Charter School Expansion

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

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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.

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!”

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

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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.”

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg donates $200 million to charter schools

mlerner10 Charter School Expansion, Charter School Facilities, DCPS, Mayor Bowser, PCSB, School Choice Leave a comment

A couple of days ago Cayla Bamberger of the New York Post revealed that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg granted two charter networks, Success Academy PCS and Harlem Children’s Zone PCS, $100 million each in order to help them grow to accept more students. The money is only the beginning of Mr. Bloomberg’s investment in these alternative schools. His goal is to spend $750 million nationwide. The former Mayor told the Post:

“I don’t know that 30 years from now, when they don’t have the kind of life that we’d want for them you can explain to them what happened and why we were asleep at the switch.”

My point exactly. The pandemic has created a magnificent opportunity for charters. I do not understand why pro-charter organizations are not buying up vacant office buildings to house schools. I’m sure there are great deals to be had in the current marketplace. Is there no one in D.C. who will be embarrassed in 30 years that they did not act when they had the chance?

The DC Public Charter School is currently on a year-long pause for considering new schools and the expansion on existing ones. This needs to end now with the result being that it is simpler for new charters to open and easier to add more seats for those that are already operating.

I found interesting that the Washington Post’s Perry Stein found the need in her recent story about D.C. middle schools to talk about Mayor Bowser’s view of the expansion of the charter sector. The reporter wrote:

“While charter schools are independent, the mayor can have a role in shaping the sector and the Bowser administration has been considered charter-friendly. Bowser appoints the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which authorizes which charter schools can open and which must close for low-performance. She said she speaks with all her appointees about the need to approve only charters that address an unmet need in the city.”

Ms. Stein contradicts herself. She claims that charters are independent yet simultaneously points out that they are overseen by the PCSB whose members are selected by the Mayor. But this is slightly off topic. I just love the quote that Ms. Stein includes in the article from past charter board chair Rick Cruz regarding the growth of charters while many DCPS school are under enrolled.

“It means little to us and even less to many D.C. families to hear that there are thousands of seats in many schools that boast poor academic results.”

Right on! It is now time to wake up from our Covid-19 lull. Come on Mr. Bloomberg, District charters are ready to accept your cash. Who else is out there that wants to pitch in?

Membership on the D.C. charter board dwindling

mlerner10 At-Risk Preference, Charter School Alliance, Charter School Enrollment, Charter School Expansion, Covid-19, D.C. Council, DC Charter School Alliance, School Choice Leave a comment

Last evening’s monthly meeting of the DC Public Charter School Board started strangely. Long-term member and previous vice chair Saba Bireda announced that this was her last meeting. Also on the Zoom broadcast for a short period was Naomi Shelton. She revealed that her last meeting was actually the August session. She had joined just to say her farewells. Both individuals received accolades from the remaining members of the board.

Recall that last June during a D.C. Council oversight hearing on the charter sector, Chairman Mendelson asked whether DC PCSB chair Rick Cruz and executive director Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis were aware of Mayor Muriel Bowser naming a replacement board member for Steve Bumbaugh whose term had ended, and whether she intended to renew the term of Ms. Shelton. Neither had any information. Now here we are at the end of September with Ms. Bireda having to step down apparently because she has accepted a position with the federal government that conflicts with her PCSB service and, as I postulated three months ago, Ms. Shelton will not get a second appointment to the board. This leaves the charter board with only four members. I cannot recall a time in the approximately twenty-five year history of the PCSB that the number of members has dropped so low.

I do not know if it is the impact of this terrible pandemic or the lack of support for his body from D.C.’s chief executive, but chair Rick Cruz appeared dejected. Or it could have been due to a general lack of enthusiasm by the populace for the charter movement as a whole. For also on this night, Ms. Walker-Davis announced that her organization is in the midst of reviewing the application process for new schools and for replication. Of course, this evaluation is long overdue, and I have called for years to make it simpler both for charters to open and grow. Charter school expansion has been much too bureaucratic. However, I was shocked to hear that because of this deliberation no new charter applications will be accepted until the 2023 cycle and all existing schools will also be prevented from adding additional grade levels until that time. Charter amendments for expansion of student ceiling limits will still be entertained. It felt to me that perhaps we should simply end this entire experiment in school reform.

