Author: mlerner10

At monthly charter board meeting, public pushes back

mlerner10 Charter Schools, Covid-19, PCSB, School Choice Leave a comment

Yesterday, I attended perhaps the most exciting policy forum around public education that I have been to in decades. Sitting on the CATO Institute’s Hyack Auditorium stage were five educational entrepreneurs who have created highly innovative microschools. Three of the participants were able to take advantage of the existence of Educational Savings Accounts in the states in which they are located to fund their endeavors. ESA’s are dollars provided by states to parents for educational services for their children outside of those provided by the local neighborhood schools.

There is a new educational choice movement on fire in this country, much of it ignited by the closure of regular classrooms during the pandemic. According to CATO, “In 32 states plus Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, many families can use school choice programs to select the learning environment that works best for their children.” I pictured Andrew Coulson, the former long-term director of CATO’s Center for Educational Freedom who passed away in 2016 at the age of 48 from a brain tumor, smiling ear to ear from above as he watched the event.

One of the panelists was Jack Johnson Pannell. Mr. Pannell had formed an all-boys charter school in Baltimore focused on helping those living in poverty. A friend introduced him to the universal ESA’s available in Phoenix. He decided to relocate his school across the country, establishing it as a Christian all-boys private school.

It was most likely not a difficult decision. By going the private school route this educator avoids all of the bureaucracy and regulation associated with chartering. In the audience was Shawn Hardnett, founder and executive director of D.C.’s Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys Public Charter School. His eyes lit up as Mr. Pannell spoke, and why shouldn’t this be the case? His school had its five year review by the charter board recently and, for all its excruciatingly difficult work and the right to continue operating, here’s what it received:

“Statesmen PCS will develop and implement an academic improvement plan. At a minimum, the plan must include specific strategies the school will use to improve academic outcomes for all students. The plan must also include a description of how the school will measure its academic progress toward meeting its goals. Statesmen PCS will report on its progress implementing the plan in its annual report every year leading up to its 10-year charter review.”

“Additionally, Statesmen PCS will develop and implement a procurement contract compliance improvement plan. At a minimum, the plan must include strategies the school will use to improve internal procedures for both bidding and submitting procurement contracts. The plan must also include a description of how the school will measure the plan’s success. Statesmen PCS must comply with DC PCSB’s Procurement Contract Submission and Conflict of Interest Policy and Data and Document Submission and Verification Policy. Should DC PCSB recognize noncompliance, it will engage Statesmen PCS’s board about needed improvement or take additional action as appropriate under each policy.”

A shocking alternative to the energy I found at the CATO conference was observing Monday night’s monthly meeting of the DCPCSB. The sessions are held virtually, a reminder of the horrible days of the pandemic. The connection via Zoom made it clunky and awkward to connect sequentially the over 20 people who volunteered to speak as part of the public comment period. Almost all testified passionately against a proposal by the Mary McLeod Bethune Day Academy PCS’s plan to relocate its 16th Street, N.W., campus to Takoma Park Baptist Church located on Aspen Street, N.W. Apparently, the school failed to communicate or miscommunicated the move to those living in the area around the Church, including the ANC. The District’s charter movement is almost 30 years old but I found the entire two hour get together to be a replay of those that I first attended in 1999.

So, while listening to the back and forth discussion between members of the board and the school, I thought about the day that ESAs would come to the nation’s capital. Imagine a parent going on My School DC and picking a private school for their child instead of the regular one in their neighborhood. Then in the mail would come a credit card pre-loaded with almost $13,000 in educational dollars to pay for a year’s tuition in one of the 135 private schools that at one time operated as charters.

People are allowed to dream, aren’t they?

D.C. board overseeing charters spends $6 million a year on salaries

mlerner10 D.C. Council, PCSB Leave a comment

Data from the DC Public Charter School Board Transparency Hub demonstrates that it spends over $5 million a year in employee salaries to administer the charter sector. The data, however, is from the year 2022. It lists 47 staff members. A review of the current organizational chart shows a total now of 56 employees. With an average annual salary of almost $107,000, again from 2022, this would mean that the line item for labor expenses, without benefits, reaches just about $6 million.

