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Re: "D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee proposes teaching parents basic skills," Nov. 20

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s focus on greater parental involvement is good news for every child enrolled in the District’s traditional public schools

D.C.’s public charter schools have found that by fostering partnership with parents to create an environment in which parents can be more involved, they can boost the education of the one in three D.C. students who are educated in these independent public schools.

Every D.C. public charter school is required to have two parents on its school board. These unique public schools also achieve greater parental involvement by working with programs like the Prichard Committee’s Parent Leadership Institute, the Parent Institute for Quality Education and National Council of La Raza’s Parents as Partners.

D.C.’s public charter schools are already involving parents to benefit children from some of the District's most vulnerable communities. Every child deserves no less.

Robert Cane
Executive Director
Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS)

Nov. 26 letter writer Susan Born-Ozmet was wrong to assert that few of the District's public charter schools outperform its traditional public schools.

D.C. students in public charter secondary schools with a majority of economically disadvantaged students are twice as likely to score advanced or proficient on reading and math tests as those in traditional public schools.

Disadvantaged D.C. students in charter public elementary schools also outperform those in non-charter public elementary schools.

Non-selective, publicly funded and independently run, these unique schools educate more than one in three of the District's students. Nearly nine in 10 of these students are from low-income homes; 97 percent are minorities. With comparable demographics to traditional D.C. public schools, the District's public charter schools perform better.

The District's public charter schools are creating life-changing opportunities for children from some of its most deprived communities, an achievement of which every D.C. teacher should be proud.

ROBERT CANE
Executive Director
Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
Washington

Your Nov. 24 editorial "Curb D.C. school violence" wisely drew attention to the need to curb violence in the District's schools. However, the problem is much less serious in the District's public charter schools. District students at public charter secondary schools were half as likely to have a violent-crime incident at their school as students at traditional public secondary schools during the two most recent full school years, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

D.C. secondary school students in public charter schools with a majority of economically disadvantaged students also are twice as likely to score as advanced or proficient on math and reading tests as those in traditional public schools, data from the District's Office of the State Superintendent of Education reveals.

Readers can draw their own conclusions about how these two facts might be related.

ROBERT CANE
Executive Director
Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
Washington

Extract

"The D.C.-based Friends of Choice in Urban Schools took credit for nominating Nida to the charter board. Leaders of the organization described Nida as an analytical, hardworking man of integrity who pioneered charter lending and made a huge contribution to a system that has produced a number of high-quality schools that serve the District's poorest children."

"In D.C., as in many other cities, there are a small number of bankers, developers, contractors and business people who really took a risk on charter schools early on and made it possible for charter schools to grow and thrive," said Robert Cane, the group's executive director. "Tom Nida is one of the first. Without these people, we wouldn't have 35 percent of the kids in charter schools."

*** Clarification to This Article***

Nona Richardson, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said staff members believe that Chairman Thomas A. Nida voted against an enrollment increase for William E. Doar Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts on Feb. 21, 2006. Mark Lerner, who is chairman of the Doar school's board and attended the 2006 meeting, said Nida voted against the increase. The board's official minutes of that meeting do not reflect that vote but instead show that Nida joined in a unanimous approval of the increase, as The Post reported in a Dec. 14 Page One article and an accompanying graphic. Richardson said a memo asserting that the minutes are incorrect would be added to the charter board's file. Nida did not respond to requests from The Post for comment on his vote.

Carrie Lukas ignored a huge education reform in D.C. that is making a difference - one that President-elect Barack Obama enthusiastically supports. Publicly funded, nonselective and independently managed, public charter schools now educate more than one in three of the District’s children.

Economically disadvantaged students in public charter secondary schools are twice as likely to score proficient or advanced in reading and math tests as their non-charter public school peers.

These independent public schools are enriching the lives of many of the District’s most at-risk children by creating an education environment in which schools are free to innovate, allow parents to get more involved, and provide students the structure they need to learn.

No wonder while campaigning for his party’s nomination, Obama called for the doubling charter school investment "so that students have more choices within the public school system."

Ariana Quiñones-Miranda, Deputy Director, Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS)

Why has D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton called for Tom Nida's head?

The chairman of the Public Charter School Board must be deposed, Norton said, because of "astonishing, acknowledged and systemic conflicts of interest and financial self-dealing."

I fear Ms. Norton may be acting on impulse. Worse, she was moved to call for Nida's ouster based only on an article in the other daily newspaper.

In great detail, The Washington Post reported last Sunday how Nida, a banker, has helped charter schools get loans for buildings and programs. From the outside, this relationship seems ripe for conflicts of interest.

"For a long time, the charter board has taken the position that it is not subject to any authority or scrutiny from the District," Attorney General Peter Nickles told me. "I disagree with that."

