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The annual standardized test scores for public schools in D.C. this year show children at the elementary level in regular public schools doing better than children in public charter schools. For the first time in three years, reading and math scores at the elementary level are higher for children in regular public schools than for their counterparts in public charter schools. Tom Nida heads the charter school board. He says before making any generalizations, and it's important to remember these results are preliminary. Nida says last year a dozen schools found errors in the data reported. Also he says last year several Catholic schools converted into charter schools and those students were taking the tests for the first time. Nida says once they get acclimated to their schools and then the "trends move upward." At the high school level, that trend is reversed with charter school students showing double digit gains over students in regular public schools. The final test scores are expected by the end of this month.

Kavitha Cardoza reports....

To listen to this segment, click the following link: http://wamu.org/audio/nw/09/07/n3090720-27722.asx

The Washington Times
Marshall center opens
By Mark Lerner
Monday, December 21, 2009

Firsts are not new to Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School in Washington. The most recent citywide test scores established the nine-year-old public charter school's elevated status as the highest-performing nonselective high school in the District.

Offering a safe and caring environment, Thurgood Marshall Academy is the only high school in Southeast to operate without a metal detector. Now it is the first charter to partner with the city to create a state-of-the-art athletic and community center, fulfilling an urgent need for east-of-the-Anacostia River youths, for whom few adequate recreation centers and athletic facilities exist.

The 24,346-square-foot athletic facility is the brainchild of Josh Kern, founder and executive director of Thurgood Marshall Academy. Like many D.C. public charter schools, the academy lacked adequate gymnasium facilities for many years.

Once the project was up and running, the D.C. government agreed to partner with the school and included in the project the city's planned modernization of neighboring Alfred Kiger Savoy Elementary School, a multimillion-dollar investment program that included new computer labs.

The state-of-the-art facility includes a full-court gym floor, rooms in which community agencies can offer yoga and other physical activity classes, and a workout room equipped with cardiovascular exercise equipment and free weights. In addition to its uses for physical activity, the new space also will provide a venue suitable for dance, concerts or public presentations.

Externally, the facility replaces a blank brick wall facing Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue Southeast with an inviting entrance to a sleek modern building with street-facing, full-length, museum-quality display cases in which the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum will showcase community history. Thurgood Marshall Academy also will be able to use the window display cases to advertise open houses for interested parents and community members.

Noting the many benefits of the new facility, Mr. Kern said: "This collaborative venture has brought a top-quality athletic facility to the charter and non-charter students it will serve as well as to the wider community in Anacostia, which has long been bereft of recreational facilities.

"With our original renovated, historic school building and this brand-new top-of-the-line athletic and community facility, Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School now has the facilities to match our status as the highest-performing nonselective public high school in the city," he said.

The public charter high school, which began its life in a church annex in Congress Heights, is widely regarded as a model of best practices by other public charter schools in the city and has developed complex data systems to analyze and track the academic performance of individual students, 70 percent of whom are economically disadvantaged.

Dignitaries at the Dec. 4 ribbon-cutting ceremony included former D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams and D.C. Council member Marion Barry. D.C. government officials included Kerri L. Briggs, state superintendent of education for the District; Stefan Huh, director of charter school financing and support at the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education; and Allen Lew, executive director of the D.C. Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, who was instrumental in building on the charter school's initial investment and the city's decision to partner with the school in this joint project.

Other guests included representatives from Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, an advocacy and resource organization for D.C. public charter schools, and Building Hope, founded by Sallie Mae to help charter schools overcome the facility obstacles that keep them from expanding and serving more students. Students, faculty and alumni from both schools in the joint venture also were present.

Students at Thurgood Marshall Academy are three times more likely to be proficient in reading and math than their peers in the two neighboring high schools, and 100 percent of the school's first five graduating classes this year were accepted to college, officials there said.

Commenting on the District charter venture, Robert Cane, executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, said: "It is to the credit of Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School that it has successfully created a high-quality public school in a community that has been chronically underserved for quality education options."

The Current
Charter school gets former Clark Elementary Building
By Katie Pearce
Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Succeeding where many other charter schools have failed, E.L. Haynes Public Charter School has secured a former D.C. Public Schools building for its new home. During summer 2010, Haynes will begin its move into the former Clark Elementary School in Petworth.

