- Does School Choice Improve Education? [FOCUS Letter To the Editor]
- Academic Success — and Struggle — In D.C. [Achievement Prep Academy and Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS are mentioned]
- DCPS, Suburbs Taking a Page From Charter Schools [KIPP DC, DC Prep, E.L. Haynes and Friendship PCS are mentioned]
- Montessori Specialist is D.C. Teacher of the Year [DC Prep PCS is mentioned]
- Charters, DCPS to Compete More Freely in H.S. Sports
- Simmons: The High Cost of Special-Ed Bus Service
-
Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?
Does School Choice Improve Education? [FOCUS Letter To the Editor]
The New York Times
December 11, 2011
To the Editor:
Natalie Hopkinson claims that “charters consistently perform worse than the traditional schools, yet they are rarely closed.”
In fact, the high-school graduation rate for Washington’s charter schools was 83 percent last school year, compared with 72 percent for its public school system. Furthermore, charter school students have scored higher on the district’s standardized tests in math and reading.
Some 34 percent of Washington’s charter schools have been required to give up their charter — a higher share of schools than those closed by the public school system.
ROBERT CANE
Executive Director
Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
Washington, Dec. 5, 2011
To the Editor:
As a school choice advocate and a former member of the District of Columbia City Council, I must take issue with some of the claims made in “Why School Choice Fails,” by Natalie Hopkinson (Op-Ed, Dec. 5).
Ms. Hopkinson points to what she deems the fundamental unfairness of the lottery aspect of the charter school law. To be sure, it’s not a perfect system, but luck and chance have always determined where one attends school. If you are lucky enough to be born to reasonably well-off parents who can write checks to private schools or buy a house in an expensive suburb, opportunity is everywhere.
If you aren’t so fortunate, your parents grit their teeth and send you to the neighborhood school, chosen for you based on nothing but your ZIP code. If access to high-performing schools has to come down to a number, better it be a lottery number than a ZIP code.
Washington parents seem to agree. Polls show that for the first time in over a decade, a majority of the city’s parents give positive ratings to the school system.
It’s an oft-used analogy in the education reform movement that failing schools are like a burning building: the forces against choice would rather leave everyone inside if everyone can’t be saved. I’ve never made the claim that choice is a panacea. But by and large, Washington’s charter program — and others like it — are success stories. They have given a generation of underprivileged students access to a quality education that has heretofore been largely out of reach.
KEVIN P. CHAVOUS
Chairman
Black Alliance for Educational Options
Washington, Dec. 6, 2011
Academic Success — and Struggle — In D.C. [Achievement Prep Academy and Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Editorial Board
December 11, 2011
There were two, seemingly unrelated, announcements about education in the District last week. The first was the unveiling of a new rating system for public charter schools in which a number of schools were identified as being in the top tier for student performance. The second was the release of national test data that made clear the formidable challenges facing the city’s public schools even as reform has brought progress. What struck us was how the experience of some of the city’s best-performing charters — those with high-poverty student populations — should inform efforts to eliminate the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white peers.
Analysis of the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results showed D.C. students, like those in many of 21 urban districts studied, improving in math but not in reading. One factor may be an increase in special education students taking the test. In 2009, 12 percent of fourth-graders and 14 percent of eighth-graders were excluded from the test because they required special accommodations. In 2011, all but 4 percent of students were included.
The most heartening finding was that the percentage of proficient or advanced students across all grades and subjects increased from 2009, a validation of the city’s vigorous reforms started in 2007. But the fact that those proficiency levels are scandalously low — less than 25 percent, according to the NAEP — is a sobering reminder of how far the system has to go.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the gap — the nation’s largest, according to the federal analysis — between black and white students. D.C. is unusual in that its schools enroll relatively few poor white students. As Michael Casserly of the Council of Great City Schools observed, the gap in the District is more of an income divide.
