NEWS
- D.C. charter board approves three new schools to open in fall 2016 [Breakthrough Montessori PCS, Washington Leadership Academy PCS and Goodwill Excel Center PCS mentioned]
- D.C. Charter Board Approves 3 New Schools [Breakthrough Montessori PCS, Washington Leadership Academy PCS and Goodwill Excel Center PCS mentioned]
- Get ready for a serious drop in test scores
- The Power of Choice: Why News10NBC went to Washington, D.C.
D.C. charter board approves three new schools to open in fall 2016 [Breakthrough Montessori PCS, Washington Leadership Academy PCS and Goodwill Excel Center PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
May 19, 2015
The D.C. Public Charter School Board has given the green light for three new operators to open schools by fall 2016.
The board approved Breakthrough Montessori, an elementary school that will start with pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students and intends to open in Ward 1; Washington Leadership Academy, a high school that will emphasize service learning and blended learning and hopes to open in Ward 7 or 8; and Goodwill Excel Center, a competency-based alternative high school for students older than 16 that aims to find a location near a Metro station in Ward 4, 5, 6 or 7.
“These new schools will help ensure every family can find a quality school that is right for their student,” Darren Woodruff, chair of the charter school board, said in a statement after the approvals Monday night.
The board approved the plans conditionally and outlined objectives that need to be met over the next year, including developing more detailed special-education plans and securing facilities.
An additional hurdle for the alternative high school will be to change D.C. policy, which awards credit based on time in class. The State Board of Education considered a policy change in December that would have allowed for alternative approaches of awarding credit to students who can demonstrate competency by passing a test or completing a project. Ultimately, the board delayed the vote, citing insufficient time for public discussion and amid questions about how the city can increase flexibility while maintaining rigor.
“We will be working closely with the State Board of Education to release competency-based graduation requirements before Goodwill Excel Center opens in fall 2016,” Naomi Rubin DeVeaux, deputy director for the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said in a statement Tuesday.
The announcement of three new charter schools comes as many District residents are urging the city to be more deliberate in the planning of new charter schools to prevent duplication of services and to make education investments more efficient.
“We are at a place where we feel oversaturated,” said Eboni-Rose Thompson, chair of the Ward 7 Education Council, which co-hosted an event to offer public comment about the proposed applications. “We are all feeling the crunch. What does it do to enrollments at other schools, and how does it affect the school community?”
The number of students enrolled in charter schools in the District has more than doubled during the past decade. The publicly funded, independently managed schools enroll 44 percent of the city’s public school students.
The charter board also has moved to shut down low-performing charter schools. In the past three years, 17 charter schools have been approved and 18 campuses have been closed. Charter board officials said they expect that the new schools will not add to the overall share of charter school students.
Scott Pearson, executive director of the charter board, encouraged the new charter operators to work with the deputy mayor for education to coordinate with the city’s other school plans.
The board received six applications this spring. It turned down two, and one was withdrawn.
D.C. Charter Board Approves 3 New Schools [Breakthrough Montessori PCS, Washington Leadership Academy PCS and Goodwill Excel Center PCS mentioned]
The Washington Informer
May 19, 2015
The DC Public Charter School Board approved three new schools Monday, with each tentatively scheduled to open next year.
The new schools are Breakthrough Montessori for prekindergarten and kindergarten students, Washington Leadership Academy High School and Goodwill Excel Center. The latter is the first local competency-based alternative public charter school offering diplomas to students 16 and older.
All three schools were approved with conditions that must be addressed before they can open in 2016.
"As the recent lottery showed, there is tremendous demand for quality public education in the District," said board chairman Darren Woodruff. "These new schools will help ensure every family can find a quality school that is right for their student."
Woodruff said that the board employs a rigorous process and criteria for school approvals and is committed to sanctioning applications which offer quality educational opportunities.
The board also received three other charter school applications: Legacy Collegiate and Sustainable Futures were declined, while Fostering Scholars withdrew its application.
In the past three years, the board has approved 17 new schools and closed 18 campuses.
"Our next step is to work with D.C.'s deputy mayor of education to find the best facilities to house these new schools," said Scott Pearson, the board's executive director.