The DC Public Charter School Board now has 0.8 employees for each of the 69 LEA’s under its jurisdiction. How do we assess if this number is the right amount of staff members per school?

One way would be to look for information from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. The most recent data from 2020 shows that across the country authorizers that oversee LEA’s have four schools per authorizer. If this was the case in DC., then the DCPCSB would have a little over 17 staff members.

It is interesting to consider whether Washington, D.C. taxpayers are getting their money’s worth with all of these staff members and salaries. A charter school has not been shuttered for years, and it has been quite a while since a new one has been approved. Charter school standardized test scores proficiency rates for the 2022-to-2023 school year are actually lower than those of the traditional schools, including the category of economically disadvantaged students. Moreover, the share of total public school students that the charter sector instructs has been stuck at 48 percent. One other point that needs mentioning is that the charter board’s major decisions are made by members appointed by the Mayor who serve as volunteers.

There are incentives for increasing both the number of staff members and salaries of those working for the DCPCSB. The Uniform Per Student Funding Formula has gone up by at least four percent each budget cycle and last year the charter school facility allotment increased by three percent. These jumps have been supported by the board. This expansion in revenue for schools means more dollars for the PCSB since its revenue comes from a one percent fee on the income of each charter, although the group’s budget information for 2021 demonstrates that schools received a ten percent discount on this charge. 

The D.C. Council provides oversight for the DCPCSB, but since the city no longer supports its budget there is not much of an incentive to questions its spending. I doubt that the individual charter schools would push back against the organization’s budget since it is their regulatory body. Moreover, from years of watching DCPCSB meetings, the board members generally defer to staff on the matters before them.

Another interesting finding for me is that the 2023 DCPCSB Annual Report contains no financial information.

I contend that more questions need to be asked regarding the DCPCSB annual budget.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools backs lawsuit to block opening of a public charter school

mlerner10 Charter School Expansion, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, School Choice, Virtual Learning Leave a comment

Word came yesterday from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools that it has filed an amicus brief backing the efforts of Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond to stop the opening of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Public Charter School. The Alliance’s senior vice president for state advocacy and support Todd Ziebarth, whose title in light of this action seems Orwellian, stated the following:

“Since the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s approval of a charter contract for a religious charter school, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has stood firmly in solidarity with the Oklahoma Attorney General to declare religious charter schools unconstitutional and to affirm that all public schools must maintain their status as public, non-discriminatory, and non-religious for all.” 

“To this end, we filed an amicus brief with the Oklahoma State Supreme Court to proactively highlight that the Board’s actions to approve, contract with, and oversee the religious charter school violate the Establishment Clause.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Ziebarth, he is misunderstanding the United States Constitution’s First Amendment. But you do not have to take it from me. We now have a long line of Supreme Court cases that have given the green light to public funds going to religious institutions, most recently in Carson v Makin in which parents in Maine sued to be able to send their children to a Catholic high school in a rural area where traditional public schools are not located. As in this instance, just like in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris in 2002; Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc., vs. Comer in 2017; and Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2020, the words of Chief Justice John Roberts in Espinoza rings true, [The blocking of the use of taxpayer dollars] “discriminated against religious schools and the families whose children attend or hope to attend them in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the Federal Constitution.”

Mr. Drummond goes on to remark, “All charter schools are public schools. The National Alliance firmly believes charter schools, like all other public schools, may not be religious institutions or discriminate against any student or staff member on the basis of sex, gender, race, disability, or religious preference.”

Agreed. Also concurring with this opinion are the founders of St. Isidore. The school’s website under admissions declares, “It is the policy of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School not to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, or disability in its programs or employment practices as required by Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.”

In light of the explosion of school choice plans across the country, this effort by the National Alliance to limit individual freedom appears antiquated. If the mission of the group as it asserts “is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic achievement by fostering a strong charter school movement” is no longer relevant, then it should go ahead and close up shop.