That’s precisely why the experience of standout charter schools is so relevant. Achievement Preparatory Academy PCS, with 86.2 percent of its students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches, for example, or Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS, with 79.1 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches, can help show how to overcome the obstacles posed by poverty.
One big advantage that charter schools offer low-income children is more time in school. An extended school day, weekend classes, a longer school year and summer instruction are tools that successful charters have used to lift students disadvantaged by a home life that doesn’t include educational support. D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson told us that officials are examining ways to elongate the school day for students who are in most need of added class time. Another advantage of charter schools is flexibility in basic school management such as, for instance, requiring teachers to submit weekly lesson plans to principals, a practice inhibited by the public schools’ contract with the teachers union.
The national results mirror earlier state tests suggesting a slowing in the pace of improvement as officials confront the more intractable ills of urban education. That calls for bigger thinking and bolder action, not for backing down.
DCPS, Suburbs Taking a Page From Charter Schools [KIPP DC, DC Prep, E.L. Haynes and Friendship PCS are mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
December 10, 2011
Say that School A is a middle school, and it's failing -- miserably.
Down the block, School B is trying a few different things. It serves the same student population, but it's succeeding.
Wouldn't you check School B out?
The most successful public charter schools in the District are trying creative approaches, and D.C. Public Schools' principals and teachers are examining those practices to improve their own troubled campuses.
Those wanting to start charter schools in Montgomery and Fairfax counties also are taking notes from the District's most successful charter schools, especially when it comes to leadership philosophy.
Kipp DC's three middle-school campuses rank in the top five of all D.C. charter schools, according to rankings released by the charter board last week. Kipp is more than 99 percent black, and four out of five students come from low-income households.
But its proficiency rates are up to 60 percentage points higher than some of DCPS' middle-grade campuses, with nearly identical demographics. At 10 of the 13 middle schools in DCPS, less than 40 percent of students can read at even a basic level. Most or all of them are black children from low-income households that don't discuss college.
The charter network -- which serves 32,000 students, or about 40 percent of D.C. public school children -- has failing schools, too. But it offers a host of top-ranked middle-school campuses such as Kipp serving poor, black children.
"All our homerooms are named after where our teachers graduated from - you'll be in the Dartmouth classroom for a year, and learn all about Dartmouth," said Susan Schaeffer, founder and chief executive officer of Kipp DC.
D.C. Prep Public Charter school topped the rankings. On the 2011 state exams, 92 percent of students demonstrated math proficiency, alongside 74 percent in reading.
Leaders at both Kipp DC and D.C. Prep said that DCPS teachers and principals routinely visit their schools, taking a day to observe classrooms, tour the campus and meet with school staff.
Those conversations often center around the schools' rewards and discipline program, Kipp staff said.
Their campuses use a "paycheck system." Good performance and behavior earn students "Key Cash" or "Kipp Cash," good at the school store for supplies or uniforms.
Additionally, Kipp's nine-hour school day and intermittent Saturday sessions give its students 40 percent more class time than most schedules.
D.C. Prep also uses "dollars" to track students' achievement, and middle-grade students attend class eight hours each day.
Teachers are on-call until 8 p.m. to answer homework questions. School leaders say that's key -- the commitment of teachers, with students and parents, to getting kids college-ready.
"A lot of people say, 'What textbooks are you using?' It's not about the textbook. It's the teacher in the room, and the school's culture of, we're going to be successful, we're going to college," said Schaeffer, noting that students' uniforms often bear the year they will graduate from college.
"I think this is where DCPS is trying to go," said Emily Lawson, founder and CEO of D.C. Prep. "They're trying to help teachers put an emphasis on perfecting their craft."
Fred Lewis, a spokesman for Chancellor Kaya Henderson, said DCPS frequently collaborates with charters. When developing a curriculum, school leaders visited E.L. Haynes Public Charter School to discuss their curriculum and framework for professional development.