Or maybe it already has stopped. Earlier in the day the Mayor mandated that all school employees and contractors, no matter what their role, will now have to vaccinated against Covid-19, without an option to skip the shot and be tested. This is something Rocketship PCS, Perry Street PCS, and Monument Academy PCS adopted weeks ago and a mandate that the charter movement should have led as it used to proudly set high standards. The DC Charter School Alliance went along with the move with founding executive director Shannon Hodge stating, “Charter school leaders and the DC Charter School Alliance are prepared to work together with Mayor Bowser, DC Public Schools, and DC Health to ensure we provide safe spaces to learn and adequately protect students and staff in the fight against COVID-19.” Really, what else could she say at this point?

As if all of this was not depressing enough, WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle reported last week that eleven charter schools have agreed to include an admission preference for at-risk students. The ability to offer this preference was granted to charters by the D.C. Council in 2020, and is in addition to admission preferences that include siblings of existing enrolled students, children of school employees, and special education students. As a school choice purist, I am fine with the admission advantage for siblings and employees but I stop there. In the most simple terms I do not believe anyone should be discriminated against when trying to gain a seat at these schools. The answer for charters wanting a greater proportion of at-risk students is to open more campuses that can serve these scholars, especially if we can accomplish this by taking over failing traditional schools. It is what we should have been doing for years.

Last month I observed a brief spark in our local charter ecosystem and I was hoping this was the start of a flame. It looks like the match has burned out.

Future bleak for approval of new charter schools in the District of Columbia

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Last Monday evening the DC Public Charter School Board considered for approval five applications that they had heard new school representatives present the prior month. Board member Steve Bumbaugh commented before the vote on Capital Experience Lab PCS that “this is one of the finest applications” that he had read during his six-year tenure on the board. He went on to say that he himself had opened a charter school, so he could see the promise of what this new school could become.

So what did the members of the PCSB do following his remarks? They turned down the school in a four to three ruling.

The discussion over whether to create additional classrooms started out on a highly defensive note. Here is board chair Rick Cruz’s remarks regarding this part of the meeting’s agenda:

“As long as public charter schools have been in Washington, DC, there has been a debate about them: Many have been concerned, arguing that we have too many public charter schools and contending that they take away resources from more traditional options.    And each time this Board has considered opening new schools, many in the city worry that there is not enough need and not enough demand.

“The Board sees it differently. Yes, the number of public charter schools grew in the early years, but for the last decade the percentage of public school students attending traditional and charter schools has stayed roughly the same, with more than half attending traditional DCPS schools. And that’s because both sectors open new schools, while closing others. With charters, we have a process of regular review and oversight that allows us to close schools which are underperforming. 

“In fact, since 2014 when I joined the Board, we have opened 21 schools while closing 15. And when I say schools, I am referring to campuses not [local education agencies] LEAs.

“My basic point is that charter application approvals are but only one part of the story. One needs to look at the whole picture — from applications to oversight, from improvement to closing if necessary.

“Often the controversy around charters is framed as one of budget dollars being taken by charter schools away from the traditional neighborhood schools. That is simply not true. Public charter schools get funded per pupil. The dollars belong to them and their families. And, over my time on the Board and in the sector, we have seen real increases in funding under the leadership of Mayor Bowser. One sector does not take from the other.

“Public charter schools were created as an alternative approach to provide public education — to offer innovation, quality, and choice to families that wanted another way. In Washington, DC, we continue to work toward that goal. And our work is not done. We need to keep looking for ways – through our oversight and monitoring — to make public charter schools better. Why?  Because the students and families of this city deserve this. They deserve better.”

The tone is quite different from a statement released by the board in 2019 when D.C. Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn attempted to put pressure on the PCSB to restrict the number of new school applications given the green light to open.

“Despite concerns about ‘under-utilization’ by the DC Deputy Mayor of Education, families are choosing public charter schools for their students. This year, 59% of public charter schools had longer waitlists than they did last year, and roughly 67% of applicants on waitlists are waiting for a seat at a top-ranking public charter school. Quality matters to families. This is why we want to ensure that there are excellent options available throughout the city.”

That year five out of eleven bids to create new facilities were approved.

This year it was only one. The story of what happened to CAPX is one around fear around demand. Board member Lea Crusey remarked that the board has approved 2,000 new high school seats over the next 10 years and that of the eight pre-Kindergarten to twelfth grade charters approved to open over the last four years, only two charters have met their first year enrollment target.