U.S. House Republicans may hurt D.C. voucher program in trying to help it.

mlerner10 OSP, School Choice Leave a comment

An article yesterday by the Washington Post’s Lauren Lumpkin stated that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are trying to unbalance the three-sector approach to federal school funding in the District of Columbia to steer more money to private school vouchers. Remember that the three-sector approach has been in place since 2004, and was championed by Joseph E. Robert, Jr. , the Washington D.C. area philanthropist who passed away in 2011. It provides an equal amount of dollars to traditional and charter schools in addition to the scholarship plan. According to Ms. Lumpkin’s piece,

“Now, however, Republicans want to increase the voucher program’s share from $17.5 million to $26.25 million and cut D.C. public schools’ piece to one-sixth of the $52.5 million pot of funding — posing a funding crunch for the 50,000-student district.”

The justification for changing the formula is that costs to educate children have gone up dramatically in recent years. According to John Schilling, an educational consultant who for years worked at the American Federation for Children, “The Opportunity Scholarship Program desperately needs more funds. . . There’s tremendous demand for the program, and the reason the program needs more money is because it’s been flat-funded.” Mr. Schilling goes on to explain that due to inflation each scholarship is larger in size, which has translated into a lower number of children who can take advantage of them.

However, this move is fraught with risk. In the District, Mayor Muriel Bowser has been a consistent supporter of the Opportunity Scholarship Program. This makes logical sense in that it brings thousands of dollars each year to the regular schools and charters. But if DCPS loses this revenue I could see the chief executive changing her mind. In 2017, when the SOAR Act that funds the OSP was up for Congressional renewal, a majority of the D.C. Council wrote Congress opposing the voucher program and arguing that it should be shut down. President Biden has stated that he wants to end the program in fiscal year 2023.

My view is that if Republicans want to increase the dollar amount of the scholarships, they should also provide an equal amount to charters and DCPS to maintain the three-sector approach.

Groups sue to stop Catholic charter school from opening. This is a mistake.

mlerner10 Charter Schools Leave a comment

I remember when six Catholic schools in the District of Columbia converted to charter schools to become Center City PCS. At the time there was uniform agreement among education policy makers that these facilities, being public schools, would have to cease religious instruction. I took the opposite view.

We now have a consistent legal precedent at the level of the U.S. Supreme Court of allowing public money to flow to parochial schools, the most recent case being decided last year in Carson v. Makin. The particulars of this decision, as is equally true of the details of the other cases on this issue, are not particularly relevant to my argument as I know full well that the public will just rationalize the rulings as those coming from a conservative dominated bench. So let’s try another line of reasoning.

For a year and a half I worked Holy Cross Hospital, located in Silver Spring, Maryland. Holy Cross is a Catholic Hospital whose mission is, “We, Trinity Health, serve together in the spirit of the Gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities. We carry out this mission in our communities through our commitment to be the most trusted provider of health care services.” It is common to see the cross mounted in the building’s hallways and patient rooms, and many meetings began with a prayer to Jesus Christ.

The hospital accepts Medicare and Medicaid patients whose healthcare is paid for with government funding. During the height of the Covid Pandemic, it received the same federal financial assistance as did hospitals throughout the country. Is any of this revenue unconstitutional because these transfer of taxpayer dollars runs afoul of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits an establishment of religion? Of course not. In no way does this government funding promote Catholicism as the dominant religion in the United States.

The same is true when it comes to education. Tuition may go to Catholic schools through private school vouchers, charter enrollment, or through education savings accounts, for but there is no correlation of this activity to the role that the Anglican Church played in English society around the period of the American Revolution.

About 30 years ago the private school voucher plan was passed in Milwaukee and the arguments for and against the program were going strong. David Boaz was speaking at the CATO Institute and he explained his support for school choice this way: He said that criticism of government money going to parochial schools as an establishment of religion is the same as saying that people who use food stamps at Safeway are singling out this corporation as the dominate grocery store in this country. This line of thought makes little sense.