Kathleen Guinan, who is opening the first charter school in Montgomery County in September, said she toured Friendship Public Charter Schools, among others, while researching her pre-kindergarten through third grade Community Montessori Charter School.
"The strength of the leadership, and also the notion we share, which is very, very, very high expectations for children ... the bar was very high," Guinan said.
Eric Welch also checked out D.C. charters when putting together the application for the Fairfax Leadership Academy, a proposed Falls Church campus that would be the first charter in Fairfax County.
"The biggest thing we noticed with Kipp is their use of extra time, the increased learning time," said Welch, who has proposed an extended school day and year for his grades 7-12 Academy.
Montessori Specialist is D.C. Teacher of the Year [DC Prep PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
December 9, 2011
Perea Brown-Blackmon, a Montessori specialist at Langdon Education Campus, is the 2012 District of Columbia Teacher of the Year.
Brown-Blackmon, who teaches grades 3 and 4, was honored Friday with a surprise classroom visit by Mayor Vincent C. Gray and a delegation of top city and school officials. In a statement, they said Brown-Blackmon won praise from parents and colleagues for culturally relevant lessons and hands-on projects to stimulate children’s interest in science, math, technology and writing.
At one time or another in her 17 years at Langdon, Brown-Blackmon has been cheerleading coach, step team adviser, choir director, lead teacher and grade-level chairperson. She’s also a recipient of the 2011-2012 Rubenstein Award for Highly Effective Teaching.
All nine of her children are current or former DCPS students, according to the statement. Her husband, Jonathan Blackmon, teaches at Coolidge High School
It’s also worth noting that she breaks a three-year run of public charter school teachers who have been Teacher of the Year recipients.
The winner is selected by education leaders from a group of citywide nominees who write essays and are interviewed and observed in class. The other finalists this year were Steven King of Shepherd Elementary and Drew Snodgrass of D.C. Preparatory Public Charter School.
Charters, DCPS to Compete More Freely in H.S. Sports
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
December 10, 2011
D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray plans to appoint a citywide athletic director by the end of the year, enabling charter schools to compete with D.C. Public Schools in tournaments like the Turkey Bowl high school football championship.
It's essentially a plan to move the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association out from under control of D.C. Public Schools, and put the sports agency under the Office of the State Superintendent for Education, which oversees both the traditional and the charter school systems.
"We're working now to find a system that will be a statewide system," said Gray, even speculating about the possibility of private schools competing in tournaments historically open to only DCPS.
Although acknowledging that the new position is "daunting," Gray told reporters and charter school leaders that he expects to fill the role by year's end.
Under the current system, charter schools must apply for a sanction to play any team outside of the D.C. Charter School Board's purview. Members of the charter school community say that's become an issue when teams are ready to play in a tournament out-of-state, but DCPS' computers go down -- or DCPS loses the papers -- and the team can't play.
Audrey Williams, spokeswoman for the charter school board, said that DCPS' control of the sports agency caused "concern over how DCPS can be independent in making these decisions if they're housing the organization."
DCPS is considered a local education agency, or LEA. In comparison, each charter school is its own LEA. Years ago, when charter schools were a small or nonexistent presence, it made little difference where athletic authority was vested.
But charter schools now serve about 32,000 children, or 40 percent of the District's public school students. It made little sense to the 53 LEAs that they had to ask a 54th LEA for permission to throw a ball.
"This is something we're really pleased about," Williams said.
Simmons: The High Cost of Special-Ed Bus Service
The Washington Times
By Deborah Simmons
December 11, 2011
This morning, the D.C. Council opens wide the door to the spiraling costs of providing transportation for 3,500 special-education students, whose busing system currently costs taxpayers about $26,285 per student, per year.
Of course, the laws of humanity dictate that no expense be spared to educate children with special needs, though the money is not actually being spent on teaching and learning.
Meeting the moral obligation could be easier if city officials develop a narrow line of questioning.
Why doesn’t the city offer vouchers to parents with special-needs children? Would doing so drive the costs of special education up or down?