It is now easy to understand why only Wildflower PCS was granted a charter. Here you have a small school with a Montessori model aimed at enrolling at-risk children. There is high demand for Montessori-based pedagogy in the city. The existing schools, both traditional and charter, that are based upon this framework are oversubscribed. Even though there is tremendous need for more Montessori schools in the city, the charter board cut the number of 60-pupil campuses proposed by Wildflower from eight to six.

When you see a high quality innovative charter like CAPX being denied and an extremely specialized school like Wildflower being approved, it means that the portfolio of charter schools in the nation’s capital is now basically fixed.

Only 1 new D.C. charter school application should be approved by board

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Tonight, the DC Public Charter School Board will vote on five applications for new schools that it entertained last month. Only one of these should be approved to open during the 2022-to-2023 term.

Capital Experience Lab PCS applied last year and the board missed an opportunity by failing to give this charter the green light. Now the submission to the board has been improved. According to the school,

“We have spent the past year learning from and implementing the feedback we received from the PCSB last March.
We have focused on the areas of demonstrating demand, strengthening team capacity, planning inclusively to meet
the needs of all learners, and building out a more comprehensive high school plan.”

I thought once again the representatives from the school did an exceptional job in their presentation. While the members of the PCSB have the right to ask almost any question they want, the line of inquiry around Ms. Dailey-Reese’s record as executive director of City Arts and Prep PCS went beyond common decency. She did everything in her power to improve the academic performance of her students.

Wildflower PCS will be denied because the school leaders were not able to give a clear vision of roles and responsibilities between those running the charter at the local level compared to the national organization. This is a CityBridge Education supported application so I’m on dangerous grounds casting my vote against the efforts of this group.

The charter board was especially excited about the application from Heru Academy PCS, particularly because it would enroll students with emotional and physical disabilities. While this is a noble cause I just didn’t believe that the those doing the presentation demonstrated sufficient knowledge and experience to take on this mighty challenge.

I have similar feelings about Lotus PCS and  M.E.C.C.A. Business Learning Institute PCS. The applications were fine but I didn’t get the sense that the representatives had the background to leap into the turbulent world of charter school start-ups.

All of this is too bad because as you are aware I want as many charter schools to open in the nation’s capital as possible.

Complicating the issue of approving new schools is the fear as expressed by some board members that there are currently too many available seats in District schools. In an article by the Washington Post’s Perry Stein that appeared last Thursday, the reporter states that board member Saba Bireda observed, “In all, the charter board has approved nine middle and high schools that are in the process of opening, expanding or adding more grade levels, with the potential to add more than 3,000 seats in the city.” Another trustee, Jim Sandman remarked at the March board meeting, ““I am concerned about the under-enrollment of a number of current middle schools in Wards 5 and 6.”

Being a proponent of a strong education marketplace, I say the more schools the better and let parents vote with their feet as to which will financially be able to support themselves and which will have to close. I just wish the applications for new schools had been stronger.

When D.C. public schools reopen they should all be charters

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City leaders and educators are already beginning to imagine what public education will look like when schools are once again allowed to teach students in the classroom. Today, the Washington Post has a long article by Laura Meckler, Valerie Strauss, and Joe Heim talking about the challenges school systems are anticipated to have bringing its pupils up to their academic grade level. Once solution that was provided by Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and referenced by the Post reporters, is to keep low performing Title 1 children, those from low-income households, at their current grade until individualized lesson plans can be developed for each child. Mr. Petrilli wrote:

“So when schools reopen in the fall, these students should remain in their current grade and, ideally, return to the familiarity of their current teacher. (Other types of schools — including affluent schools, middle schools and high schools — may also want to consider a similar approach.) The first order of business will be to attend to the social, emotional and mental health needs of their children and to reestablish supportive and comforting routines.

Then teachers should develop individualized plans to fill in the gaps in kids’ knowledge and skills and accelerate their progress to grade level. The use of high-quality diagnostic tests will be critical in assessing how much ground has been lost in reading and math. Students who are assessed as ready for the next grade level can move onward.

The next step would be for teachers to develop plans for each pupil to make progress, aimed at getting them to grade level by June. The plans should involve as much small-group instruction as possible, with kids clustered according to their current reading or math levels, plus some online learning opportunities in case schools are closed again. Those who are furthest behind could get regular one-on-one tutoring from specialists. This would be different from just ‘repeating the grade,’ which, research shows, rarely helps students catch up.”