Get ready for a serious drop in test scores
Greater Greater Washington
By Natalie Wexler
May 19, 2015
Students in DC have been far more likely to score in the proficient category on local standardized tests than on tougher national assessments. This year, as schools switch to a local test that's more like the one given nationwide, proficiency rates here will probably drop by 30 points or more.
For years, DC students have taken a set of standardized tests called the DC CAS in 3rd through 8th grade, and also in 10th. DC education officials have chosen a particular score on each test, called a cut or cut-off score, that determines proficiency. DC students who score above that number are supposedly performing on their grade level.
While the proficiency rate has been inching up, last year only 54% of DC students were proficient in math and just under half in reading.
Dismal as those figures are, they're far better than DC's scores on another test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Representative samples of students throughout the United States take the NAEP in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade every two years. The NAEP is a rigorous test, and education experts consider it cheat-proof.
According to a new national report comparing last year's state test scores to the 2013 NAEP scores, DC has the third largest gap in the country in 8th grade math, just behind Georgia and Texas. The proficiency rate on the DC CAS was 46 percentage points higher than the analogous rate on the NAEP.
In other words, according to DC, about 65% of 8th graders performed on grade level in math last year. According to the NAEP, only 19% of them did.
While the 8th grade math gap is the most egregious, the DC CAS proficiency rate is well below the NAEP rate in other areas as well. In 8th grade reading, the gap is 37 percentage points. In 4th grade math and reading, the gaps are 31 and 27 points.
DC is not alone in having state proficiency rates that are far higher than those on the NAEP. Over half of the discrepancies are more than 30 percentage points. The gaps in Maryland ranged from 22 to 41 percentage points, and in Virginia from 27 to 34.
With the switch to Common Core tests, DC's own scores will drop
In DC and many states this year, education authorities have switched from the old local tests to more rigorous tests that are aligned to the Common Core State Standards. Instead of taking the DC CAS this month, students are taking tests developed by a consortium called PARCC.
While scores on the PARCC tests won't be available until the fall, they're likely to be as low as those on the NAEP. The two tests are far from identical, but both require students to follow multiple steps and give answers at each step. Both also require students to cite evidence from texts in support of their answers and to demonstrate writing skills.
On the old local tests, students could score proficient without being able to do these things. In addition, the reading passages on the PARCC tests are more difficult than those on the DC CAS.
If the new PARCC scores do mirror DC's past performance on the NAEP, the District will have, for example, a 23% proficiency rate in 4th grade reading instead of its current 50% rate.
It's possible that plummeting scores will spark outrage here, as they did in New York two years ago after that state made an early switch to rigorous Common Core-aligned tests. And the drop in test scores there happened even at some previously high-performing charter schools.
New York's state tests are now so rigorous that fewer students scored proficient on them than on the NAEP. Complaining that the new tests are unrealistically difficult, many parents in the state have refused to allow their children—possibly as many as 150,000 of them—to be tested.
But some argue that relatively easy state tests have been dishonest, portraying students as having mastered skills and subjects they really haven't. One group striving to close the so-called honesty gap points to Kentucky, which in 2010 became the first state to adopt the Common Core State Standards.
After Kentucky toughened its state tests and raised cut scores, proficiency rates dropped by as much as 30 percentage points. But as teachers and students adapted to the new standards, scores on the state tests rose. In 8th grade math, the gap between proficiency rates on state tests and the NAEP narrowed from 32 percentage points in 2011 to 15 in 2014.
Even so, Kentucky has its own opt-out movement. While it's smaller than the one in New York and some other areas, it's significant enough that the state superintendent felt the need to tell school districts not to honor parents' requests to withdraw their children from testing.
How to deal with the test score decline
No doubt the DC CAS, like other local tests, did set the bar too low, even after its supposed alignment to the Common Core two years ago. One charter school leader has said the test was so easy it was a waste of time.
But a drastic switch to a regime where less than a quarter of students score proficient will be a shock to the system. The new tests will also probably make the achievement gap between low- and higher-income students even more apparent.
One thing we can do to soften the blow is to place less emphasis on proficiency rates when evaluating whether schools are doing a good job. Schools with affluent populations start out with kids who are likely to do well on standardized tests and shouldn't necessarily get the credit for their high scores. It makes more sense to focus on how much test scores have grown at a school rather than whether scores rise to a uniform standard.