The D.C. school bus fleet, which transports only special-education students, has 840 buses that cover 645 routes at an annual cost of $92 million.
D.C. Public Schools operates 126 school buildings, yet there are five times as many routes. Why? School authorities truly need to explain this one to taxpayers, who suspect authorities are failing to design routes based on students’ common destinations, especially when many are taken to public and private schools in nearby jurisdictions.
A report in July uncovered “a startling number of safety concerns” regarding the buses themselves, which, of course, is unconscionable. For example, even basic safety checks — mirrors, motor oil and lights — were neglected in 91 percent of the 754 buses that were studied, according to the report. Moreover, 492 buses failed to undergo an annual comprehensive brake inspection.
Lawmakers must get to the bottom of such safety issues immediately.
As for the parents of special-needs youths, the plaintiffs in ornery lawsuits filed in connection with special-education issues and the judges overseeing the cases, all parties need to exhibit more flexibility.
Currently, the District remains under a heavy cloud of court-ordered mandates, ranging from whether the school system drags its feet on providing a child an individual evaluation to ensuring that the child gets to and from school in a timely manner. Mayor Vincent C. Gray deserves much credit for addressing most of the issues.
His administration recently opened another evaluation center for special-needs children, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit just last week handed the city a substantial victory in the 16-year-old class-action case. In short, the three-judge appeals panel ruled that future decisions on the longstanding suit give measurable weight to current circumstances.
That’s good to know as lawmakers and school officials begin divulging the dollars and sense of every aspect of special-education transportation.
Here again, the focus is not whether the city is providing transportation services, which was the chief issue when the initial Petties v. the District of Columbia lawsuit was filed in 1995. The question is that now that those school-bus responsibilities are back in the hands of the District, how can they be provided more efficiently.
Vouchers — even if not for all 3,500 youths in special-education programs — should be part of any education discussion.
The annual per-student rate of $26,285 for transporting special-needs children should raise eyebrows, to be sure — especially when you consider that those expenditures could prove more beneficial on teaching and learning.
Thanking Ofield Dukes
In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, as mainstream media begin casting its eyes upon black journalists, a man named Ofield Dukes, as fate would have it, rounded us up in Washington and told us to pay attention to this and watch out for that — blazing a trail for professionals, professionalism and coverage of events that might otherwise go ignored.
Ofield, a public relations pioneer who died Wednesday in Detroit from a rare form of bone cancer at 79, was a mentor who shared the mystiques of the two Washingtons — the city and its denizens and the inside-the-Beltway powerbrokers who work and live here — and how to cover both.
His legion of students, as well as the events and individual people to whom he brought honor, owe him much.
As one of his students since I was a teenager, I pay homage.
Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?
The New York Times
By Helen F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske
December 11, 2011
Durham, N.C.
NO one seriously disputes the fact that students from disadvantaged households perform less well in school, on average, than their peers from more advantaged backgrounds. But rather than confront this fact of life head-on, our policy makers mistakenly continue to reason that, since they cannot change the backgrounds of students, they should focus on things they can control.
No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush’s signature education law, did this by setting unrealistically high — and ultimately self-defeating — expectations for all schools. President Obama’s policies have concentrated on trying to make schools more “efficient” through means like judging teachers by their students’ test scores or encouraging competition by promoting the creation of charter schools. The proverbial story of the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost comes to mind.
The Occupy movement has catalyzed rising anxiety over income inequality; we desperately need a similar reminder of the relationship between economic advantage and student performance.
The correlation has been abundantly documented, notably by the famous Coleman Report in 1966. New research by Sean F. Reardon of Stanford University traces the achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families over the last 50 years and finds that it now far exceeds the gap between white and black students.
Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that more than 40 percent of the variation in average reading scores and 46 percent of the variation in average math scores across states is associated with variation in child poverty rates.