I agree with the Fordham Institute president that restarting schools will bring a need to tailor learning, as the excellent teachers I have met like to say, “to meet the students where they are.” But how can we get this done for the 47 percent of the 93,708 students that are identified as at-risk in the nation’s capital?

The answer is surprising simple. We need to open all schools, including those of DCPS, as charters. Charter schools in the District of Columbia have spent more than 25 years learning how to adapt their curriculum to the needs of the specific students enrolled in their buildings. We need to free the leaders of each campus to adapt as quickly as possible to the plethora of needs of those they are about to serve once again.

Now don’t get me wrong. This conversion to one hundred percent charters is a tremendous undertaking. But it is monumentally exciting at the same time. I imagine the DC Public Charter School Board, with the assistance of OSSE, the Deputy Mayor for Education, DCPS, and the State Board of Education, all rolling up their collective sleeves to create the new paradigm. In order for these facilities to be as flexible as possible, union membership by all teachers would be suspended indefinitely.

Think of the freedom that this change would bring to the principals of our traditional schools. They would form a natural partnership with the 62 sites that are already part of the charter sector. Consider the support that groups like Education Forward DC, CityBridge Education, the Center for Education Reform, FOCUS, the DC Association of Chartered Public Schools, Education Board Partners, the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, and the Flamboyan Foundation could provide to this effort. This is a ton of expertise.

After the Katrina hurricane disaster in New Orleans, that city’s schools reopened as charters. The result, as documented by a Tulane University research group, has been increased high school graduation rates, higher college participation, and standardized test scores that have gone up by “eight to fifteen percentage points.” These improvements include students from low-income families. In the aftermath of another catastrophic tragedy, a similar bold move is needed regarding education reform.

This coming Friday Mayor Bowser is expected to make another announcement regarding the city’s public schools. I anticipate that she will keep them closed for the remainder of the academic year. Wouldn’t it be great if she also announced that in the fall all schools would reopen as charters?

Friendship and KIPP DC charter school networks deserve more students, not less

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The Washington Post’s Perry Stein has noticed that both Friendship PCS and KIPP DC PCS have been taking over campuses of other charters that were facing closure by the DC Public Charter School Board for poor academic performance. Friendship actually started this trend when it assumed control of Southeast Academy in 2005 after the PCSB revoked its charter. KIPP DC then followed suit nine years later when it agreed to bring Arts and Technology PCS into its network at the same time that New York’s Democracy Prep PCS expanded to run Imagine Southeast PCS. Then in 2015 Friendship incorporated Dorothy I. Height’s Community Academy PCS’s Armstrong and on-line campuses in the aftermath of the financial scandal surrounding its founder Kent Amos.

Democracy Prep PCS closed at the end of the 2019 school term when it realized that it could not raise its score on the DC Public Charter School Board’s Performance Management Framework.

More recently, Friendship rescued Ideal Academy PCS and brought City Arts and Prep PCS’s program around visual art, performance art, dance, theatre, instrumental music, and vocal music into Armstrong Elementary. KIPP DC this year added Somerset PCS to its roster of schools.

All of this consolidation is worrisome to Ms. Stein. She commented:

“KIPP DC and Friendship, the city’s two largest charter networks, have grown bigger in recent years as they take over floundering charter campuses, revamping the schools and adding the campuses to their already extensive and well-regarded portfolios.

The networks are poised to educate more than 11,500 public school students in the coming years — more than 11 percent of the city’s public school population.”

The Washington Post reporter raised an identical concern when she wrote about KIPP DC being granted the shuttered Ferebee-Hope Elementary School. She stated:

“The city’s decision to lease the vacant Ferebee-Hope Elementary School building in Southeast Washington means citywide enrollment on KIPP campuses could grow to more than 7,600 students in coming years — representing about 15 percent of the city’s charter sector and 7 percent of all public school students.”

Ms. Stein has actually underestimated the impact of Friendship. At the end of last year’s school year, with the help of many of this city’s nonprofits, Friendship’s Educational Foundation incorporated Monument Academy PCS into its fold. The Foundation already runs schools in three states with many more to come.

In addition, news came from Ms. Stein’s piece that apparently Achievement Prep PCS is in discussions to have its Wahler Place Middle School transferred to Friendship. Although Achievement Prep’s elementary school has been slowly increasing its PMF scores over time, the middle school appears stuck at an extremely low Tier 2 level. If Ms. Stein’s report is true, this would be an extremely interesting development since both of Achievement Prep’s campuses are at the same location.