The Public Charter School Board is chartered by Congress, and its members are appointed by the mayor from a slate of candidates provided by the feds. Chaired by Nida for four years, the board has helped grow D.C.'s charters into a robust system of 60 schools on 96 campuses. They educate more than a third of the city's students, and many do a much better job than the city's public schools.

The charters are funded by the city but operate independently of the school system.

"We provide the money," Nickles says, "so we have authority. "It's important to have clear conflict of interest rules. We're looking into these issues."

What Nickles will find is a board of volunteers who oversee a small staff that — from the accounts of most charter schools — have run a tough and disciplined system. And Nida, rather than being a self-dealing banker, is seen as a highly ethical pioneer.

"In our work with Tom Nida," says Susan Schaeffler, founding principal of KIPP academies, "we have always found him to be working in the best interests of children and completely professional. He's held the charters to a really high standard. I think we are as strong as we are because of the oversight provided by the board and Tom Nida."

A closer look will find that Tom Nida is a product of D.C. Public Schools. He graduated from Kramer Junior High and Anacostia High. He became a banker and returned to the city as one of the first and only bankers willing to lend money to charter schools.

"It was because of Tom that other bankers were willing to lend to the charters," says Robert Cane, who directs FOCUS, an advocacy group for charter schools.

Now, it may shock some people that banks make money when they loan funds. It's called interest. And it may be hard for some public school ideologues to accept that charter schools have the freedom and the right to get loans and buy buildings, but that is the law.

Whether Tom Nida has benefited from his position is a good question, but neither the press nor Eleanor Holmes Norton has answered it.

Nickles will.

STUDENTS IN the District's charter schools on average outperform peers who attend the city's traditional public schools. They do so not because they come from more privileged backgrounds but because the charters are free to innovate and implement practices that work. The charter schools' success in educating poor and minority children should be celebrated, and it should help validate efforts by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to bring similar changes to the traditional public schools. The charters' independence, so vital to their success, should be protected.

A recent Post analysis confirmed the "solid academic lead" of charter students over those in traditional schools. According to The Post's analysis, students in middle-school charters scored 19 points higher than their peers in regular schools on national reading tests and 20 points higher in math. Charters also did better on such measures as attendance and graduation rates. Teachers in the charters are more likely to be "highly qualified."

The Post statistics do not prove that charter schools will always be superior to regular schools; their performance, too, is uneven. Clearly, though, the "no-excuses" innovations of the best charters make a difference: longer school days, summer classes, an inclusive culture of parental involvement, and the power to hire teachers who are committed to a school's philosophy and dismiss teachers who aren't up to the job.

Much of the credit for the success of the charters must go to the volunteer public charter school board, which, in the span of a dozen years, has overseen the growth of a sizable school system. The Post investigation raised questions about whether its members, in particular Chairman Thomas A. Nida, paid sufficient attention to conflict-of-interest rules. It's important that the matter be investigated, and both D.C. Attorney General Peter J. Nickles and the city's campaign finance office are looking into the situation. The board should revise its practices to bring better transparency to its actions. But calls for a purge of board members are premature. Consider, for instance, that there were sound educational reasons for some of the actions that have been called into question (such as closing schools that were failing to adequately educate their students). It would be wrong to discount the important work done by the board, under Mr. Nida's leadership, in nurturing charter schools.

Even more ill-advised are proposals to change how the board is constituted and place it under city control. Autonomy from business as usual is what has made the charters a success. Just ask the parents who, largely through word of mouth, are now responsible for 26,000 District children enrolled -- and learning -- in charter schools.

School choice works. It’s that simple. That is the obvious conclusion from the Washington Post’s analysis earlier this week confirming independent reports that District children in charter schools are vastly outperforming students in the city’s traditional public schools. To quote from the front-page Post story, "The gains show up on national standardized tests and the city’s own tests on reading and math…. Charters have been particularly successful with low-income children." Also, "District school records show that charters also have better attendance and graduation rates than the regular public schools and that their teachers are more likely to fit the city’s definition of ‘highly qualified,’ meaning that they have expertise in what they are teaching."

These stunning successes are exactly what proponents of school choice have long predicted, and they track results in other parts of the country. In an interview with The Examiner, Robert Cane, executive director of the local non-profit Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, explained: "It’s all about enabling poor parents to get their children into schools that can best help their kids…. [The great test results] are largely attributable to the ability to shape the academic program to the needs of the students they are actually dealing with. They don’t have to get permission from a school bureaucracy."

Cane was speaking only about charter schools, but his comments also apply to "choice" options such as the congressionally funded DC Opportunity Scholarships, which students can use to attend private or parochial schools. More than 1,900 economically disadvantaged District children presently benefit from the program. Studies by the U.S. Department of Education and Georgetown University found that parents in the program were more engaged in their children’s education, more confident in their safety, and more focused on academic performance than those in the regular public schools. And a Manhattan Institute study showed that regular public school students are relegated to far more segregated education environments than the scholarship recipients.