The D.C. Council yesterday passed legislation that authorizes up to $13.35 million in revenue bonds to help finance Haynes’ transition into the school building, at 4501 Kansas Ave. NW.

Haynes founder Jennie Niles said the school is negotiating a 25- year lease for the Clark building, with the option of a 25-year renewal.

Clark Elementary was one of 23 public schools that Chancellor Michelle Rhee shut down in 2008. Though charter schools have collectively offered 33 bids for 11 separate empty school buildings, only three negotiations have moved forward, according to Barnaby Towns, spokesperson for the nonprofit Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.

Haynes put bids on a few other school buildings before landing Clark, Niles said. The charter school plans to use the new building as a second campus, housing both its youngest and oldest students. Clark is less than a mile away from Haynes’ current location at 3600 Georgia Ave. NW.

The charter school, founded in 2004, today serves 460 students from pre-kindergarten through seventh grades. Haynes grows incrementally each year with its student population, and it will begin offering a high school curriculum (to its current seventh-graders) in 2011 in the Clark building.

The high-schoolers will share the space with pre-kindergartners through second-graders, while third- through eighth-graders will remain at the Georgia Avenue cam- pus.

Some extensive renovations must take place before students can move into the Clark building, Niles said. Haynes plans to add a regulation-size gym, a cafeteria for high-schoolers, and new science, music and art classrooms. And though the building functioned as an elementary school recently, its mechanical engineering and plumbing systems have degraded and need to be replaced, she said.

She said the school is funding both its lease and renovations through debt, the council-approved revenue bonds and a grant from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

Niles, a former teacher, headed the Charter School Office for the Connecticut State Department of Education before she completed the urban principal training program New Leaders for New Schools in 2003.

Towns said Friends of Choice in Urban Schools is “extremely pleased” about Haynes’ pending move, but lamented that most charter schools don’t enjoy the same fate.

“While we would like to believe that the city’s decision ... was recognition of [Haynes’] status as one of the city’s highest-performing public schools, the city has prevented many high-performing charter schools from acquiring surplus school buildings while seeking bids from developers of luxury condos and hotels,” Towns wrote in an e- mail.

Aside from Clark, only two other former school buildings are under negotiation for future charter school use. YouthBuild Public School is negotiating for the J.F. Cook Elementary School building on Q Street NW near North Capitol Street, while Hyde Public Charter School and the AppleTree Institute are jointly negotiating for the Taft Special Education Center in Northeast, according to Towns.

Of the 28,000 schoolchildren now enrolled in D.C. public charter schools, “there are just over 9,000 in former [D.C. Public School] buildings,” Towns said. Only about 800 of that number were moved into school buildings because Mayor Adrian Fenty took office, he added.

Niles said she believes Haynes was successful in securing Clark because “we were a compelling school with good results” and also due to its plans to operate two campuses in close proximity.

Haynes operates on a year-round schedule, with eight- to 12-week academic sessions punctuated by breaks. Its Web site notes significant strides in test scores over three years: By 2009, the school had gone up 50 percentage points in math and 29 percentage points in reading.

The Washington Post
Who knows best on charter schools?
By Dennis and Eileen Bakke
Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Regarding Jay Mathews’s Dec. 14 column, “When is it time to close a charter?”:

Mr. Mathews is usually right on the money, but this time he was off base in several ways. First, the very nature of charter schools forces poorly performing ones to shut on their own. Charter school funding comes from the government based on how many students choose to attend the school. If the school performs poorly, parents won’t send their children there, and the school won’t have the funds to operate. Parents, not the government or regulators, are the best evaluator of a quality school, partly because they take into consideration qualities in addition to academic achievement (e.g., safety, character education, after-school programs, location).

Additionally, Mr. Mathews’s case for closing schools based on proficiency-test results would be more compelling if those tests were the right tests. But his colleague Valerie Strauss got it right in her Dec. 11 Answer Sheet column: “Average test scores don’t tell us how good a school is, but rather reveal information about the family income and education of the students’ parents.”

Consider the case of a student who enters a school three years behind and the school helps that student advance two grades in one year — remarkable academic growth. But the student is not deemed proficient, the teacher and school will be labeled failing, and many will urge that the school be closed because of low test scores. The appropriate measure of the performance of all public schools, including charters, is same-student learning gains (i.e., how much did the students grow academically from September to June each year?).