We also need to remember that change takes time. Low-income students generally score lower on rigorous tests, especially in subjects other than math, largely because they lack background knowledge and vocabulary when compared to their more affluent peers.
To remedy that situation, schools need to begin inculcating knowledge about subjects like history and science as early as possible, in an age-appropriate way. For too long, elementary schools have concentrated on reading and math skills to the near exclusion of all else.
Some elementary schools in DC are beginning to focus on expanding knowledge. But that's a radical departure for most teachers and administrators, and we may not see results on a large scale for years.
It's probably already too late for many older students in DC to clear the new proficiency bar. But if elementary-level teachers and administrators are able to move away from a narrow focus on basic skills and give our youngest disadvantaged kids some of the knowledge their middle-class peers often acquire at home, we can still give them a fighting chance.
The Power of Choice: Why News10NBC went to Washington, D.C.
NBC News10
By Berkeley Brean
May 19, 2015
If we are going to help turn around our public schools in Rochester, we need to know what other cities are doing to fix their schools. That's why we sent Berkeley Brean to Washington, D.C. which is the number one city in America when it comes to empowering parents and giving them options.
We went to D.C. because it's the number one city for school choice. Almost half of the kids are in charter schools and they have vouchers to go to private schools.
That is competition.
And we found that competition is forcing powerful people and groups in the traditional public schools to change. The numbers tell us that competition, that choice is making the situation better for kids.
In the 80's and 90's, Washington D.C. was the murder capital of America and it had the country's worst public schools and its lowest population in decades. But now read what these students said, some from the poorest parts of D.C., when we asked where do they want to go to college and what do they want to be?
Jade Yates said, "I want to go to Rutgers and the new art campus."
Natalie Davis said, "Well for undergrad I would probably say Howard or Merlin University or Trinity."
Stokely Lewis said, "Maryland University."
Anih Holley, "I want to be an inventor."
Kevin Akers said, "MIT and I want to study astrophysics and eventually go to NASA."
Those are five of 85,000 students but their answers are full of hope. Those children are in D.C. charter schools. It was a choice for their parents.
Rochester and D.C. have a lot in common -- terrible crime in the 80s and 90s, people leaving the city and the schools, as bad as they get. But now DC's population is up for the first time in 60 years, crime is the lowest it's been in 20 years and a lot of the people I talk to say, a major factor is what they did with the schools.
Parent Barbara Jones said, "I'm sure. I'm sure because it gives people an option of where they can send their kids to, because people in the city aren't bad people. They just didn't have any choices."
In D.C. 45-percent of children are in charter schools -- that's around 40,000 students. The option for parents and children started in the mid-90's when the city was desperate and congress passed D.C.'s Education Reform Act.
"It was a reaction to a system of schools, traditional schools that had not been serving families well for a very long time and entrepreneurs and families said we want something different." Mieka Wick runs City Bridge Foundation. It helped develop a new teacher evaluation system for public school teachers. One ineffective rating and they're gone. Two minimally effective ratings and they're gone. "So we actually in Washington, have gotten ahead of that, but we are the exception in the country."
It's radical compared to Rochester. D.C. also got rid of its elected school board. The mayor now appoints a public school chancellor and because of competition and public school teachers leaving for charters. The D.C. teachers' union gave up seniority hiring rules and a lot of tenure protection. Fifteen years later, graduation rate in the district is up 10-percent and enrollment in the district schools and charter schools is up.
Coming up in our special reports from D.C. you'll meet the man with the authority to grant and revoke charters, the woman who grew up poor in Rochester and now runs some of the most successful charter schools in D.C. and the public school principal who went door to door recruiting students.
The stories in our hour long special at 7 p.m. and then at 11 p.m. That kind of paradigm-shifting competition does not exist in Rochester.
If our families don't have the money to move to the suburbs or pay for private school then they have to be among the lucky 4,000 kids to get into a Rochester charter. The remaining 25,000 students have no choice but to enroll in Rochester City District Schools.
A lot of those changes, including teacher protections, happened when there was pressure to change. The big changes didn't happen until there was a critical mass of choice, like getting almost half of kids into charters. And so in D.C., they say when the public schools started losing those students and teachers to charters, the public school district and the teachers' union negotiated those changes. We're told it was a nine-month negotiation and it wasn't easy.
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