The lawsuit challenging the opening of the online St. Isidore Charter School by the Oklahoma City Archdiocese is a wasted effort. In this instance, as in others involving religious educational institutions, the money is being used to support the children.

D.C. charter alliance blows equity argument when it comes to DCPS teacher raise

mlerner10 Charter School Finances, Charter School Unions Leave a comment

A few days ago Alex Koma of the Washington City Paper had a detailed article published regarding charter schools in the nation’s capital and their request for increased funding to match the newly ratified teachers’ union contract. The agreement, which the D.C. Council approved yesterday, provides a total of a 12 percent raise in teacher salaries that goes back retroactively three years to the start of contract negotiations. The D.C. Line’s Chris Kain pointed out that the new labor agreement ends on September 30, 2023 and includes, on top of the pay increase, a four percent retention bonus. As Mr. Koma pointed out, now charter schools want access to the same funding. His article includes this paragraph:

“’To ask public charter school leaders and teachers to continue serving students well with significantly fewer resources than DCPS exacerbates the inequity between the sectors and our most under-resourced students and their peers,’ Ariel Johnson, executive director of the DC Charter School Alliance, writes in a Dec. 19 letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Council. Sixty of D.C.’s 68 charter school operators signed onto the letter.”

However, there is a major problem with the tone of the letter sent to Ms. Bowser. The Charter Alliance, while pointing out that the traditional schools are receiving $38.7 million more than the charters in the 2023 budget, or $800 more per student, fails to stress that equivalent funding for both education sectors is the law under the 1995 School Reform Act.

In retrospect, I should have not been surprised. In a conversation I had some time ago with the founding executive director of the Alliance, Shannon Hodge, she asserted to me that there was no legal requirement that the same level of funding go to DCPS and charters. Never mind that FOCUS, the previous incarnation of the Alliance, engineered a lawsuit against the Mayor over the unequal, immoral, unlawful money that DCPS has received compared to charters which was estimated to be between $72 million and $127 million a year. I guess we should be happy that the variance has come down substantially, if this estimate is to be believed.

While this appears to be straightforward matter please remember that we are talking about Washington, D.C. where politics is always a factor. In this case, as Mr. Koma discussed, the union does not want charters to get the benefits of their contract negotiations without being part of the bargaining unit. It fears that this will provide further incentive for charter school teachers not to join the union. Newly elected Ward 3 Councilmember Matt Frumin apparently buys into this argument, as well as expressing a concern that if the charters get extra money they will not spend it on salaries.

My hero Pat Brantley, Friendship’s PCS’s CEO, has already committed, according to the City Paper, to dedicate additional revenue to teacher salaries. Although Ms. Brantley is being nice, she did not need to make this promise and in fact, she should not have taken this step.

I feel that the charter schools in Washington, D.C. have become too cooperative.

The piece by Mr. Koma concludes that Council Chairperson Phil Mendelson is open to providing matching dollars to charters.

The DC Bilingual PCS new addition Ribbon Cutting

mlerner10 Charter School Expansion, Charter School Facilities, Charter Schools, Mayor Bowser, OSSE, PCSB Leave a comment

Last Friday, on a perfectly sunny crisp fall morning, hundreds gathered outside on the grounds of DC Bilingual Public Charter School to celebrate the addition a spectacularly beautiful 27,000 square feet addition to the existing permanent facility. The new space grows the existing structure by 55 percent, and, most importantly, will allow the charter to increase its enrollment from its current size of 494 scholars to over 700.

Head of school Daniela Anello led the festivities that included, besides students and staff, the presence of many leaders of the school, the District of Columbia’s education sector, and D.C. government. In attendance were D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, State Superintendent of Education Dr. Christina Grant; chair of the DC Public Charter School Board Lea Crusey; DC PCSB executive director Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis; and D.C. Council Ward 4 Council member Janeese Lewis George. Following an energetic performance by the Busy Bees, the school’s dance team, there were emotionally charged speeches by Mayor Bowser and the charter’s board chair Nadia Ramey, who both congratulated the school body on this important milestone. The next individual to address the attendees was Ms. Anello.