The writers are co-founders of Imagine Schools.

The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU-FM 88.5 (NPR)
Friendship Public Charter School Chairman Donald Hense discusses the need for the daily presence of law enforcement officials at the Minnesota Avenue and other metro stations when schools let out
Friday, December 11, 2009

Click on this link to listen and/or view clip: http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2009-12-11/politics-hour

FOX News at 5pm (WTTG-TV)

http://focusdc.org/media/Thurgood%20Marshall%20Academy%20Public4.mp4

Details:

Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School partnered with DCPS, A. Kiger Savoy Elementary School, the 21st Century School Fund and other agencies to develop the Thurgood Marshall Academy/Savoy Public Education Campus.

This uniquely collaborative community development project consists of the modernization of A. Kiger Savoy Elementary School and creation of a shared-use, high-school-sized gymnasium/community center to serve Savoy, Thurgood Marshall Academy, and the local community.

The facility fulfills an urgent need for East-of-the-river youth and their community—few adequate recreation centers and athletic facilities exist in this area.

The 24,346 square foot athletic facility provides appropriate facilities for teaching elementary and high school students physical education and health, and also supports extracurricular activities for both schools.  It also incorporates prominent window cases in which the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum will feature cultural and education displays on community history.

Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School is the highest performing nonselective high school in the city, and 100 percent of its graduates are accepted to college.  More than 72 percent of its students scored proficient in reading and 66 percent in math on this year’s DC-CAS standardized test.  By contrast, less then 24 percent of students at neighboring Ballou and Anacostia Senior High Schools scored proficient in either category.

CBS News Now at 5pm (WUSA-TV )

http://focusdc.org/media/Thurgood%20Marshall%20Academy%20Public3.mp4

Details:

Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School partnered with DCPS, A. Kiger Savoy Elementary School, the 21st Century School Fund and other agencies to develop the Thurgood Marshall Academy/Savoy Public Education Campus.

This uniquely collaborative community development project consists of the modernization of A. Kiger Savoy Elementary School and creation of a shared-use, high-school-sized gymnasium/community center to serve Savoy, Thurgood Marshall Academy, and the local community.

The facility fulfills an urgent need for East-of-the-river youth and their community—few adequate recreation centers and athletic facilities exist in this area.

The 24,346 square foot athletic facility provides appropriate facilities for teaching elementary and high school students physical education and health, and also supports extracurricular activities for both schools.  It also incorporates prominent window cases in which the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum will feature cultural and education displays on community history.

Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School is the highest performing nonselective high school in the city, and 100 percent of its graduates are accepted to college.  More than 72 percent of its students scored proficient in reading and 66 percent in math on this year’s DC-CAS standardized test.  By contrast, less then 24 percent of students at neighboring Ballou and Anacostia Senior High Schools scored proficient in either category.

The Washington Examiner
D.C. students’ test scores no longer worst in the country
By Leah Fabel
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

D.C. Public Schools are no longer the worst in the nation, according to standardized test scores released Tuesday comparing large urban districts.

But the reality remains grim. Fourth-graders rank fourth from the bottom, ahead of Cleveland, Detroit and Fresno, Calif., on the math portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Eighth-graders ranked ahead only of their peers in Detroit.

"We are no longer last, so that is good news," said Chancellor Michelle Rhee, speaking with Mayor Adrian Fenty at Southeast's Sousa Middle School.

Though overall scores leave room for improvement, D.C. students outpaced the gains made by their urban peers nationwide. In 2009, DCPS was the only district to improve the average score at both grade levels by at least five points compared with 2007. Only two other cities have achieved similar results, and not since 2005.

Nationwide, fourth-grade public school students scored an average score of 239 on the 500-point test, compared with 220 for DCPS students. Eighth-graders scored 282 nationwide, compared with 251 among D.C. students.

Charter school students were not included in Tuesday's analysis, completed by the U.S. Department of Education, though they did take the tests in the spring. A spokesman for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools said charters outperformed DCPS at the eighth-grade level, but traditional schools outperformed charters among fourth-graders.

Rhee acknowledged "a foundation set before us" when she became chancellor in 2007, but claimed credit for the pace of gains over the past two years. Critics have chided her for claiming successes for which they don't believe she is responsible.

"In past years, though DCPS saw gains, they were on par with other cities' gains," Rhee said. Over the past two years, the gains were "out of step" with lagging competitors.