What is truly fascinating is that now that the educational marketplace is working exactly as intended, in that good schools are growing in their span of control and low performing ones are going away, the establishment, as represented by Ms. Stein, is sounding an alarm. I, of course, take a different view.

Charter schools in the national’s capital currently teach 46 percent of all public school students, which equates to 43,446 pupils. This proportion should be much higher by now. In addition, although slowly improving, charter school standardized test scores are not where they need to be and the academic achievement gap, now at about 60 points, is holding steady. If having all kids go to a KIPP or Friendship campus is what it is going to take to turn this situation around, then I am perfectly fine with this outcome.

Support for my position comes directly from the leaders of KIPP and Friendship. Susan Schaeffler, the founder and chief executive officer of KIPP DC explained to Ms. Stein, “If something is working, it makes sense to build on it. . . We did not do this overnight.” Ms. Patricia Brantly, the Friendship CEO, put it much more simply on Facebook. “Go big or go home,” she wrote.

Between KIPP and Friendship there are currently 16 Tier 1 schools, with other campuses at Tier 2 or untiered. If you had a child in the District would you patiently wait while other schools catch up? Not a chance. You would enroll your son or daughter as quickly as you could in one of these fine institutions.

At-risk student lottery preference in D.C. school lottery is a bad idea

mlerner10 Charter School Expansion, PCSB Leave a comment

Yesterday, the Washington Post’s Perry Stein wrote a story about the controversy over Washington Latin PCS’s application before the DC Public Charter School Board to replicate next year.

The only problem is that there never should have been controversy over this issue. Latin clearly meets the charter board’s criteria for a ceiling enrollment increase through its consistent attainment of Tier 1 status for both its middle school and high school and due to the fact that its student wait list is around 1,500 pupils. The charter board, under its own rules, should have given the green light to expansion without six pages of conditions imposed on this institution.

The charter school bargain has always been expressed as autonomy in return for accountability. Washington Latin exemplifies this standard.

If there was ever a definition of mission-creep we have found it in the work of the PCSB.

The charter board was highly critical of the low proportion of at-risk student who attend the school. But as they like to say at Latin “words matter.” This is straight from the school’s website:

“Unlike the majority of public schools, Washington Latin serves a diverse student body; our demographics mirror those of the city. We believe that all students can learn and deserve access to a rigorous, quality education. As a public school, we have civic and moral obligations to accept all students who come to us for an education. We consider a truly integrated school community to be the only way to accomplish our classical education model, helping students develop the ability to discuss ideas and make moral decisions within a diverse community.”

The school’s goal has always been to have a diverse student body. If you visit Latin you will see it for yourself; I don’t believe there is a charter in this town that is more of a melting pot of young people from different ethnic and racial backgrounds. It works intentionally toward this goal. As a former board member of the school I have lost track of how many bus routes it runs in order to pull students from each Ward of the District.

Scott Pearson, the PSCB’s executive director, believes that the solution to gain even more diversity at Latin is to provide an at-risk student preference in the My School DC Lottery. Ms. Stein quotes him as stating:

“If we are really serious about equity and if we are serious about making sure that our least advantaged families have the ability to go to our high-performing schools, we need to do more.”

I agree, we do need to do more. But the answer is not to discriminate against certain children gaining admission to some of the city’s highest performing schools due to the color of their skin or their economic status.

No, there is a much more superior solution than tinkering with the lottery. We need to open more charter schools. But the charter board, the same one that is so critical of the tremendously difficult work being done at Latin, seems to make it as arduous as possible to replicate or open new schools.

I’ve talked so much about the obstacles that it puts in place that I don’t really want to repeat them here. But I do want for a minute to provide a taste of what I envision for the District’s educational landscape.

For those of us involved in public school reform, we desperately desire a quality seat for every child. Yet, today, we have numerous low performing traditional schools, many with proficiency rates in reading and math in the single or low double digits. These need to be immediately turned over the charters. I don’t care if they are given to our home-grown versions of these schools or we bring in charter school networks from outside of our city. As charters proliferate by taking over the buildings of DCPS sites or by co-locating in the empty hallways of the humongous number of under-utilized regular schools, we will provide a stellar education to all of those beautiful children that we categorize as at-risk.

But doing this will take courage. It will be the political fight of the century. I am optimistic we can get this done in our lifetimes. Perhaps we need to begin with baby steps. One simple way to get started is to have a unanimous unambiguous vote by our charter board to have a school like Latin replicate.