DC Bilingual is a tremendously successful school on many levels. For example, while educational institutions across the country posted declines in academic achievement coming out of the pandemic, DC Bilingual’s 2022 PARCC standardized test scores were the highest they have ever recorded. After interviewing the head of school in 2017 I came to understand that this attainment is due to a plethora of effort. Perhaps we can glean the reasons behind this feat from the words delivered by Ms. Anello on this day:

“Hello everyone my name is Daniela Anello and I am the incredibly proud Head of School at DC Bilingual.

Thank you for joining us for this special event. Today we will hear remarks from Mayor Bowser, who we are so excited to host, and from our Board Chair, Nadia Ramey. Then we invite everyone to join us in the ribbon cutting celebration. Afterwards, students will return to their classrooms and we invite our guests to join us inside for a reception featuring a historical display of the use of the land that we are so lucky to be on & have a school tour. We hope you will be able to stay the whole time.

Today’s celebration is in many ways the culmination of decades of work by literally hundreds of dedicated staff members, families, and supporters.

This is my fourteenth year working here, which means that I have had the privilege of have made DC Bilingual what it is today.

At the very beginning, our school was located in Columbia Heights and we had shared building space. We had a planter box as a school garden, a playground on the roof of the building that got extremely hot on sunny days, and for gym space we had to walk across several city blocks to the local neighborhood recreation center.

Today, we have the second-largest school garden in the city, two large, age-appropriate playgrounds, access to a large field, designated spaces for each of our six specials classes, brand new and well lit classrooms, a bilingual school library, and we even have a food lab!

We are very lucky–and I am so grateful we have access to so much!

Like many of our students. I am a first generation immigrant.

When I was four years old, my parents moved my sister and me to New York from Viña Del Mar, Chile in search for more opportunities and a better education.

Since then, I have spent my life trying to seize every opportunity presented to me, and I have learned first-hand the power of spaces that allow people to feel fully and completely themselves and to feel like they belong.

It’s a simple thing, but I’ve realized that experiencing a sense of belonging comes from having the opportunity to learn how to be our full selves and having access to resources with which we can thrive. Sadly this is something that not very many have the opportunity to receive.

This mindset is what drives me each and every day in my role as a school leader, and it’s the commitment I have made to our students, our staff and our caregivers.

Over the next five years we are looking to grow our school to serve over 700 students, and our dream is to ensure it remains a beautifully diverse and thriving school community.

This year we adopted the equitable access preference, which gives school entry to any student experiencing homelessness, who is in the foster care system, or receives government benefits. Our dream to grow our school to serve the students we know need the highest quality education came true.

DCB Staff: I feel incredibly honored to be able to serve you in this capacity , and I do not take for granted what it means to me to be part of this learning community here with you, working each day to better serve our students. Your dedication to our mission, your drive and your ability to go “all out” is contagious — even if it means having to join you on a choreographed dance to Olga Tanon in front of the whole school!!

To our parents & caregivers: thank you for choosing DC Bilingual to be part of your family, thank you for being part of our school team, and thank you for trusting us each day with your incredible children. We love them, we are inspired by them, and we are grateful for the chance to be a part of their lives.

To the DC Bilingual Board of Directors: thank you for helping our students follow their dreams, for opening new doors for us, and for always steering our ship in the right direction.

To our donors, and volunteers: you made this all possible, and we hope to make you proud.

To our Mayor, our councilmembers, ANC commissioners & our school partners: thank you for working hand in hand with us to ensure our students are safe and have access to the resources that will ensure the best experience possible at DC Bilingual.

To our project team, Gilbane Construction, Hord Coplan Macht (HCM), and John Breyer. Thank you for the design and construction of the building addition. The added facilities and outdoor spaces are more beautiful than we ever imagined, and we can’t wait to grow to fill all of our new spaces that you built for us.