Rhee credited her administration's "focus on human capital" for helping to jump-start the progress.

The school system's Hispanic students saw the greatest improvements, with fourth-graders gaining eight points and eighth-graders jumping 15 points since 2007 -- the largest gain in the nation. Fourth- and eighth-grade black students both saw gains of four points.

Fenty downplayed the negative attention Rhee has received surrounding nearly 300 teacher firings in October.

"From what I hear from the people in D.C., they're extremely enthusiastic about the progress that's been made," Fenty said.

The Washington Post
District leaps forward in math:
Gains on national tests stand out among results for city school systems
By Nick Anderson and Bill Turque
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

D.C. public schools made outsize gains in mathematics during the past six years, according to a federal report card released Tuesday that shows the city school system, long derided as one of the nation's worst, is progressing faster than most of its urban peers.

The advances do not put the city schools anywhere near the same league as high-flying suburban systems such as Montgomery, Fairfax or Arlington counties. But the results suggest that reform efforts under controversial D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and her predecessor have begun to pay off in better student performance.

Once routinely ranked last in math among major urban systems, D.C. public schools are now roughly on par with such cities as Los Angeles, Baltimore and Milwaukee. The National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the D.C. system was the only one of 11 studied in 2007 and 2009 to make significant strides in grade 4 and 8 math scores, in an analysis that excluded charter school scores. Its gains in fourth grade since 2003 were triple those found in the nation as a whole and roughly double those for all large cities.

"We grew significantly, whereas other districts remained pretty flat," Rhee said. "That, for us, speaks pretty loudly."

There were caveats. The report covered only math. A crucial follow-up on reading is expected next year. The D.C. system's scores remain well below the national average. On a 500-point scale, the city scored 220 this year in fourth grade, compared with 239 nationally, and 251 in eighth grade, compared with 282 nationally.

For another point of comparison, New York schools had no statistically significant gains this year compared with 2007. But New York's fourth-grade score nearly matched the national average, and its eighth-grade score put the city far closer than the District to closing the gap in academic achievement between big cities and the suburbs.

The District's independently operated charter schools, which teach nearly four in 10 of the city's public students, also made progress over six years. The fourth-grade score rose from 203 in 2003 to 217 in 2009. The eighth-grade score, 256, was up from 250 in 2005 (the first year for which a score was available).

"We think that the longer children stay in these [charter] schools, the better they do," said Barnaby Towns, a spokesman for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.

Still, experts said the scores provide evidence that under Rhee, the D.C. system is gaining traction.

"Gains of this magnitude do not happen by accident," said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, long a key advocate of the national testing program for urban schools. "They happen because there are real reforms beneath them."

Tuesday's report provided new details about the District's performance compared with other big city systems, building on a state-by-state analysis issued in October.

Rhee took office in June 2007 with a mandate from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to overhaul the schools from the ground up. Her combative style, especially in challenging the teachers union, has made Rhee a national lightning rod. Advocates of data-driven and market-based reforms admire her; many labor leaders loathe her.

Despite the focus on Rhee, the report showed that the upward trend in the District began before she arrived. She credited her predecessor, Clifford B. Janey, with laying a solid foundation in academic standards and curriculum.

In math, educators say, an increased focus on the use of games, calculators and written responses -- to help students demonstrate their reasoning in solving a problem -- helped drive the gains in scores in the national assessment, known as NAEP. The emphasis dates to Janey's tenure but has been redoubled under Rhee.

"I know it sounds simplistic, but it's through the games that kids were able to reinforce factual recall and apply the skills. They were able to look at math as something that was not just paper and pencil drills," said an elementary instructional coach who asked not to be named because she is not authorized to speak publicly.

The emphasis on calculators and written responses is aligned with the substance of the NAEP math test. Calculators are permitted on about a quarter of the fourth-grade test questions. Much of the test covers number properties, operations and measurement, with a bit of geometry, data analysis, statistics, probability and algebra.

D.C. teachers and administrators say the improvement in NAEP scores is attributable in part to the use of Everyday Mathematics, a K-6 curriculum Janey introduced in the District in 2005. Everyday Mathematics focuses on using a student's experiences, encouraging the use of games and hands-on work rooted in real-life situations. Students also are encouraged to explain and discuss their reasoning in their own words.

