would recognize the truth that not all students learn at the same pace.
Nonetheless, the board’s proposed requirements would reduce academic rigor for students who are on an accelerated track. Increasing course requirements, such as more time in physical education or arts, could leave such students less time for academically vital Advanced Placement or early college credit courses, which college-bound students often need for college acceptance.
Requiring students who are performing below grade level and who need hours of support to catch up to earn additional credits hinders their chances of gaining proficiency in core subjects, which they need to graduate.
The board’s envisaged move to a competency-based system would have been much better informed had members reviewed the work of other states and homegrown educators.
Our public charter high school, by the Minnesota Avenue Metro station, has a 60 percent male enrollment. Some 91 percent of our students graduate on time, 35 percentage points higher than the D.C. Public Schools average and 14 points higher than the charter average.
Our Collegiate Academy high school graduates nearly 250 students annually, and with our organization’s partnership with D.C. Public Schools at Anacostia, we are responsible for 43 percent of the ontime graduates in D.C.’s high-poverty wards 7 and 8.
Learning from what has worked will best serve our students — especially the most vulnerable who need our help most. I would hope this would include public charter schools in the conversation.
Donald L. Hense is chairman and founder of Friendship Public Charter School.
DC Public Charter School Board tries to reduce 'zero tolerance' policies [Friendship PCS, KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Rachel Baye
March 14, 2013
The DC Public Charter School Board is encouraging charter schools to eliminate their "zero tolerance" discipline policies in an effort to reduce the number of students being suspended and expelled, Executive Director Scott Pearson said Thursday.
"On the whole, charter schools expel and suspend too many students," Pearson told The Washington Examiner following a D.C. Council hearing.
Some actions, like bringing a weapon to school or threatening to hurt or kill someone, are widely accepted or even federally mandated as actions meriting "zero tolerance" -- meaning a school must automatically suspend or expel a student who commits such an act, he said. However, a zero-tolerance policy for students who get into fights or bring drugs to school are less productive "because it effectively ties their hands when they're making discipline decisions."
the charter board is talking only with schools seeking to establish campuses for the first time and those whose charters are up for renewal, since the board approves discipline policies when it approves schools' charters.
Charter schools' disciplinary policies have come under fire in recent months following reports showing that they suspend and expel students at a much higher rate than schools in the city's traditional public school system.
Last school year, charter schools -- which enrolled 41 percent of the District's public school students -- suspended 332 students for at least 10 days and expelled 239 students, according to charter school board data. By comparison, DC Public Schools suspended 929 students and expelled three, according to DCPS data.
Though some charter schools did not suspend or expel any students, others levied those disciplinary actions on significant portions of their student bodies last year. Friendship Public Charter School, for example, suspended or expelled 881 -- 22 percent -- of its 3,939 students on six campuses. Of those, 70 students were expelled.
Despite the numbers, Friendship Chief Operating Officer Patricia Brantley did not characterize the school's disciplinary policy as "zero tolerance."
"If a high school student brings in a massive amount of cocaine or another type of drug, we are absolutely calling Metropolitan police," Brantley said. But the school examines every incident on a case-by-case basis, she said.
KIPP DC, which suspended or expelled 624 -- 45 percent -- of its 1,397 students across nine campuses last year, automatically suspends for at least one day any student caught fighting or carrying drugs, to give school officials time to look into the incident, said KIPP DC Executive Director and Founder Susan Schaeffler. But she also said this policy was not "zero tolerance."
"We all know that sitting at home suspended is not hugely productive," she said. "But at the same time, there has to be consequences for negative behavior."
Examiner Local Editorial: DCPS achievement gaps widens
The Washington Examiner
March 14, 2013
If it took Hurricane Katrina to improve New Orleans' failing public school system, one shudders to think what it will take to improve Washington's. A recent study by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute underscores this grim reality.
Between 2008 and 2012, while the District was spending record amounts of money on its traditional public school system under former Chancellor Michelle Rhee's widely heralded "reforms," a third of the city's schools "saw a notable decline in proficiency" in reading and math as measured by the DC Comprehensive Assessment System test. The declines were concentrated east of the Anacostia River, which were already far below basic proficiency levels.