And finally to our students: You are amazing. I urge each of you to seize every opportunity presented to you and that you proudly become bilingual scientists, mathematicians, avid readers, gardeners, cooks, performers and much more. But most importantly, I wish for you to become fully and completely yourselves. Know that you deserve all of this and remember that you always belong.

At DC Bilingual we have a tagline–“juntos somos lideres” or “Together we LEAD” This tagline couldn’t be more true for all of us right now. Let’s seize the opportunity to lead together and make sure everyone feels safe and welcome in the spaces we create. Thank you for being part of the DC Bilingual community. Juntos Somos Lideres!”

Cesar Chavez Public Charter Middle and High Schools make DC Bold Schools list for academic achievement

mlerner10 Charter Schools, PCSB, Standardized Test Scores, TenSquare Leave a comment

The month EmpowerK12 released the names of 14 District of Columbia schools that made its annual Bold Schools list. According to this organization’s web site bold schools are identified in this way:

“Schools are determined using the 2022 Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) data and their Percent Proficient Above Expected (PPAE) calculations (using four sophisticated mathematical models) that project what percentage of students are expected to be proficient given a school’s demographics. Bold Performance Schools have proficiency rates for students at least 5.5 percentage points higher than how schools with similar demographics achieved pre-pandemic.”

In addition:

“The 14 schools designated as Bold Performance Schools are DC Public Schools (DCPS) and DC charter schools, across elementary, middle, and high school grades; and serve student populations where students designated as at-risk make up at least 30% of the student population. This year’s Bold Performance Schools have 2022 PARCC proficiency rates that were an average of 9.1 percentage points better than other Bold-eligible schools, and their 2022 PARCC 4+ proficiency rates were 2.6 percentage points better than the pre-pandemic average for schools serving similar demographics.”

As you can see it is quite an academic achievement for these schools, especially coming out of the pandemic. Here is the list of facilities that includes those of both the charter sector and DCPS.

However, I want to highlight one of these schools because of its troubled past regarding standardized test scores. Back in 2017, when the Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy faced its 20 year review with the DC Public Charter School Board it was nearly shuttered due to low academic performance.
Instead the PCSB prevented its Parkside Middle School from accepting any new students into its sixth grade with the end result of closing this campus. The remaining schools, Chavez Capitol Hill and Chavez Prep would also cease operations if they did not meet specific Performance Management Framework targets over the next three years. The charter board commented that the Local Education Agency was simply “not meeting its goals and student achievement expectations.”

Facing an extremely dire situation, the Chavez’ board turned to the TenSquare Group for assistance. The charter then started making news for something other than pedagogy. Some teachers at Chavez Prep were working hard to bring a teachers’ union to the school. Then, for academic, enrollment, and financial pressures that I described here in 2019, the charter decided to close Chavez Capitol Hill and Chavez Prep and consolidate these institutions at the Parkside location. The plan was always to one day rebuild the middle school.

At the time I described Josh Kern, TenSquare’s leader, to literary hero Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s book The Fountainhead. Now we can recognize the magnitude of his team’s turnaround efforts. This year represents the first year since 2017 that the middle school will fill grades six through eight. Now, thanks to the analysis by EmpowerK12, both the middle and high schools fulfill the promise to provide a quality education to any student who needs one.

D.C. charter board proves equity has its limits when it comes to Eagle Academy PCS

mlerner10 Charter School Enrollment, Charter School Expansion, Education Forward DC, PCSB Leave a comment

When I attended the Education Forward DC event a couple of weeks ago that I recently wrote about, the organization’s new CEO Bisi Oyedele pointed out to me that in the past I used to summarize the proceedings of the DC Public Charter School Board on my blog. I told him that since the COVID pandemic the meetings have not been as interesting as in the past, but I said I would get back to this task. So to be true to my word, yesterday I watched last Monday evening’s session.