The District’s charter schools enjoy broad support, and incoming president Barack Obama and Education Secretary nominee Arne Duncan are both avowed charter-school fans. Unfortunately, Obama has been far less supportive of private school choice options, even though some of his own daughters’ new classmates at Sidwell Friends, an elite private school, will be Opportunity Scholarship recipients. The goal should be to give as many families as many educational options as possible – because freedom, choice, and parental involvement clearly produce good results.

The administration of D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said yesterday that it is seeking to redevelop 11 now-shuttered public schools, inviting developers to submit proposals that can include retail space, offices and high-priced and affordable housing.

The schools are located across the city and include Stevens Elementary in Foggy Bottom, opened in 1868 to educate the children of freed slaves; Hine Junior High on Capitol Hill; and Randle Highlands Elementary in Southeast Washington.

"We have a rare opportunity to bring transformative projects that will improve neighborhoods across the city," Neil O. Albert, deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said in a statement. "We are looking for capable, creative partners with great ideas for these sites."

But the initiative has drawn criticism from some schools advocates, who say it squanders valuable public buildings that could be used for charter schools or other educational purposes. "I question whether this is good academic policy and whether it is sound economic policy," said D.C. State Board of Education member Mary Lord.

The future of the schools has been under discussion since the end of the 2007-08 academic year, when Fenty (D) and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee shut down 23 buildings. They said that declining enrollment had left the schools underused and that the money needed to keep them open could be better spent elsewhere.

In June, the administration announced that seven of the buildings would be used for government services. That plan has since evolved, with District officials considering some of the sites for housing and retail development. The District later invited charter schools and nonprofit groups to submit proposals on some of the buildings, including the former Backus Middle School in Ward 5.

The intent of yesterday's solicitation to developers is to "ask the market what's possible there and what they'd like to do," said Sean Madigan, Albert's spokesman.

The options, he said, could include housing, retail space, offices and educational facilities. "We're waiting to see what we get back, and as soon as we get them back, we'll have community meetings, and then we'll go from there," he said.

D.C. Council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), chairman of the council's Economic Development Committee, said he's concerned that the credit crunch will hinder redevelopment of the properties. "No one can find the money right now," he said.

The District is counting on economic conditions to shift by the time developers are ready to begin construction, Madigan said. "The last thing we want is for the schools to sit idle for years and years and waste away while we try to figure out what do with them," he said. "We're not going to allow these schools to sit fallow."

The District's announcement prompted criticism from Robert Cane, the leader of a charter school advocacy group, who said he was "extremely disappointed" that more charters weren't invited to negotiate with the District for use of the buildings.

Cane, executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, said several charter schools made proposals on properties listed by the District yesterday, including four that submitted plans for Stevens, five for Grimke Elementary in Northwest, four for Hines and one for Randle Highlands.

Of the school buildings for which proposals were solicited in September, according to Cane, 18 charters made 33 offers. But just six charter schools have been invited to negotiate with the city.

Cane said the results reflect the District's lack of commitment to the charter school movement and more interest in the welfare of the commercial real estate sector.

"This administration, just like the administration before them, has not embraced charter schools and does not feel an obligation that D.C. kids have a good place to go to school," he said. "It's not part of their agenda."

Madigan said the District received "a number of good responses from the charter community" and is "pursuing negotiations on several" proposals.

In addition to Backus, Grimke, Hine, Randle Highlands and Stevens, the list of buildings released yesterday includes Langston School, M.M. Washington Career High School, Slater School, Slowe Elementary School and Young Elementary School, all in Ward 5, and Rudolph Elementary in Ward 4.

PREP YOUR FAVORITE CONSPIRACY THEORY—District prepares to dispose of surplus school properties, implement The Plan, whatever you want to call it: “The administration of D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said yesterday that it is seeking to redevelop 11 now-shuttered public schools, inviting developers to submit proposals that can include retail space, offices and high-priced and affordable housing,” Paul Schwartzman and Bill Turque write in WaPo. “But the initiative has drawn criticism from some schools advocates, who say it squanders valuable public buildings that could be used for charter schools or other educational purposes. ‘I question whether this is good academic policy and whether it is sound economic policy,’ said D.C. State Board of Education member Mary Lord.”

THE CHARTER FACTOR—By law, charter schools are supposed to get dibs. Says Robert Cane of FOCUS, “This administration, just like the administration before them, has not embraced charter schools and does not feel an obligation that D.C. kids have a good place to go to school…It’s not part of their agenda.” Six charters, of 18 who made offers, have been invited to move forward with bids. LL SEZ—Great financing available from United Bank! Ask for Tom!