"Schools in Wards 4, 5, 7 and 8 face declining proficiency levels," the FPI report noted, while "typical school proficiency level grew the most in Wards 1 and 3." So the achievement gap between affluent and high-poverty neighborhoods has actually widened.
In contrast, charter schools as a whole posted solid gains in reading and math at almost every grade level, with the exception of high school reading, which stayed about the same. But DC Public Schools saw losses in both reading and math across all age levels, with the only bright spot being a slight increase in middle school math scores. And despite $10,000 teacher bonuses and other inducements, a worrisome drop in reading proficiency at the elementary level is a harbinger of future failure.
When CBS reporter Scott Pelley asked New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu about the condition of the Big Easy's school system the day after Katrina hit, Landrieu replied that not only was every school under water, but "in terms of governance, it just disappeared." The state-run Recovery School District made a conscious decision to replace the old public school system -- which like D.C. had a graduation rate below 50 percent -- with mostly charter schools.
"Chartering is the replacement system for the failed urban system," Andy Smarick, author of "The Urban School System of the Future," pointed out during a panel discussion in the District in January. The chartering process is dynamic, he says, and creates "a continuous improvement cycle" that replicates high-performing schools and closes failing ones.
So seven years after Katrina, New Orleans "has nearly caught up with the state average in student proficiency," and its high school graduation rate last year exceeded both the state and national average. Meanwhile, DCPS students continue to lose ground.
Charter applications deadline this Friday
The Current Newspapers
March 13, 2013
Applications for most D.C. public charter schools are due this Friday in advance of the March 22 lottery to establish where students are accepted.
After the lottery is conducted, parents have until April 12 to decline or accept the slots their children are offered. Information and application forms for 85 schools are available at applydccharters.org.
E.L. Haynes adds new high school building [E.L. Haynes PCS mentioned]
The Current Newspapers
By Deirdre Bannon
March 13, 2013
In a rousing ceremony last week, E.L. Haynes Public Charter School,one of D.C.’s highest performing public schools, celebrated the completion of its new high school building with city officials including Mayor Vincent Gray.
Haynes currently serves approximately 950 students from preschool to 10th grade on two campuses in the Petworth neighborhood. The addition of the high school building will allow Haynes to add the 11th and 12th grades over the next two years, ensuring that students will be able to complete their secondary education at the tier-one college preparatory charter school.
Jennifer Niles, Haynes’ founder and head of school, said the new high school comes with a promise that through rigorous programming, E.L Haynes will help raise the District’s graduation rate. The city’s current rate currently hovers at 59 percent — lower than any state in the country, according to U.S. Department of Education data.
“It will be a model of excellence, and we hope it will transform the landscape of high schools in Washington, D.C., making college dreams a reality for more of our students,” Niles said at the event.
The new high school adjoins the charter’s preschool-to-third-grade building (formerly D.C. Public Schools’ Clark Elementary) at 4501 Kansas Ave. An interior bridge on the third floor was designed to connect the two schools while keeping the two student bodies largely separate. The school’s separate fourth-toeighth-grade campus is located at 3600 Georgia Ave.
The high school facility includes a two-story lobby, a cafeteria and administrative offices on the main floor. Classrooms and science and computer labs are located on the
second and third floors.
Overlooking the athletic fields on the second floor is an expansive room with wall-to-wall and floor-toceiling windows that Niles has dubbed the “think tank.” The intention is for students to use the contemporary room, which will be furnished with items like rocking
chairs, as a space for contemplation.
On the lower level is a regulation-size gym, art and music studios, and office space. A green roof will soon be installed atop the building.
At last week’s event, 10th-grader Hasa Bangura said as a younger child his dream was to play high school football and to one day play for the NFL. When he matriculated to Haynes as a ninth-grader, he was devastated when he found out that the school didn’t have a football team, and he even considered transferring. Instead Bangura stuck it out, and decided to participate in every club he could to get to know the school and his fellow students.
This year Bangura was elected student government president, and with his academic success he now has a new goal: He wants to go to college and become a medical doctor.
Mayor Gray said that Haynes is setting a new standard in the District, and that under Niles’ leadership it’s demonstrating “best practices to advance public education.”
“So many kids have been lost not because they didn’t have any ability or potential, but because we didn’t do a good enough job helping them realize who they are,” said Gray. “That’s what I hope E.L. Haynes will help us achieve — more opportunities for our children — so that every one of our children will succeed.”
