- Chronic Truancy Down at Some D.C. Middle Schools
- Suburban Charter? Forget About It.
- Why Are Maryland, Virginia Students in D.C. Schools?
- Simmons: D.C. Schools Need ‘Residents Only’ Signs
- Wonks: College Is Not the (Only) Answer for D.C. Kids
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But the data submitted to D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R.Brown (D) for last week’s hearing show what appears to be a significant decline in chronic truancy at middle schools and PS-8 campuses.
At Eliot-Hine, which figures prominently in plans for improving Ward 6 middle school options, chronic truancy was down to 24 percent in 2010-11 (73 of 310). That still won’t garner any awards, but it’s an improvement nonetheless. Kelly Miller (Ward 7) dropped to 10 percent last school year (42 of 411 students). MacFarland (Ward 4) took the single biggest dip to 2 percent (just 3 of 166 students). Sousa (Ward 7) and Kramer (Ward 8) showed big decreases as well.
While correlation doesn’t mean causation, as social scientists are fond of saying, it’s worth noting that these schools were all sites for the Full Service School (FSS) model launched in 2008. It meant that each received extra staffing, including an additional assistant principal, a mental health clinician and caseworkers to intervene with students who need help.
But two truancy rates at two other full service middle schools--Johnson and Jefferson--while lower to begin with, have grown since the advent of FSS. For the others, better attendance hasn’t necessarily translated into improved academic performance, as least in terms of the DC CAS. Sousa and Eliot-Hine showed big bumps in 2008-09. At Kramer, Kelly Miller and MacFarland, scores have been consistently dismal.
They are deluded to think this would ever be approved, although Welch, much-honored as an educator, knows a lot about kids and teaching. We met several years ago when I visited his class at J.E.B. Stuart High School, where he used a program known as Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) to prepare average students for challenging courses. He is now the executive director and board chairman of the planned academy.
Counting him, the 17-member board includes 12 current or former Fairfax school educators, plus state Del. Kaye Kory (D-Fairfax). I expected more sense than this from such capable people, well-versed in the ways of public school politics. I hope they read the next few sentences carefully.
There are no public charter schools in Fairfax County. There have never been any public charter schools in Fairfax County. There are no public charter schools anywhere in Northern Virginia. Every attempt to create one of those independently run public schools has died. Virginia law gives local school boards the power to veto charters in their territory. They usually don’t like charters because they might make their regular public schools look bad. Fairfax County has kept them out. Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) failed in an attempt last year to deny school boards that power.
Fairfax school officials have suggested to me that charters are just for struggling school systems, such as the one in D.C. The District has many more charter schools than any jurisdiction in Maryland or Virginia, a bad sign to these folks. They will admit that some of the D.C. charters are successful, but so are Fairfax’s regular public schools, they say.
Didn’t Welch see me praise the intellectual depth of the Fairfax school board on Monday? How can he disrespect such bright people? Perhaps he understands that even the wisest officials have blind spots.
In another time and at another place, the plan for the Fairfax Leadership Academy would be warmly embraced. They want a seventh- through 12th-grade school located in an area served by high schools that send less than 50 percent of their graduating seniors to four-year colleges. They want to create small learning communities with just 75 students in each grade. They want a longer school day and required summer school to create the equivalent of 55 more days in the school year. They want to use both AVID and the International Baccalaureate program. They want students to do service projects. They want to create a team-like atmosphere among the staff with collaborative leadership and evaluation.
They are trying to win school board approval by groveling. Their written materials remind me of my graduate school days, reading 14th-century appeals to the Chinese emperor. “We recognize the merits of the current public schools in Fairfax County and do not enter this venture with any notion of trying to undermine the success of a great school system,” they say. “Rather, our intention is to provide an educational program with a unique structure that will enhance the system’s ability to serve all of its students.”
Nice try. Like its equally conceited neighbor, Montgomery County, Fairfax will never allow such upstarts to show them up.
Oh, wait a minute. I forgot. Montgomery got a new superintendent this year and promptly approved its first charter school. Fairfax will have a new superintendent soon. I still don’t think the Leadership Academy has a chance, but we shall see. Some day Fairfax might realize that as good as its schools are, it could use a little competition.
Mr. Brown has invited eight witnesses to a hearing before his Committee of the Whole on Thursday to talk about why parents in surrounding counties drop off their children in D.C. schools without paying tuition. His exploration into the issue is in support of a bill he introduced last spring to “give teeth” to enforcement of school residency laws by increasing fines and referring cases to the D.C. Office of the Attorney General.
“Let me be clear: This was brought to me by parents,” Mr. Brown said in an interview Wednesday.
Mr. Brown said it is “no secret” that Maryland and Virginia license plates pop up at D.C. schools in the morning. Sometimes, the students themselves freely admit they live outside the city, he said.
“This is nothing new,” Mr. Brown said.
Nor is the topic new to the D.C. region, after Montgomery and Prince George’s counties made considerable efforts in the late 1990s and in the past decade to investigate and verify the residency of its students, citing an influx of illegal aliens and out-of-county students.
Mr. Brown’s office said the D.C. legislation should not be construed as an exploration into any students’ legal status in the country, but rather whether they have established residency in the District.
Recent anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the students illegally attending D.C. schools are from Prince George’s County. Some parents may enroll their children in city schools because they work in the District, Mr. Brown said.