On the agenda was a vote on a charter amendment request by Eagle Academy PCS to expand on its two campuses, Congress Heights and Capital Riverfront, its offerings from the third to the fifth grade, with the fourth grade added in 2024 and the fifth grade starting in 2025. This amendment would not involve an enrollment increase. The discussion regarding this change initially occurred as part of the September monthly meeting. Here is some background around this issue.

In September 2021 the DC PCSB announced that it was pausing requests for grade expansion and new school applications for the current year and 2022. I brought this topic up in my interview with board chair Lea Crusey last July and here is what she said about the move:

“The questions around where the Performance Management Framework lands, how many tiers we end up with, the way that we define excellent schools, are at the heart of what we do.  We have a broad range of student achievement coming out of the pandemic.  We acknowledge that there are gaps around the academic offerings at different schools.  Our mission around equity means that we need to address the unique needs of all students.  We are now addressing how we approve new schools and allow others to grow in light of our revised framework of how we evaluate quality.  Simultaneously, D.C.’s population growth is uncertain.  We need to understand how these shifts are impacting the delivery of public education.”

However, despite the fact that the redesigned Performance Management Framework is still in development, charters were apparently informed that bids to add additional grades would now be entertained, with a June 1 deadline for modifications effective with the start of the 2023 to 2024 term. Eagle Academy submitted its charter amendment on June 6th, asserting that this was the due date communicated to the school.

Eagle Academy serves an extremely challenging population of students. I visited the Congress Heights campus in Anacostia six years ago and this is what I observed about the school then:

“The school founded in 2003 has always accepted students with disabilities up to Level 4, the highest category.  Services are readily available for these children.  A sensory room complete with pulleys and other gymnastic equipment allow an occupational therapist to assist with motor skills.  Speech pathologists and mental health workers share a wing of the building where they care for the 120 kids with Individual Education Plans.  Mr. Kline [the school’s principal] related that Eagle follows the inclusionary model in regard to their special education students, placing them in regular classrooms as often as possible.”

As we know, the pandemic has had terrible detrimental effects on our students, with the burden falling particularly hard on those living in poverty. Dr. Joe Smith, Eagle Academy’s CEO/CFO, pointed out to the board that parents have been requesting for years that the school expand to go up to the fifth grade. It is something he has wanted to do but COVID interrupted his plans to seek the enrollment modification. He stated that he believes in consideration of all that his families have gone through, and in light of the special needs of his pupils, he would now try to remove the requirement for a difficult transition to a new school when his kids reached the end of the third grade. However, on this night, the charter board would unanimously deny this plea, focusing on the fact that the school had missed the deadline for the charter amendment by five days. The PCSB did not explain why it entertained the request in the first place if its self-imposed time limit had been reached.

On the same night, Appletree Early Learning PCS brought a proposed charter amendment to the board to add students while staying within it already approved enrollment ceiling. This charter, like Eagle Academy, had missed the June cutoff. However, in this case the board found a workaround. According to the PCSB, “AppleTree PCS submitted its request on July 25, 2022, initially seeking approval to operate a new campus in the proposed facility beginning in SY 2023 – 24. DC PCSB staff informed the school that it was too late to seek authorization to operate a new campus in SY 2023 – 24. However, it was not too late to seek authorization to operate a new facility beginning in SY 2023 – 24. Consequently, AppleTree PCS submitted an updated facility amendment request on August 29, 2022.”

Appletree is seeking to expand into the Spring Valley section of the city. The bid is exciting, for if it is approved, it would be the first D.C. charter school ever located in Ward 3. This would be Appletree’s seventh facility, which would be considered a part of its Oklahoma Avenue N.E. campus, located 8.1 miles away from the new location.

The request, which appeared to receive positive feedback from board members, will be voted on during the November monthly meeting.