Haynes also sets itself apart because it has been able to secure and build facilities to meet its programmatic needs. With the proliferation of charter schools in the District, many end up conducting classes in church basements or other ad hoc spaces while searching for more appropriate buildings.
Julie Green, head of Haynes’ marketing and development, attributes the school’s success in that area to its board of trustees — many of whom have backgrounds in finance or real estate — and to Niles’ leadership, which stems in part from her dual master’s degrees in education and business from Yale University. The trustees researched and took advantage of a wide swath of financing, from grants to loans to tax credits and bond financing.
Haynes was able to secure a 25-year lease from the District for the Kansas Avenue campus. And once the school established a strong academic track record, more donors and other financing options became available. Among them was a $900,000 grant from the D.C. Office
of the State Superintendent of Education.
Now, Haynes has one more project on its list: renovating the athletic fields at its Kansas Avenue campus. It already has a head start, with a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Soccer
Foundation to install turf. The school also wants to create a track around the field, which would help restore a community amenity, Green said.
Founded in 2004, Haynes’ motto is “Be kind, work hard, get smart” — and its innovative curriculum emphasizes mathematical reasoning and using scientific methods to frame and solve problems. More than 65 percent of Haynes’ fourth- to eighth-graders meet the D.C. Public Charter School Board’s standards of high performance, which designates it as a tier-one school.
The school is named for Euphemia Lofton Haynes, the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics, from Catholic University in 1943. She taught in D.C. Public Schools for 47 years.
DCPS launches teacher recruitment campaign
The Washington Informer
March 13, 2013
By Dorothy Rowley
The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) system recently announced the launch of a recruitment campaign aimed at attracting the best teachers and principals in the country.
The campaign includes a new recruitment website (www.joindcpublicschools.com) that features more than 20 professionally-produced videos showcasing top teachers, principals and Central Office staff.
"We are in the middle of historic change at DCPS and we need the most talented educators in the nation to help us reach the ambitious goals we've set for ourselves and for our students," said Chancellor Kaya Henderson. "We are defying expectations about what an urban school system can achieve, and are looking for the best and the brightest to join us."
In addition, the school system has doubled the size of its recruitment team, and is launching the "Capital Commitment Fellowship," a prestigious program for the 50 best teacher recruits of the year.
As DCPS launches its recruitment campaign, officials for the 44,000-student body are also committed to retaining top educators, particularly as the system undergoes a city-wide school consolidation process, in which Henderson has mandated the closings of 15 schools by the end of 2014.
"We will do everything possible to keep our best teachers," said Jason Kamras, chief of the Office of Human Capital. "That means the best pay in the nation, supportive principals, exciting new leadership opportunities and an outstanding curriculum."
DCPS currently offers teachers the opportunity to earn significantly higher salaries than other school districts. For example, top teachers in the system can earn up to $100,000 in salary and bonuses by their fourth year.
"We want people who know that education is a game changer. We want people who are willing to deliver on a promise – the promise of a public education," said Henderson, 43. "We treat teachers like the professionals they are, and we reward them accordingly for the outstanding and challenging work they do."
DCPS's efforts are part of a nationwide campaign launched nearly three years ago by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who said that 1.5 million new teachers were needed over the next decade. More specifically, the campaign has sought to increase the number, quality and diversity of individuates seeking to become teachers – particularly in high-need schools, which not only have the most significant achievement gaps, but also the highest rates of teacher turnover.
While President Barack Obama has joined Duncan in the challenge to turn around 5,000 of the nation's chronically-underperforming schools within the next couple years, those efforts have continued to lack assurance that students are assigned experienced, effective teachers with a track record of success in an urban setting.
To that end, Duncan's initiative focuses on attracting teachers who could engage more African-American students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) curriculums, to increase teacher training and provide opportunities for mentorships both in and out of the classroom.
"With more than a million teachers expected to retire in the coming years, we have a historic opportunity to transform public education in America by calling on a new generation to join those already in the classroom," Duncan said at the time of his campaign launch. "We are working with the broader education community to strengthen and elevate the entire teaching profession so that every teacher has the support and training they need to succeed."
But Trayon White, the District's Ward 8 School Board representative, said he isn't so sure that a teacher recruitment effort is what's needed right now.