The problem has lingered for a variety of reasons, including documentation fraud, problems inherent to transient or homeless families or sudden shifts in a child’s caregiver status to a relative who lives in the District, officials said.
“Sometimes the school system doesn’t want to be in the business of telling the children they cannot attend their school,” Mr. Brown said.
Parents are supposed to provide tax forms, pay stubs or other documentation to prove the residency of children before enrolling them in D.C. schools. However, a 2008 report by the Office of the Inspector General found seven public schools did not have residency-verification forms for 56 of their students.
Mr. Brown said his bill is an attempt to preserve resources for D.C. students, and not to harm the out-of-state children caught in the middle.
“They can attend, but they would have to pay costs,” Mr. Brown said. “This is really about just assuring we have as many decent, quality seats for D.C. residents as we can.”
The issue was highlighted early this year, when the parents of a fourth-grader accused of bringing cocaine to a Northwest school revealed during a court proceeding that they are not D.C. residents.
Mr. Brown hopes witnesses from D.C. Public Schools, D.C. State Board of Education and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) can shed light on how many students might be attending city schools and how they are able to circumvent identity verification. State Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley and John Davis, the instructional superintendent for DCPS, are among the listed witnesses.
Mr. Brown’s bill tasks OSSE with leading investigations into student-residency fraud to make referrals to the attorney general, establishes a hotline to report instances of fraud and increases the fine for violations from $500 to $2,000.
With District schools being the butt of jokes and criticism because of their long history of poor academic performance and cost overruns, one might think proving residency would be the least of taxpayers’ worries.
To the contrary, residency is a huge problem that has been documented by local and federal authorities in recent years.
Moreover, as traditional, charter and specialized schools begin competing for students and dollars, parents are finding that out-of-state license plates are becoming as commonplace as D.C. tags.
Mr. Brown authored the D.C. Public Schools and Public Charter School Board Student Residency Fraud Prevention act to get to the heart of the matter, and he is proposing that fines be levied against anyone — anyone — who submits fraudulent information to D.C. Public Schools.
“The Office of the State Superintendent has the authority for auditing and verifying all this [residency and enrollment] information,” Mr. Brown said. “My office has received a number of complaints … but people say they don’t feel comfortable telling the principal.”
And fewer students means “less money to the school,” he added.
Indeed, while local education funding is set in stone with a per-pupil formula, the money doesn’t necessarily follow the student.
Parents in some neighborhoods, think Capitol Hill and Georgetown, effectively exercise their residency requirements by establishing cluster and feeder schools, where children simply migrate from one school in their neighborhood to the next. But not all neighborhoods have that advantage.
For example, school officials closed all traditional middle schools and junior high schools in Ward 5, which leaves parents either scrambling to find a suitable charter school or praying to get a spot after they place their names on an out-of-boundary waiting list for, say, the always-popular Alice Deal Middle School off upper Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest.
Out-of-state tags stick out a like sore thumb at D.C. schools, and the U.S. General Accounting Office, then-Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and the D.C. Office of the Inspector General all have underscored problematic school-residency issues, especially with schools that aren’t providing the documentation to prove a student — whether a child or an adult — is indeed a D.C. resident.
Mr. Brown’s legislation reinforces Office of the State Superintendent’s burden to prove residency and creates an 800 number and mandates publicly displayed posters so anyone can comfortably blow the whistle on nonresidents.
The residency issue is widespread, said a city hall official who asked not to be named. “People don’t want their children’s school to lose money. They don’t want to be blackballed [by the principal] for complaining. Sometimes, there are not enough slots” for neighborhood youths because out-of-state youths “are taking them.”
It’s about time the District began tackling this issue.
Maryland and Virginia residents sometimes think they have an automatic right to take advantage of D.C. services, even its lousy schools. So it’s good to know the council has put it on a front burner.
Mr. Brown came into office in January with a promise to go after money that should be coming in to many agencies of the D.C. government, and the fraud prevention measure is a means to that end.
But he still should beware: The funding-first crowd will try to distract.
“We don’t have enough staff,” they’ll say. “We have not yet let a contract to do the math,” will be another oft-used but unjustifiable excuse.
The school system lays out clear guidelines for proving residency, and while those guidelines are lax, toughening them is not the issue at hand.
The point of the Student Residency Fraud Prevention act is to prevent further fraud and abuse.
Tightening residency guidelines is the next logical legislative action.
It’s that simple — for now.
Wonks: College Is Not the (Only) Answer for D.C. Kids
Money quotes from the executive summary:
The 'college for all approach' that dominates the educational establishment leads to the mainstream ideal of completing an academic program of study in high school and then graduating from a four-year college. Integrating employment and occupational skills into the high school and post-secondary curricula is often disparaged, with career and technical education (previously known as vocational education) seen as a dumping ground for students not deemed 'college ready.' The legacy of tracking, segregation, and discrimination in the educational system certainly provides support for that view—education can be a vehicle for upward mobility, but it can also perpetuate inequality based on race and class...
"Only about 30 percent of Americans earn a four-year degree by their mid-twenties, showing that the 'college for all' approach is not translating into the desired outcomes. While post-secondary education is clearly a gateway to economic opportunity, two-year degrees and certificates can also lead to family-sustaining wages.
Read the full thing here.
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