International research tells the same story. Results of the 2009 reading tests conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment show that, among 15-year-olds in the United States and the 13 countries whose students outperformed ours, students with lower economic and social status had far lower test scores than their more advantaged counterparts within every country. Can anyone credibly believe that the mediocre overall performance of American students on international tests is unrelated to the fact that one-fifth of American children live in poverty?
Yet federal education policy seems blind to all this. No Child Left Behind required all schools to bring all students to high levels of achievement but took no note of the challenges that disadvantaged students face. The legislation did, to be sure, specify that subgroups — defined by income, minority status and proficiency in English — must meet the same achievement standard. But it did so only to make sure that schools did not ignore their disadvantaged students — not to help them address the challenges they carry with them into the classroom.
So why do presumably well-intentioned policy makers ignore, or deny, the correlations of family background and student achievement?
Some honestly believe that schools are capable of offsetting the effects of poverty. Others want to avoid the impression that they set lower expectations for some groups of students for fear that those expectations will be self-fulfilling. In both cases, simply wanting something to be true does not make it so.
Another rationale for denial is to note that some schools, like the Knowledge Is Power Program charter schools, have managed to “beat the odds.” If some schools can succeed, the argument goes, then it is reasonable to expect all schools to. But close scrutiny of charter school performance has shown that many of the success stories have been limited to particular grades or subjects and may be attributable to substantial outside financing or extraordinarily long working hours on the part of teachers. The evidence does not support the view that the few success stories can be scaled up to address the needs of large populations of disadvantaged students.
A final rationale for denying the correlation is more nefarious. As we are now seeing, requiring all schools to meet the same high standards for all students, regardless of family background, will inevitably lead either to large numbers of failing schools or to a dramatic lowering of state standards. Both serve to discredit the public education system and lend support to arguments that the system is failing and needs fundamental change, like privatization.
Given the budget crises at the national and state levels, and the strong political power of conservative groups, a significant effort to reduce poverty or deal with the closely related issue of racial segregation is not in the political cards, at least for now.
So what can be done?
Large bodies of research have shown how poor health and nutrition inhibit child development and learning and, conversely, how high-quality early childhood and preschool education programs can enhance them. We understand the importance of early exposure to rich language on future cognitive development. We know that low-income students experience greater learning loss during the summer when their more privileged peers are enjoying travel and other enriching activities.
Since they can’t take on poverty itself, education policy makers should try to provide poor students with the social support and experiences that middle-class students enjoy as a matter of course.
It can be done. In North Carolina, the two-year-old East Durham Children’s Initiative is one of many efforts around the country to replicate Geoffrey Canada’s well-known successes with the Harlem Children’s Zone.
Say Yes to Education in Syracuse, N.Y., supports access to afterschool programs and summer camps and places social workers in schools. In Omaha, Building Bright Futures sponsors school-based health centers and offers mentoring and enrichment services. Citizen Schools, based in Boston, recruits volunteers in seven states to share their interests and skills with middle-school students.
Promise Neighborhoods, an Obama administration effort that gives grants to programs like these, is a welcome first step, but it has been under-financed.
Other countries already pursue such strategies. In Finland, with its famously high-performing schools, schools provide food and free health care for students. Developmental needs are addressed early. Counseling services are abundant.
But in the United States over the past decade, it became fashionable among supporters of the “no excuses” approach to school improvement to accuse anyone raising the poverty issue of letting schools off the hook — or what Mr. Bush famously called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Such accusations may afford the illusion of a moral high ground, but they stand in the way of serious efforts to improve education and, for that matter, go a long way toward explaining why No Child Left Behind has not worked.
Yes, we need to make sure that all children, and particularly disadvantaged children, have access to good schools, as defined by the quality of teachers and principals and of internal policies and practices.
But let’s not pretend that family background does not matter and can be overlooked. Let’s agree that we know a lot about how to address the ways in which poverty undermines student learning. Whether we choose to face up to that reality is ultimately a moral question.