The NAEP exams, given every two years, are a competition of sorts for urban school reformers.

With D.C. public schools beginning to rise in the rankings, Detroit now sticks out as the school system with by far the lowest marks. Its score of 200 in fourth grade was 39 points below the national average. Casserly called that "an outrage."

On Tuesday, Rhee told a Detroit civic leader: "I feel your pain. We were where you are not too long ago."

The Washington Post
Finding frustration instead of a home:
Charters are increasingly seeking space in former public school buildings, but the District has repeatedly rejected their applications
By Michael Birnbaum
Friday, December 4, 2009

Walking through a vacant District school building Thursday, Mary Shaffner could visualize the peeling paint replaced by fresh blackboards. Dusty hardwood floors marred by bird droppings could be polished to a gleam. Teachers and students would once again fill the halls of the Franklin School.

But to the developers also attending Thursday's open house, a hotel or condominiums might be more attractive, and it's likely they'll get their way. Two applications from charter schools to use the building have been rejected, including one from Shaffner's Yu Ying Public Charter School. The city said the renovation costs were too high, and there's little indication a new application will be accepted this time around.

It's a drama that has occurred repeatedly in the District, and the 1869 Franklin School, at 13th and K streets NW, is just the latest instance. Because of the credit crunch, which makes it more difficult for charters to finance private projects, and space newly available thanks to the closure of more than two dozen D.C. public schools, charters are clamoring more than ever for public school buildings.

"It's a lot of my job trying to find us a new home. It's a very difficult process," Shaffner said. She plans to try again at Franklin. She also filed applications for two other D.C. public school buildings, which were also rejected, one of them in favor of another charter school. Parents at her school, which leases space in an old convent near Catholic University, are frustrated with the process, she said.

"They're D.C. taxpayers, and they're sending their children to a public school, so they want them to have access to the same resources as other kids," she said.

Although the Franklin School was closed long before Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced plans to close a number of schools last year, it is part of the larger pool of former school buildings that charters have coveted but, in large part, have not received. Charters serve 38 percent of D.C. public school students, but just under a third of charter students attend classes in former public school buildings, according to an analysis by Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, a charter advocacy organization. Most of the rest have found space on the commercial market.

Of the 26 public schools whose closures have been announced since last year, seven are or will eventually be occupied by charters. One will be used by the University of the District of Columbia. Four have been filled by other branches of D.C. government, taking them over for, among other purposes, a temporary recreation center and offices for the Department of Public Works. Three will be turned over to developers and two to nonprofit groups. Five are in use as D.C. public schools. One will be torn down and the land turned into a park. The fates of three have not been decided.

Concerns about the process for deciding how the buildings are used led D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) to propose legislation this year that would catalogue city property online and set up an advisory committee to monitor what is done with empty buildings.

"There didn't seem to be a lot of transparency or inclusion" around the recently closed buildings, he said.

Charter advocates point to city law, which says charter schools have a "right to first offer" on excess school buildings.

"Why are charter schools being forced to take out expensive loans to go and convert commercial spaces, for example a warehouse, to send little children there?" asked Barnaby Towns, a spokesman for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools. He said it would be more prudent to take the public money that charters spend on facilities and channel it back to the city through leases on D.C. school properties.

And some charter advocates think there is room for accommodation.

"The space is there. How you organize it and allocate is the challenge," said Thomas A. Nida, chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. He said that in the early days of the charter movement, in the 1990s, charters had relatively little trouble buying or leasing school buildings from the city.

But the city said that it has to consider its needs, too, and that turning buildings over to charters isn't always the best way to use the old schools. In some cases, city agencies spend a great deal renting space in office buildings when they can save money by moving to empty school buildings, officials said. In other cases, a building has deteriorated so much that it's not practical to hand it over to a charter school, they said.

"Charter schools, in every case, have had the opportunity to make the first offer for all of the District's excess school facilities," Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso said Thursday. "A number of schools have made compelling, economically viable proposals for these properties, and the city is working with them to bring these projects to fruition. Our top priority is to ensure that these facilities do not sit fallow but are returned to productive use as fast as possible."

For Shaffner and Washington Yu Ying, that's little consolation. Her school will lose its lease in a year and a half, and she's not sure where it will move.

"We are really looking at every option we possibly can," she said. "And we don't have loads of money to spend on it."