Now back to Eagle Academy and the closing words by Mr. Smith regarding his school’s amendment that was turned down:

“We are coming out of COVID and I think one of the key things we have to do is to think about what’s best for our students in terms of COVID. And I think coming out of COVID and having a chance to start working with our kids again, it’s very important for them to have stability. Their lives have been disrupted for the last two years. I have a daughter that graduated college in the middle of COVID. She got a master’s degree in the middle of COVID. So, I know how this affects even people who are adults, but children, it’s even worse. And that’s part of the reason I think my board has pressed me and why I have agreed to present this to the Public Charter School Board to see if there was some kind of way you could look at this and realize we’re not asking to add additional students. That’s not what we’re trying to do. All we want to do is to keep the students we have and grow them through grade four and grade five, and COVID is a very big pusher of us for us to go ahead and do this because these children — I understand what you’re doing and your policies, but I’m looking at the children I have in our schools, and for them, I’ve got to make a pitch and see if I can get you to see the importance of this for these kids. It’s important for them to have the stability of being in the same school with the same staff, you know, and also having the same teachers for fourth grade they had for third grade so that they can have that stability running through. So, I think that’s very critical for us and I think that’s what my board, if all of the board members were on, I think they would be saying exactly the same thing. And if you read all of the things that our parents wrote about attending the meetings, those are some of the pushes they’re giving us, that it’s very important for their kids to have additional stability beyond COVID and we can’t provide that unless you let us go to fourth grade.”

Michelle Rhee credits charter schools with DCPS academic achievement

mlerner10 Charter Schools, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, School Choice, Standardized Test Scores Leave a comment

A tremendous thank you to Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, for alerting me on Twitter of the most recent podcast by Education Next. The recording features my new friend George Parker, past president of the Washington Teachers’ Union and now senior advisor, school support for the National Alliance, and Ms. Michelle Rhee, who needs no introduction. The two engaged in a highly fascinating conversation regarding the groundbreaking union contract the two negotiated when Ms. Rhee was Chancellor of Washington, D.C.’s traditional school system in 2010. The contract would eventually lead to Mr. Parker being voted out of his position.

At the start of the discussion, moderator Paul E. Peterson, Education Next senior editor, explains that following the implementation of the labor agreement, DCPS, as measured by Mathematica, experienced substantial gains in reading and math for fourth grade students, and rising standardized test scores in reading in eighth grade pupils, but not a corresponding increase in math. Mr. Peterson asked Mr. Parker to characterize the contract. “It was the first union contract that was focused on the child and the teacher,” Mr. Parker intoned.

As background, please recall that this contract was truly groundbreaking in that for the first time in the history of public education a teacher’s performance evaluation was tied to student academic results. Moreover, it did not play an insignificant part. Fully fifty percent of the final rating was dependent on standardized test scores. In addition, instructors could earn substantial pay bonuses, up to $20,000 a year, for rises in academic marks. The agreement also reduced the power of seniority regarding job transfers and made it simpler to terminate a poor performing teacher.

When is was Ms. Rhee’s turn to speak, Mr. Peterson was most interested in the factors that created an environment in which it was possible to obtain such significant changes in the working relationship between teachers and management. Ms. Rhee recalled the unique educational ecosystem of reform present at the time. She said that the District had one of the bravest politicians she has ever seen in Adrien Fenty being elected Mayor. Soon after coming into office Mr. Fenty was able to achieve mayoral control of the regular schools. Ms. Rhee discussed the additional resource allocation the system was able to realize due to closing of under enrolled sites. She revealed that the sector received new philanthropic dollars to support the new pay for performance. Then, eight minutes and twenty seven seconds into the discussion, she dropped the bombshell.

Ms. Rhee explained that there was a strong choice dynamic in place. There were charter schools and there was the federally administered private school voucher program. She asserted that even for those who did not want change, people realized they had to do something because with these options available for parents “in ten years there will be no D.C. public schools.”

So there you have it. You can listen to the statement yourself. While there has been a highly intense debate in education circles as to what led to the strong academic achievement prior to COVID in PARCC and NAEP scores for students in public schools in the nation’s capital, we now have irrefutable proof of the cause. No one had a closer front row seat as to what took place in classrooms than Mr. Parker and Ms. Rhee.